Golden Print [EN]: Chapter 161

Woojin hadn’t planned to visit Jayden’s house that day.

He thought if he went over pretending to do homework, he would just end up watching Jayden and Seokhyun play games all night.

But Jayden strongly disagreed with Woojin’s idea.

“Bloody Hell! What do you think I am, Woojin?”

“A gaming addict.”

“Certainly not. Jayden hasn’t even played a game in over a month.”

“That’s a lie… really?”

“Of course. So come over, Woojin.”

So, after a while, Woojin went to Jayden’s house and had a new experience.

Usually, Jayden would order chicken as soon as Woojin arrived.

He would give Woojin a game controller and make him play football to decide who paid for the chicken. But not today.

For some reason, they skipped that and started on their homework right away.

The computer room used to be just for playing games. But today, it was different. It was now Jayden’s studio.

The monitors that usually showed game loading screens were now running computer programs for making 3D designs.

It was a sight he never thought he would see.

“Jayden, are you feeling alright?”

“What?! I’m perfectly fine, Woojin.”

“They say when someone changes suddenly, they’re about to die.”

“Actually, my stomach does hurt a bit, but I don’t think it’s a terminal illness.”

Woojin was still surprised.

Even though Jayden was using a 3D program instead of playing games, he still had a lot of energy.

Still, Woojin couldn’t get used to it.

“Hey, Seokhyun.”

“Yeah?”

“Why is he suddenly like this?”

“Like what?”

“I haven’t seen him doing homework this excitedly since the competition.”

Seokhyun shrugged.

“He’s been like this for the past few months.”

“Really?”

“What was he like in class?”

“In Design and Engineering class?”

“Yeah. The 3D modeling class.”

“He was similar in class… He’d make something quickly, then brag to me about it and act all proud…”

“Really?”

“Now that I think about it, I was a bit confused because Jayden’s modeling skills seemed to have improved so much.”

“Heh heh.”

“So he’s been working hard without me knowing?”

“Maybe…?”

Jayden, who seemed to be listening to their conversation while using his mouse, suddenly spoke up.

“Jayden hasn’t been working hard without you knowing.”

“What?”

“It’s just that Jayden’s talent is amazing.”

Woojin was speechless.

“Woojin probably finds it hard to understand Jayden. Heh heh.”

Jayden seemed more excited than usual and didn’t even look at Woojin as he worked, focused on the computer.

Because Jayden was quiet, Woojin was able to start discussing the assignment with Seokhyun.

“So, this assignment is about designing a building that looks like it’s from nature using Rhino, right?” Woojin asked, looking surprised.

“What? Are you secretly in our class?”

“Huh?”

“How do you know our assignment so well when I haven’t even told you about it?”

Seokhyun chuckled.

“Maybe I’m like Jayden too, in a way.”

“What?”

Seokhyun pointed his chin towards Jayden and continued.

“Every time after the Design and Engineering class, he always calls me over to his house.”

Woojin was confused.

“He says he’s having trouble with what he learned today and asks me to help him.”

Jayden, who they thought was quietly focused on his assignment, suddenly interrupted again.

“Holy! What are you talking about, Seokhyun! Jayden studied everything on his own!”

Of course, Jayden’s response was ignored.

“Well, you get the idea, right?”

Woojin chuckled as he looked at Seokhyun, who shrugged.

“Heh heh, he’s such a cute guy.”

“Bloody Hell!”

The computer room, which had been briefly noisy because of Jayden’s excited voice, soon became quiet again.

Maybe the assignment was more important than proving he was right, because Jayden started focusing on his work again.

In the quiet, Woojin tore off a sheet of yellow paper and started sketching his ideas.

To get advice and help from Seokhyun, he needed to share what kind of design he wanted to create.

“Seokgu, what do you think this is?”

“Hmm…?”

When Woojin showed his drawing, Seokhyun tilted his head.

The drawing was rough because it was just a quick sketch.

And because the theme was natural shapes, it wasn’t easy to see a clear shape.

So Woojin added a word.

“Just tell me what it feels like, just the feeling.”

Seokhyun said what he thought of, just as he was told.

“This is kind of like a wave, isn’t it?”

“Right?”

“It’s like dropping a water droplet on the water… Is that what you were going for?”

Woojin nodded right away at Seokhyun’s words.

As he said, Woojin’s sketch was inspired by waves.

“When you drop something in water, a wave is created from where it lands, right?”

“Right?”

“But when these different waves mix, they create a special shape that is irregular but still has a pattern.”

Seokhyun looked even more interested at Woojin’s words.

It was a unique idea compared to the usual ideas people had for natural modeling.

“Does the mixing of waves mean that waves created by different forces from different places are mixed together?”

Woojin shook his head, waving his hand at Seokhyun’s scientific question.

“Simply put, it’s like dropping three stones in still water.”

“Keep talking.”

“If you drop stones of different sizes in different places, waves will spread out from those places…”

Woojin continued to draw round lines on the yellow paper, continuing his explanation.

“When those lines meet, a special pattern is created on the water.”

Seokhyun replied simply.

“Same thing.”

“What?”

“What I said is the same thing.”

“Anyway!”

Seokhyun, who now understood what kind of natural modeling Woojin wanted to do, smiled and spoke again.

“So you want to try using the patterns created by mixing these water waves as a design?”

Woojin nodded.

“That’s exactly it.”

Woojin answered strongly, then spoke again in a quiet voice.

“If I could do it, I think it would look really great…”

As he spoke, Woojin’s voice got quieter, as if he was losing confidence.

“I wonder if there’s a way to model this?”

Seokhyun thought for a moment, then nodded and replied.

“It might not be easy, but I think it’s possible.”

“Oh…? Really?”

“But it might be difficult with just Rhino, and we might have to use Grasshopper.”

Woojin’s face, which had lit up when he heard it was possible, froze when he heard the word Grasshopper.

Woojin had planned to do it by hand.

Woojin had originally planned to create the wave model by hand.

He was going to draw all the lines to create the shape of the waves one by one, like building a typical model.

‘Draw lines that gradually increase in a circle, like waves spreading out… Then, if I change the height of those lines and connect them, wouldn’t I be able to create a model of waves?’

This method was possible, but it would take a lot of work.

It would just take a lot of effort for each part, but it could be done.

However, there was one problem with this method: it would be hard to show where different waves meet and affect each other.

To show how many waves mix on the water surface by hand would take an extreme amount of work.

So Woojin was hoping Seokhyun knew about some special features in Rhino that he didn’t know about.

He was hoping there was a function that could easily do this kind of modeling.

But Seokhyun mentioned a new tool called Grasshopper, which was more advanced than Rhino.

That was why Woojin’s face turned serious.

Grasshopper was a program that he had only learned about last week in Design and Engineering class.

‘It’s hard to even say I learned it. I just opened the program.’

Also, Grasshopper had a confusing design that made even Woojin, who loved modeling, feel overwhelmed.

Instead of creating a shape by drawing points and connecting lines like in Rhino or Max, it used formulas and numbers to create a plan and then used that plan to create the model.

So Woojin sighed without realizing it, and Seokhyun chuckled as he looked at him.

“Hey, don’t think it’s too hard.”

“It is hard.”

“If you know the basics, it might be easier.”

“Basic concepts?”

Seokhyun started explaining to Woojin, who was confused.

“When you draw a point in Rhino, you click where you want to draw it with the mouse, right?”

Woojin nodded.

“Right?”

Seokhyun continued to speak while setting up Rhino and Grasshopper on the computer.

“It’s the same in Grasshopper. If you set where you want to draw a point, a point will be drawn there.”

Woojin still looked confused, so Seokhyun spoke again.

“So, if you write the location where you clicked with the mouse as numbers, it will be drawn the same way.”

Meanwhile, all the programs were open, and Seokhyun quickly opened Grasshopper and dragged an icon that looked like a chessboard onto the screen.

Then, he wrote the number 0 in each of the left parts of the icons with the letters x, y, and z written on them.

Then, the next moment.

“Oh…?”

A point was created on the Rhino screen connected to Grasshopper.

“A point has been created at the location where the coordinates of the x, y, and z axes are all 0.”

“I see.”

“This time, I’ll create another point in this way…”

Seokhyun created another point at the coordinates of 10, 10, 0 in the same way.

This time, he dragged an icon with the word Line written on it and connected it to the existing two icons.

Then, the two points drawn on the Rhino screen were connected by a single line.

“Wow…! This is fun!”

Woojin, who had been watching Seokhyun work, looked excited, and Seokhyun, seeing that look, started explaining again with a proud face.

“Just drawing one point looks harder than clicking with the mouse… But when you’re working on that wave model you’re trying to make, there’s no tool as good as Grasshopper.”

Woojin asked back, his eyes shining.

“Why?”

Seokhyun smiled and replied.

“If you use the formula for how waves are created in the plan, Grasshopper will automatically create lines according to that pattern.”

Woojin was surprised.

“It’s no problem even if several waves are mixed. If you create the plan correctly, the model will be created naturally even if you mix 100 waves.”

Woojin’s eyes were getting bigger and bigger as he heard about the modeling method he had never thought of before.