Introducing RagingHull for InDesign CS4-CC
February 03, 2015 | RagingHull | en | fr
While studying bounding boxes and transformations I realized we could get nice patterns based on successive rotations applied to a given shape. As InDesign instantly determines the coordinates of the enclosing rectangle whatever the page item transform state, I had fun in drawing those boxes while varying strokes and angles. Jongware made similar experiments with its famous Spirographs script. RagingHull is just another free toy that reveals the bounds of a spinning object…
Getting Started
First, download RagingHull.jsx and install it as usual. On executing the script with no active selection you'll get the preferences window:
Click the “Indiscripts Menu” icon button (bottom right) to have RagingHull available in a dedicated menu. Default settings are suitable for a smooth start, so click Save and you're up for the game.
The easiest way to test the script is to create and select a rectangle in the active document, then to call RagingHull from the Indiscripts menu. The result is shown below:
If you plan to increase the number of bounding boxes, undo the process (Cmd Z
), open again the preferences window (release the selection and go into Indiscripts > RagingHull), then set the Step angle to a lower value, e.g. 5°
. You can also adjust the Stroke weight, smooth the corners (Rounding field), and so on. RagingHull's settings are self-explanatory. When you're done, save your prefs, re-select the target rectangle (or anything else!) and re-run the script.
From boxes to patterns
As an experiment, select the group of boxes you have just created, ungroup (Cmd Shift G
) then click the Exclude overlap button in the Pathfinder.
You then have a compound path whose inner pattern can be revealed by pressing Shift X
(Swap Fill and Stroke):
As you will see spinning boxes spawned by RagingHull have many interesting and aesthetic properties. Here are some samples that emerged while I was writing this tutorial:
Be creative!
Comments
On peut même en faire des pattern si on l'associe à d'autres scripts, peut-être.
RagingHull : c'est sans doute le plus beau dans ce script, quelle trouvaille que ce nom ! :-)
Je le charge, déneige en attendant, et m'empresse de l'essayer.
Amicalement,
Nico.
Sympa ! Pour moi il y a ici un vrai champ d'exploration pour la création dans la pure lignée du design génératif. Comme quoi un script c'est plus que de faire des rechercher/remplacer :D