Return the value stored in this primitive for a particular attribute. The attribute may be specified by name or by hou.Attrib object.

Looking an attribute value using a hou.Attrib object is slightly faster than looking it up by name. When looking up attribute values inside a loop, look up the hou.Attrib object outside the loop, and pass it into this method.

When looking up the attribute values of all primitives, it is faster to call hou.Geometry.primFloatAttribValues or hou.Geometry.primFloatAttribValuesAsString than to call this method for each primitive in the geometry.

Raises hou.OperationFailed if no attribute exists with this name.

Return the primitive attribute value for a particular floating point attribute. The attribute may be specified by name or by hou.Attrib object.

Raises hou.OperationFailed if no attribute exists with this name or the attribute is not float of size 1.

In most cases, you’ll just use hou.Prim.attribValue to access attribute values. Houdini uses this method internally to implement attribValue.

Return the primitive attribute value for a particular floating point attribute. The attribute may be specified by name or by hou.Attrib object. The return value is a tuple of floats.

It is valid to call this method when the attribute’s size is 1. In this case, a tuple with one element is returned.

See also hou.Prim.attribValue.

Return the primitive attribute value for a particular integer attribute of size 1. The attribute may be specified by name or by hou.Attrib object. See hou.Point.floatAttribValue for more information.

Return the primitive attribute value for a particular integer attribute. The attribute may be specified by name or by hou.Attrib object. The return value is a tuple of ints. See hou.Prim.floatListAttribValue for more information.

Return the primitive attribute value for a particular string attribute. The attribute may be specified by name or by hou.Attrib object. See hou.Prim.floatAttribValue for more information.

Return the primitive attribute value for a particular string attribute. The attribute may be specified by name or by hou.Attrib object. The return value is a tuple of strings.

It is valid to call this method when the attribute’s size is 1. In this case, a tuple with one element is returned.

See also hou.Prim.attribValue.

Return the primitive attribute value for a particular dictionary attribute. The attribute may be specified by name or by hou.Attrib object. See hou.Prim.floatAttribValue for more information.

Return the primitive attribute value for a particular dictionary attribute. The attribute may be specified by name or by hou.Attrib object. The return value is a tuple of dictionaries.

It is valid to call this method when the attribute’s size is 1. In this case, a tuple with one element is returned. See hou.Prim.floatAttribValue for more information.

Store an attribute value in this primitive. The attribute may be specified by name or by hou.Attrib object, and must be an existing primitive attribute in the geometry. You would typically call this method from the code of a Python-defined SOP.

Raises hou.OperationFailed if no attribute exists with this name or if the attribute’s data type does not match the value passed in. If the attribute’s size is more than 1, the attribute value must be a sequence of integers/floats, and the size of the sequence must match the attribute’s size.

If the attribute is an array, the seqeunce must be a flat array, not an array of tuples. If the attribute is float, ensure the python objects are float, and not integer (1.0, not 1).

Raises hou.GeometryPermissionError if this geometry is not modifiable.

# Create a float primitive attribute of size 3 named "Cd", and assign
# each primitive a unique color.  This code will work from inside a Python
# SOP, but not from the Python shell.
geo = hou.pwd().geometry()
color_attrib = geo.addAttrib(hou.attribType.Prim, "Cd", (1.0, 1.0, 1.0))
num_prims = len(geo.prims())
color = hou.Color()
for prim in geo.prims():
    fraction = float(prim.number()) / num_prims
    # Give each primitive a different hue, but full saturation and value.
    # Store the RGB value in the attribute.
    color.setHSV((fraction * 255, 1, 1))
    prim.setAttribValue(color_attrib, color.rgb())

Return the enumerated value hou.attribType.Prim. Points, primitives, vertices, and geometry support the same set of methods for querying their attributes, and this method is one of them.

See also:

• hou.Point.attribType

• hou.Vertex.attribType

• hou.Geometry.attribType

• hou.attribType

Returns a dictionary mapping intrinsic names to their values.

Gets the value of an “intrinsic”, often computed, value of the primitive, such as bounds, measuredarea, vertexcount, and so on.

Most intrinsic values are computed, such as measuredarea, however a few are writeable with hou.Prim.setIntrinsicValue. For example, sphere primitives have a transform matrix as part of their definition.

You can also view these values in the user interface using the geometry spreadsheet.

Raises hou.OperationFailed if the given intrinsic name does not exist. You can get a list of the available intrinsic value names with hou.Prim.intrinsicNames. Different primitive types will have different intrinsic values available.

Bounding box intrinsic values like bounds or packedbounds are returned in (xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax, zmin, zmax) order.

Returns a tuple of strings representing the intrinsic values available for this primitive. Different primitive types will have different intrinsic values available. You can then get or set the value using hou.Prim.intrinsicValue and/or hou.Prim.setIntrinsicValue.

Some “intrinsic” values can be modified. For example, you change the internal size and rotation (transform) of a sphere primitive by passing a 9 float tuple representing the transform to hou.Prim.setIntrinsicValue. Raises hou.OperationFailed if the intrinsic is not writeable or does not accept the passed value, or if the given intrinsic name does not exist.

Returns whether the intrinsic is read-only or can be modified with hou.Prim.setIntrinsicValue.

Returns the intrinsic value’s tuple size.

Given normalized (i.e. from 0 to 1) u, v, w values, return the interior position of the primitive at that parametric location.

Use hou.Face.positionAt for querying positions along the perimeter.

Return an attribute value at the normalized u, v, w parametric position in the interior of the primitive.

Raises hou.OperationFailed if the attribute is not a point or vertex attribute. If you want a primitive attribute value, it doesn’t vary across the surface, so use hou.Prim.attribValue.

If the attribute name is “N” the primitive’s intrinsic normal is evaluated, not the value from any point or primitive attributes.

Use hou.Face.attribValueAt for querying attributes along the perimeter.

Return the hou.Geometry object containing this primitive.

Return the number of this primitive. Primitives are numbered sequentially starting from 0, and the primitives returned by hou.Geometry.prims are in order by their number.

Return a hou.primType value containing the type of this primitive (e.g. polygon, NURBS curve, metaball, etc).

Return a sequence of the vertices contained in this primitive.

If the primitive is a face (e.g. a polygon or NURBS curve), the result corresponds to the order of the vertices in that face. If it is a surface (e.g. a NURBS mesh), however, the primitive has a 2D array of vertices, and this method returns all vertices in the 2D array, ordered by the rows.

See hou.Surface.vertex for more information about the relationship between the 2D vertex array and the sequential vertex index, and for more ways to access the vertices in a surface.

A shortcut for len(self.vertices()). You probably don’t need to call this method.

Shortcut for getting all the points of a primitive without iterating through each vertex.

Return an axis-aligned 3D bounding box that is sized and positioned to be large enough to hold this primitive.

Given a sequence of three floats containing a position, find the location on this primitive that is closest to that position. Returns a tuple containing the u value on this primitive, the v value on this primitive, and the distance to this primitive.

NOTE: The returned UVs are in real coordinates, use the primuvConvert to switch to unit coordinates to match VEX’s xyzdist.

Given a 2D uv coordinate, compute the location in a different coordinate system. The tol argument is optional. See the primuvconvert VEX function for the different valid modes.

Given a 1D u coordinate, compute the location in a different coordinate system. The tol argument is optional. See the primuvconvert VEX function for the different valid modes.

Return a tuple of the primitive groups that contain this primitive.

Create a new vertex inside this face, adding it to the end of the vertex list. You would typically call this method from the code of a Python-defined SOP.

point is a hou.Point object that the new vertex will refer to. See hou.Vertex for information on the relationship between points and vertices.

Raises hou.GeometryPermissionError if this geometry is not modifiable.

# These arrays define point positions and a set of polygons composed
# of those points.  Note that the point positions could also be floating
# point values.
point_positions = ((0,0,0), (1,0,0), (1,1,0), (0,1,0))
poly_point_indices = ((0,1,2), (2,3,0))

geo = hou.pwd().geometry()

# Create all the points.
points = []
for position in point_positions:
    points.append(geo.createPoint())
    points[-1].setPosition(position)

# Now create the polygons, adding vertices that refer to the points.
for point_indices in poly_point_indices:
    poly = geo.createPolygon()
    for point_index in point_indices:
        poly.addVertex(points[point_index])

See also:

• hou.Geometry.createPoint

• hou.Geometry.createPolygon

A shortcut for self.vertices()[index]. You probably don’t need to call this method.

This method supports negative indices to index from the end, just like self.vertices()[index] would. Also, like Python’s indexing operator, it will raise IndexError when the index is out of range.

Return whether the first and last vertex are connected.

An open face forms a multi-segment line or curve, since the first and last vertices are not connected. A closed face forms a very thin surface.

Set whether the face is open or closed. See hou.Face.isClosed for more information. You would typically call this method from the code of a Python-defined SOP.

Note that this method will raise hou.OperationFailed on a Bezier curve. See hou.Geometry.createBezierCurve for more information.

Raises hou.GeometryPermissionError if this geometry is not modifiable.

This method is deprecated in favor of hou.isClosed.

Return the vector that’s perpendicular to the face.

Given a normalized (i.e. from 0 to 1) u value, return the position of the curve at that parametric location.

Return an attribute value at a normalized u parametric position on the curve. If du is 0, returns the interpolated attribute value; otherwise, returns the derivative of the attribute value.

Raises hou.OperationFailed if the attribute is not a point or vertex attribute. If you want a primitive attribute value, it doesn’t vary across the surface, so use hou.Prim.attribValue.

Given normalized (i.e. from 0 to 1) u_start and u_stop values, return the length of the arc of curve. divs represents the number of divisions per spans. Increasing it increases the precision of the computation.