The Backbone Idea
Starting with a simple input cube, the tool allows customization of the size in X, Y, Z.
During the first step of defining general dimension, the user customizes corner’s beveling and irregularity from slightly booleaning the initial cube input.
The tool then takes the primitive facing in Z+ direction as the source to spawn random points on its surface. The user then controls how many points they would like to have on this electrical box.
These points will be used to create smaller components inside the final assets. To control which “kind” or “species” of the smaller components, point attributes are assign to each point by user’s input probability.
For example, out of 10 points, user can define: 0.4 (40%) to be a “Switch” kind, 0.2 (20%) to have “CircuitBox” kind, and so on.
These information will be used to populate premade smaller assets into the box. Next, dynamic modeling details like wires and cables are generated based on these smaller component models.
The tool is set in the way that, for each “Switch” model, on the higest primitive surface, there will be a point with “start” attribute for the wire.
Similarly, for each “CircuitBox” highest primitive surface, there will be a point with “end” attribute. The “start” and “end” attribute for the pairing points then form into a line.
These lines are used to simulate the cables with the rest of the models inside the box act as collision objects.
Once smaller objects are placed, the user also has an option to define “empty area.” This can casually acts as negative space in the overall design, or they can use this area to place hero objects or the models they want to emphasize manually.