Houdini 20.5 Nodes Geometry nodes

Groups from Name geometry node

Creates group for each unique name and adds elements to that group.

The Groups from Name operator will create a group for each unique string in the specified name attribute. Each element that has that string value will be added to the corresponding group.

This is usually a bad idea - it is massively more efficient to store disjoint sets using a string attribute than using a large number of groups. However, some old workflows or export paths may require groups rather than string attributes to partition geometry.

NOTE: Empty strings are ignored.

Parameters

Name Attribute

The string attribute to convert into groups. Each unique string value will be converted to a group of the same name.

Class

What sort of elements to applie to. The Name Attribute must be of this class. This also controls the types of groups that will be created.

Group Prefix

Prefix each of the string values with this. Useful for ensuring the auto-generated groups do not conflict existing groups. Note that empty strings will not be prefixed but instead just ignored.

Conflict Op

How to react if a newly created group matches an incoming group. In any case, the incoming group will become unordered.

Replace Existing

The existing group is cleared and the new elements added to it.

Union with Existing

The existing group is left unchanged and the new elements added to it.

Invalid Names

Not all strings are valid group names. If, after prefixing with the group prefix, the name isn’t a valid group name, this controls what will be done with the group.

Ignore

The invalid names are ignored. No group is created for them and the elements with these values are ignored.

Force Valid

The invalid names are forced into valid names by prefixing with underscores or replacing invalid characters with underscores. This produces a semi-readable conversion, but may cause different strings to map to the same group. If this happens, they will be unioned together.

Encode

Use the rules of the VEX encodeattrib function to translate the group name into an xn__ prefixed encoded name. This allows all UTF8 symbols to be properly stored and decoded later.

See also

Geometry nodes