renklint Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 Hello, this is a real Noob question and you can tell I'm not too familiar with how attributes work. The short version of my question is: how can i divide a circle into a number of circular arcs without creating a carve SOP for every arc? Long version: I want to create a number of circular arcs, you could imagine one arc from 12 o'clock to 2 o'clock, one arc from 2 to 5 o'clock and the last from 5 to 12 o'clock. Now I would need it to be procedural, because there will not always be three arcs around the circle, but variying numbers. It would also be nice to have them slightly separated. I tried by creating an attribute create with the values 0, 2, 5 and 12. Then I created 3 carve SOP's and copied those values and "paste copied relative reference" for the first and second u in the carve sops. It would be possible to create another attribute to tell how much separation there should be between the arcs. But it's not very procedural if the number of arcs changes. Any thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 You can carve a single arc that you want to repeat and then use the copy SOP and rotate each piece. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renklint Posted February 24, 2015 Author Share Posted February 24, 2015 Hi, that would work if all arcs where the same length, but they're not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 Are the lengths random or do you want to control them? Either way if you dont want to recreate a carve sop for each arc you can still use the copy sop and use the stamp function. You could make a control object with a ramp that represents the arc length as a function of the number of copies and have the copy sop use the value from the ramp to carve the arc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renklint Posted February 24, 2015 Author Share Posted February 24, 2015 Thanks for the feedback. The lengths are not random. A control object sounds good to me. I'll dig into it - found a video by Peter Quint about ramps - https://vimeo.com/6017920 Just one question, what would the control object be as you imagine it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 Well with control object I just meant a control interface. You could make a null node with a ramp parameter that is being referenced by the input of your copy. The ramp parameter is a pretty abstract way of visualizing your arc lengths but it will work for any number of copies you want. You just have to re-adjust your ramp if you change the amount of copies so that the position of the ramp matches the segment you had in mind. For something more concrete you could mimic the interface of the add sop. Here you could add extra segments and give values for the min and max u values to carve. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renklint Posted February 24, 2015 Author Share Posted February 24, 2015 Thank you Robert, I'll read up on ramps and give it a try. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eetu Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 If you just want to enter a bunch of times of day, you could parse it all from a string parameter: ee_curve_sections.hip 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
renklint Posted February 25, 2015 Author Share Posted February 25, 2015 Wow, that's great. If I understand it correctly the carve sops first and second u takes value 0 and 1 from the list, and then the $CY variable in the copy sop makes the carve sop use value number 1 and 2 for the next copy. Wonderful, thank you very much! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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