topic Re: Is it possible to create a group of different shapes and link it to instances? in Arnold General Rendering Forum

Is it possible to create a group of different shapes and link it to instances?

Le_Sep — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 19:14:18 GMT

Hi Arnold Answers Community

Let's assume I have several primitives as 'polymesh' loaded from .ply, then transformed with matrix parameter. I want to group such primitives in order to obtain an object, then I want to link it with node parameter to several 'ginstance' nodes. And so on.

I succeeded to create several instances of a single shape node, however I don't know how to gather several shapes nodes into one reference to link with 'ginstance' node parameter.

I'm working with Arnold 5.2.0.1 SDK API in C++ and nothing else.

Many thanks for any idea.

Re: Is it possible to create a group of different shapes and link it to instances?

Stephen.Blair — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 10:01:48 GMT

ginstance.node is a single node. You need a single polymesh node, you can't have a group (there's no group node in Arnold).

Re: Is it possible to create a group of different shapes and link it to instances?

Le_Sep — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 14:43:26 GMT

Understood, Stephen. Thanks for your answer.

Does it mean there is no 'obvious' way to build shapes based on several 'polymesh' to be reused, transformed and instantiated later?

Could the 'procedural' node help me to do so?

Re: Is it possible to create a group of different shapes and link it to instances?

Stephen.Blair — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 14:53:34 GMT

Yes, you could use a procedural node to load/create multiple nodes, and then just instance that procedural node.