How to access the iterating group inside Foreach SOP?

[magneto]

I have Font SOPs copied via the Copy SOP. I know I can do this with stamping but after the Copy SOP, I want to use a Foreach SOP to iterate over each group created by the Copy SOP. Inside the foreach, how can I copy each group with a different color?

Using the Color SOP with primitives, detail, points doesn't work. Is there a way to stamp the group name being iterated?

[hopbin9]

I think the group name will be in one of the values of the Each SOP.

[magneto]

Thanks Hopbin, I tried accessing it using:

`chs("../each1/group")`

but it didn't work. I get the same result, where each character is randomly colored, not each Font SOP instance.

[hopbin9]

I got it to work, but I had to put a "*" in the Group Mask on the ForEach SOP. Don't know why, and I'm wondering if this has changed in H12?

See attached, I output the group name to a prim attribute. Look in the details view.

untitled1.hip

[magneto]

Thanks Hopbin, I see what you mean. I tried copy*, it still worked though in H11. The problem is trying to generate different colors for the whole group but I think it requires storing the copy index too so you can randomize based on this. Color SOP still uses each primitive when you specify a group.

[Annon]

Why aren't you just using copy stamping?

If it's just to get used to using the forEachSOP then fair enough, but I would think it would be more economical to do this in the copySOP...

[magneto]

Yeah this works with stamping. I just want to try this because I am wondering if I could access the whole group inside Foreach. Also would be useful if the geometry wasn't created with a Copy SOP, but had groups per object in the geometry.

[Annon]

Ok well if you hadn't created the geo through a copy node (I have in the attached example, but ignore that fact), you can use a connectivitySOP to create an attribute per object, in this case "class" and then a partition sop to split the geo up into groups based on that attribute, in this case "box_*".

From there you can either use the $CLASS variable to colour each node differently, or use the groups in a for each...

Explanation of For Loop Expression:

rand(opdigits(stamps("..", "FORVALUE","")) * 523)

opdigits gets the number on the end of the string, so box_22 will return 22.

stamps(...FORVALUE...) will get you the current stamp name.

Hope this helps

Christian

colorByPartition.hip

[magneto]

Thanks Christian, this method should also work with the basic foreach groups then. I was looking for something like opdigits, so great that it exists