Evaluate Expression String as Float

[mavencolby]

Good morning and Merry Christmas!

I need to evaluate a string path and get a parameter value from it.

So far I have this as a string parm: 

`chsop("../cam")`/aperture/

This evaluates correctly as:

/obj/rendercam/aperture/

However when I try to reference this as a ch() operation, it doesn't evaluate correctly. It reads 0. How can I drive a float parameter correctly?

 

To be clear, I don't want to directly reference the camera:

// NOT this
ch("../../rendercam/aperture")

I want the user to put the path of the camera in the otl and be able to derive the aperture from the string.

Thanks!

cw

 

[mavencolby]

Okay so I've tried a little Python, this should work but I can't wrap my head around putting this into a parameter:

 

def pig():
	node = hou.node('/obj/Frustrum/')
	path = hou.evalParm(node.parm('cam').path())
	
	x = hou.node(path)
	aperture = x.parm('aperture')
	
	n = hou.evalParm(aperture.path())
	return n

pig()

I'm trying to set as "scalex" on a transform sop, and even when it's set to evaluate Python it returns 0. But the code works in the Python shell. What the heck is happening?

[mavencolby]

Got it to work! It needed to "return pig()" at the end. The final Python code looked like this:

def pig():
	node = hou.node('/obj/Frustrum/')
	path = hou.evalParm(node.parm('cam').path())
	
	x = hou.node(path)
	aperture = x.parm('aperture')
	
	n = hou.evalParm(aperture.path())
	return n

# NOTE the "return" before calling the procedure "pig()"
return pig()

This is probably overkill for what I was trying to do, but hey.. got my feet wet in Python! Hope this helps someone else.

 

cw

[anim]

you can just do this

ch(chsop('cam') + '/aperture')

 

 

get_parm_from_cam.hip

Edited December 26, 2018 by anim

[mavencolby]

6 hours ago, anim said:

you can just do this

ch(chsop('cam') + '/aperture')

 

 

get_parm_from_cam.hip

Ah great! Thanks Tomas! I was so close to that, and began pulling my hair out trying to figure which syntax was correct. Thanks for the solution

 

cw