Matthaeus, fantastic! I have to do this on a curve that consists of many many subcurves though, and the UV to Location that you use reads only one subcurve. I'm modifying, but it's growing over my head again - setting pos before and after random offset, calculating distance between, using that to dr...

Oh, and the midpoint stuff would still be welcome!

@ Julien: thanks, your idea points me to the solution to another problem i'm going to have to tackle, but for this one I think it doesn't apply. I have to take an even distribution along curve as a starting point (I'm populating an entire city and the curves are extracted from an open street map, it...

Hi Reinhardt, funny, that's just what I was thinking too after posting. But if you have an idea of how to go about it, don't hesitate

I was trying to calculate difference between original pos and after offsetting randomly now. And use that to drive scale.

Argh, I tried but I need a pointer to get me started at least! Here's the challenge: I want to randomize scale on a bunch of boxes emitted along a curve, but I don't want gaps inbetween the result (the boxes need to touch perfectly - think houses on a street, each one differently sized yet always to...

Hi NNois, your 'druitre' scene works. But when I do the same setup it doesn't... Only when I copy the compound from your pointcloud I can get it to work. What could I be doing wrong? (So, I tried with new curve and with yours, with new pointcloud and with yours, and only when I use the compound copi...

Hi Mirko,

Deadline Monitor>Tools>(Enable Super User Mode)>Configure Plugins>Softimage (or Softimage Batch)

At the bottom there's a +Render options, open it, 'Enable Strict Error Checking', set it to 'False'

Cheers,
Jasper

[edit: ha, you just beat me to it NNois]

Hey Jasper! Are you sure, that "scale" is in a per point context?? I Did some tests here with scaling and it worked with my approach..so, don´t know what is going wrong.. :-? An other thing you can try, is to fetch the data via "closest location" from original pointcloud... Hi O...

Oops, fixed it (if just for posterity's sake, nothing really to be gained there).

And thanks for the scene, busy atm but will have a look asap.

HA! That one is brilliant, thanks NNois! (And Leonard, of course!)

Thanks NNois, you're being very helpful. But still the same though - what it looks like, is it's only generating one instance per subcurve in 'spacing ratio' mode. I attached a very simple scene, if you could have a look that would be great, otherwise I'll just continue with some other ideas. thanks...

Hi Oli,

I'm setting up the tree from IamVFX now, that one's working (great find Bullit!!) If I can try later, I'll let you know.

Jasper

Thanks NNois, that works - it gives the menu and I can generate the data on the curve. So far, i'm still not getting anything useful besides the 'evenly spaced - fixed' mode though. In 'per span' nothing happens and in 'evenly spaced - spacing ratio' I see random isolated instances popping up, about...

NNois, I think i'm doing something wrong with your script - I keep getting a 'could not find node: NN Curve Tool Data Provider' message, nor a menu entry for NN Curve Tools. The instancer does work though, but only in 'evenly spaced - fixed' mode. How do I install the .js? That would likely fix that?

Hi Julca, thanks for the answer, I'm trying out NNois's idea, hope it will work.

NNois, thanks! I'm not getting everything right yet but the concept is working, all subcurves get instances in one tree.

I'm still up for that wayyyy faster compound, though!

-Jasper

Hi Oli, Reinhart, that is quick! I was actually trying something close to your solution, just didn't think of the 'get element index' node so was getting nowhere, I was trying particle ID. Which seems to be what Rray is suggesting. But in a way that works :) But: when i follow your tree Oli, the 'se...