POP Collision Detect dynamics node

A POP node that detects and reacts to collisions.

On this page	Overview Tips and notes Parameters Collision Behavior Attributes Bindings Inputs Outputs Locals Examples
Since	13.0

Overview ¶

The POP Collision Detect node finds collisions between particles and geometry. It stores the resulting collision information in a set of hit attributes:

i@hittotal

The cumulative total of particle hits.

i@hitnum

The number of times the particle hit in this detection node.

s@hitpath

A path to the object it hit. This is an op: path so it can be used directly by VEX.

i@hitprim

The primitive the object hit. Can be -1 if the specific primitive could not be resolved.

v@hituv

The parameteric location on the primitive of the hit. This is not texture uvs. The primuv() VEX function can be used to recover information about the hit location.

v@hitpos

The location in space of the collision. Often does not correspond to the current location of the particle as it usually passes through the collision. Also may not correspond to the evaluated location of the hitpath since intra-frame collisions use swept geometry.

v@hitnml

The normal of geometry at the time of the collision.

v@hitv

The velocity of the geometry at the time and position of the collision.

@hittime

When, in seconds, the collision occurred.

You can read the hit attributes directly, or use the POP Collision Behavior node to transform them in some common ways.

Tips and notes ¶

For simple RBD collisions, you can use the controls on the Collision Behavior tab of the POP Solver.
This node detects collisions of all particles in the Group field, even if they already collided. So if you're sticking particles, this node will update the hittime of stuck particles at each time step.

To avoid this, you can specify the Group as @stuck=0, so the node only affects particles that aren’t stuck.
In SOP mode, this node only supports collisions with triangles and quads. You can detect collisions with SDFs using the Relationship or DOP Objects and pointing to Static Objects.
This does not handle dynamic collision response, such as bouncing. Instead, static or RBD objects should be added to the system.

This operator modifies the hitnum, hitpath, hitprim, hituv, hitv, hitpos, hitnml, hittime, P, Cd, stopped, stuck, sliding, pospath, posuv, and posprim attributes.

For more information see Particle Collisions.

Parameters ¶

Activation

Turns this node on and off. The node is only active if this value is greater than 0. This is useful to control the effect of this node with an expression.

Note

This is activation of the node as a whole. You can’t use this parameter to deactivate the node for certain particles.

Group

Only affect a group of points (created with, for example, a Group POP or Collision Detection POP) out of all the points in the current stream.

Guide

If turned on, shows the guide geometry for this node.

Note

Even if the guide geometry is turned on here, it can be turned off by using the Hidden flag on the DOP node.

Collision ¶

Collision Target

What geometry to do collision detection with. This must be a quad and tri mesh. The mesh can be deforming, in which case its connectivity must remain constant.

Relationship

All DOP Objects with this relationship (as usually defined by Merge DOPs) to this object will be tested.

DOP Objects

A specific list of DOP objects within this simulation will be tested.

SOP

Use specific SOP.

Use Xth Context Geometry

Use one of the SOPs wired into this DOP network.

Relationship

The type of relationship to do collision detection with.

DOP Objects

A list of DOP Objects. Patterns like * can be used to match multiple objects. These refer to objects inside of this simulation.

SOP Path

The path to a SOP to fetch geometry from.

Use Deforming Geometry

The geometry at the beginning and ending of the particle’s motion will be fetched and swept to allow proper collision during the geometry’s motion. However, if the geometry has changing point counts this cannot be done, and instead only a single frame should be used.

Default Particle Size

To allow robust collision detection the particles are treated as finite-sized spheres. By default pscale is used, but if the pscale attribute is missing then this size is used.

Behavior ¶

Accumulate Hits

Normally the hit attribute, @hitnum, will be zeroed out before collision detection is performed. If this is set, it will not be cleared, allowing you to count the total number of hits over a lifetime of a particle. However, this will cause the other options, such as Group, to continue to see the particle as hitting every frame since they use this variable to detect if any hits occurred. Another option is to use a POP Wrangle with i@totalhit += i@hitnum; to create a total hit attribute that accumulates. The Add Hit Total option does this for you.

Group Name

All particles that just hit, ie, @numhit>0, will be added to this group.

Preserve Group

If the group isn’t preserved, it is cleared out first so the only particles in the group will be those that just hit. If it is preserved, the group will accumulate all particles that ever hit.

Color Hits

Particles that are just hit will have their Cd attribute set to this value. This is useful for quick visualization of hits.

Add Hit Total

Adds to the integer hittotal attribute any hits that occurred due to this collision detection.

Move to Hit

Often if you want to trigger an effect off a particle’s collision, such as birthing more particles, you want the particle at its hit location, not where it ended up at the end of the frame. This will move the particle back to its hit location. This consists of @P = v@hitpos;

Response

What happens to particles that collide

Die

Particles that hit will set the dead attribute to 1, causing them to be deleted during the reaping pass.

Stop

This sets the stopped attribute to 1. Particles that stop will no longer integrate their velocity, position, orientation, or angular velocity. They can still be moved directly. For example, by the Look At POP in instantaneous mode.

Stick

Particles that hit will have the stuck attribute set to 1. The pospath, posprim, and posuv attributes will be setup to point to the hit location, causing the integrator to keep moving the particles to their stuck location every frame. Usually you also want to turn on Move to Hit with this.

This node will continue to consider stuck particles as “colliding” and update the attributes at each time step. To avoid this, you can specify the Group as @stuck=0, so the node only affects particles that aren’t stuck.

Slide

Particles that hit will have the sliding attribute set to 1. The pospath, posprim, and posuv attributes will be setup to point to the hit location, causing the integrator to try to slide the particles along the surface.

You can also use the Cling attribute on the POP Property node to set how much the particles will cling to the object they are sliding on.

Attributes ¶

Add Hit Total Attribute

Adds the integer attribute hittotal that stores the cumulative total number of times the particle has collided with anything.

Add Hit Num Attribute

Adds the integer attribute hitnum that stores the number of times the particle has collided in this particular node.

Add Hit Pos Attribute

Adds the vector attribute hitpos that stores the position that the particle collided.

Add Hit Normal Attribute

Adds the vector attribute hitnml that stores the normal of the geometry at the time of the collision.

Add Hit Velocity Attribute

Adds the vector attribute hitv that stores the velocity of the geometry at the time of the collision. For SDF collisions this will use the point velocity, so either point numbers should be consistent or point velocity attributes present.

Add Hit Time Attribute

Adds the float attribute hittime that stores the time in seconds of the collision.

Add Hit Path Attribute

Adds the string attribute hitpath that stores the object that the particle collided. This is an op: path usable in VEX.

Add Hit Prim Attribute

Adds the integer attribute hitprim that stores the primitive hit by the particle. -1 if the primitive cannot be determined.

Add Hit UV Attribute

Adds the vector attribute hituv that stores the parametric coordinates of where the primitive was hit. This is not texture UVs.

Bindings ¶

Geometry

The name of the simulation data to apply the POP node to. This commonly is Geometry, but POP Networks can be designed to apply to different geometry if desired.

Evaluation Node Path

For nodes with local expressions, this controls where ch() style expressions in VEX are evaluated with respect to. By making this ., you can ensure relative references work. It is important to promote this if you are embedding a node inside an HDA if you are also exporting the local expressions.

Inputs ¶

First Input

This optional input has two purposes.

First, if it is wired to other POP nodes, they will be executed prior to this node executing. The chain of nodes will be processed in a top-down manner.

Second, if the input chain has a stream generator (such as POP Location, POP Source, or POP Stream), this node will only operate on the particles in that stream.

Outputs ¶

First Output

The output of this node should be wired into a solver chain.

Merge nodes can be used to combine multiple solver chains.

The final wiring should go into one of the purple inputs of a full-solver, such as POP Solver or FLIP Solver.

Locals ¶

channelname

This DOP node defines a local variable for each channel and parameter on the Data Options page, with the same name as the channel. So for example, the node may have channels for Position (positionx, positiony, positionz) and a parameter for an object name (objectname).

Then there will also be local variables with the names positionx, positiony, positionz, and objectname. These variables will evaluate to the previous value for that parameter.

This previous value is always stored as part of the data attached to the object being processed. This is essentially a shortcut for a dopfield expression like:

dopfield($DOPNET, $OBJID, dataName, "Options", 0, channelname)

If the data does not already exist, then a value of zero or an empty string will be returned.

DATACT

This value is the simulation time (see variable ST) at which the current data was created. This value may not be the same as the current simulation time if this node is modifying existing data, rather than creating new data.

DATACF

This value is the simulation frame (see variable SF) at which the current data was created. This value may not be the same as the current simulation frame if this node is modifying existing data, rather than creating new data.

RELNAME