Strand control basics

[Hirazi Blue]

I don't know if you've already seen this, but Stephen Blair (AKA xsisupport) did a short video
named Understanding Context in ICE recently on his Support Blog
;)

[Mathaeus]

Let's say i have a null, a grid and a point cloud with an ICE tree on it. I get the null's global position and the grid's point positions. I subtract one from another to create vectors. So far so good. Now, i am trying to use these vectors to drive parameters of the point cloud (namely blend them with a raycast direction vector, but let's say set data on a self.TMP) and... no joy. It says that the self.TMP will accept only data of types such and such OF POINTCLOUD.POINTCLOUD.

you need to 'fit' the result into point-context. Don't know is it exactly what you need, but anyway:

First one sorts an external array, so you can get 3d vector and ID. 'group' is group of nulls here, you'll get almost the same with "build array" node. with this method,
you'll need to repeat the sorting for any array you need.

In second one, you'll get closest polygon's center of external polymesh (first 'get closest location'), with second 'get closest location' you'll get the PointCloud's closest point to polygon's center, also all another points in pointcloud 'knows' which point is closest in particular group (by calling 'ID' you got from 'get closest location', by 'ID to location' )

If creation of another PointCloud is enough convenient, instead of using nulls... you can use 'get closest location' instead of playing with arrays - just set your attributes on PointCloud then call whatever you want.

[jamnique]

As for the tutorial, i haven't seen this one, but i already have a "force per point context" compound. I learned this trick from someone else. I asked for ways around this because i wasn't happy with raycasting and i didn't want get closest location. I'm going to try and understand Mathaeus's method. Thanks!