Storing inital values?

[ximage]

Hello Softland!

ok. so basically i want to store some initial values in an ice tree. lets say point positions.

at the moment im creating a ice tree then have to freeze it to keep that value on the first frame. is there a way to say get the ice tree just to look at the first frame then keep those values.

how do other people do this. best practises and what not.

its so i can get the vales of the point position compared to them on other frames so i can do some eyelid sliding goodness.

be great if anyone could point me in the right directions.

cheers guys and girls.

[xsisupport]

So, you don't want a Simulation region in your stack?

[ximage]

Hey Steve,

thought you might be the first to reply. awesome as always.

no. Im trying to do it with out a sim stack. Basically im getting the original position/vector from the surface of the eyeball, so i can add that offset to the vector calculated when the eye is sliding about, so i can keep the thickness of eyelid and it slides.

as said before I have to put one ice tree on there to calculate that offset, make a custom attribute. then freeze so it stores the values. then i can recall these after to grab the offset. but im just wondering if i can do this with out have to freeze to store? or if anyone has worked out how to do this, or a more efficient way?

cheers

[xsisupport]

Hi

If it was just scalars, then you could stick them in a weightmap and freeze it.
Vectors are more difficult.
Without at least an empty Simulation region, it's hard to prevent the Modeling stack from being re-evaluated.
Caching might be the way to go.

There was relevant discussion on the Softimage list just the other day.

[Pooby]

You could save a vector in 3 weight maps

[Pooby]

Or in a colour vertices map

[xsisupport]

For point positions, couldn't you store the initial object SRT in a static kine state and use that with Get Point Position to calculate the global coords on frame 1?
The local coords returned by Get Point Position aren't going to change if that ICE tree is at the bottom of the modeling stack.

[Pooby]

Hold on.. Whats wrong with the original plan of storing the custom attribute?

[xsisupport]

Hold on.. Whats wrong with the original plan of storing the custom attribute?

I'm sorry, I don't meant to imply that there's anything wrong with that.
I'm just thinking of ways to do it without freezing anything.

[Pooby]

I wasnt aiming that at you. I was just wondering in general why it wasnt a good plan. It seems to me to be a good option.

[ximage]

sorry for the late reply, for some reason I have not had updates on whos replying to this thread?

thanks so much for your input guys.

Pooby I think steven was on the right track to what i was trying to achieve. trying to remove some steps from having to freeze out ice trees to store values perminately and trying to have it so the tree only evaluates on say one frame and then stores those values and keeps them from that frame and no other.

but it would seem that freezing out the tree is the only way, from what i can find, either into a custom attribute, blank shape, weight map or color at vertices for whatever data you want to store.

been watching brad gabes master tutorials again for soft 2010. some nice info and tips in them.

cheers guys for the info.

Paul, defo looking forward to another tut from you whenever you may have to time. Great work on all of them. hope alls well.