Houdini 20.5 Nodes Geometry nodes

Capture Attribute Pack geometry node

Converts array attributes into a single index-pair capture attribute.

Since 14.5

The Capture Attribute Pack SOP takes a set of array attributes and uses a naming convention to turn it into a single index-pair attribute. It can be used after the Capture Attribute Unpack SOP processes the weights through VEX.

How points are captured requires knowledge of both per-point information as well as global metadata about each capture region. The index-pair attribute can store all the metadata as a single attribute, making it convenient to move about, and allowing support for blending and merging of captured geometry. However, it is not very practical for manipulation.

Instead of a single index-pair attribute, a group of detail and point array attributes can be used. The point attributes consist of an index array attribute suffixed with _index which refer to items in metadata, and a data array attribute suffixed with _data which usually stores the weights of each point. The detail attributes are all array attributes that represent properties of the metadata. The primary attributes are indexed directly from the point index array attribute. However, there can also be secondary attributes, with an infix of _secondary#, which represent additional tables of metadata. These will have their own implied indirection rules.

Parameters

Class

The class of attribute storing the data, usually point. The _index and _data attributes should be this class. All the property metadata attributes are detail attributes regardless of this setting.

Attribute

The name of the index-pair attribute to create. If it already exists, it is modified with new values from the attributes.

Prefix

The prefix followed by index is used to find an integer array attribute to index into the metadata. The prefix followed by data is used to find a data array attribute to form the per element data. If blank, the attribute name followed by _ is used as the prefix.

All detail attributes with the prefix are considered metadata properties.

Secondary Prefix

It is possible to have multiple separate tables of metadata. The additional tables have secondary# after the prefix and before the property name (where # is the extra table number starting at 1).

Pack Properties

When turned on, attempts to find detail attributes and override the index-pair properties with these detail attributes. All of the index-pair’s metadata are replaced by the found detail attributes.

Pack Data

When turned on, replaces the index-pair’s data and index values with the per-element index and data arrays. Each element should have the same length index and data array size.

Delete Array Attributes

When turned on, removes the array attributes after processing, leaving only the generated index-pair attribute.

See also

Geometry nodes