I started trying to match my segmented lines to the primary veins in the orthoptera image. I added an opacity slider since the lines were blocking out the image. That helped a lot.
I used a quadratic equation to set the direction of the root line segments and was able to get a decent match. Kinda getting the hang of tweaking the parameters. Wish I could render a graph of the function right in the app but … another time. Actually, I should try drawing it in Desmos to see if it’s actually useful at all first.
What else? Oh, I limited the length of the lines. They don’t line up with the edge of the wing very well.
Like, look at it. That edge has a lot of bumps and curves. Can’t model that with a quadratic and no, I don’t want to add more terms to match it more closely. It’ll have to be a limitation of my little project.
I don’t even want to look at that branching and curving going on at the leading edge of the wing. And that front wing… I’m just pretending it isn’t even there!
Okay, what is going on in that front wing? I guess there’s a huge branch point happening near the middle of the wing. Primary veins to the left and below that branch point just run into the lower branch and stop. Meanwhile, between the two branches there’s a new arrangement of primary veins that has a nice curve to it but.
I’d need a lot of parameters to model all that variation and I’m reluctant to invest so heavily into this one grasshopper.
So I’ll stick with the plan. Get a reasonable arrangement of primary veins and then move on to experiment with laying out the cross veins. I’ll probably even skip branching for now
I wonder how all this is encoded in the grasshopper’s genes. My implementation is fully top-down. The lines I’m drawing have zero awareness of each other. But the branching and curves at the leading edge of the back wing mean those primary veins are responding to the presence of other primary veins as they grow in. Kind of a blend of top-down and bottom-up influence.
Maybe one day I can try growing the primary veins in a reaction-diffusion field…
Stick with the plan. (-;