malax
02-01-2008, 04:37 PM
Hi All,
bit of a long question here,
i've been working on a expresso setup that basically traces spline shapes,as if they are being drawn by a laser,it involves 2 methods,an animated sweep nurbs and a mograph tracer.
The spline is continually traced(loops) automatically,the speed of which can be controlled with a slider,you can step through a list of different shapes to be traced,change the beam profile,colour,rotation/position and lots of other things....
The setup as it stands,works really well for splines of 1 segment and can work for splines of more than 1 segment if i tweak the expresso each time.
But...i'm lazy and don't want to have to change the expresso each time i'm using a spline with more than 1 segment,with help from Rantin'AL at C4Dcafe i've managed to get this far-Link to cafe thread (http://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/index.php?showtopic=29122)-sorry bout the link,but saves time explaining..
So the expresso relies on the condition node to jump from one segment to the next,My main problem is that,i need to change the number of input ports on the node each time i change to another spline(no. of spline segments= no.of input ports,and condition node is stepping down the list each time it is'activated')
eventually...here comes the question...Is there any way of changing the number of ports automatically?-given that the number of segments can be extracted from a spline node?
OR
is there anywhere out there a COFFEE script that could this?
cheers in advance for any help/pointers
Malax
bit of a long question here,
i've been working on a expresso setup that basically traces spline shapes,as if they are being drawn by a laser,it involves 2 methods,an animated sweep nurbs and a mograph tracer.
The spline is continually traced(loops) automatically,the speed of which can be controlled with a slider,you can step through a list of different shapes to be traced,change the beam profile,colour,rotation/position and lots of other things....
The setup as it stands,works really well for splines of 1 segment and can work for splines of more than 1 segment if i tweak the expresso each time.
But...i'm lazy and don't want to have to change the expresso each time i'm using a spline with more than 1 segment,with help from Rantin'AL at C4Dcafe i've managed to get this far-Link to cafe thread (http://www.c4dcafe.com/ipb/index.php?showtopic=29122)-sorry bout the link,but saves time explaining..
So the expresso relies on the condition node to jump from one segment to the next,My main problem is that,i need to change the number of input ports on the node each time i change to another spline(no. of spline segments= no.of input ports,and condition node is stepping down the list each time it is'activated')
eventually...here comes the question...Is there any way of changing the number of ports automatically?-given that the number of segments can be extracted from a spline node?
OR
is there anywhere out there a COFFEE script that could this?
cheers in advance for any help/pointers
Malax