Updating path of vdb inside assfile

[Daveborkiewicz_Daveborkiewicz]

Hi,

I have a bunch of smoke vdbs simulated in range 1001-2001 instanced on pointcloud.

I baked them all in ass file and include that in my lighting scene. If I bake them on frame 1001 filename path inside ass file is set to "volume/smoke.1001.vdb".

How can I target volume nodes inside ass procedural with operators and update frame in path to 1002,1003..etc?

I can target whole procedural like that: *.(@derived == 'procedural') but how to target nodes inside?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Dawid

[Stephen.Blair]

Why not use Arnold path mapping?

https://arnoldsupport.com/2020/08/06/remapping-paths-at-render-time/

[Daveborkiewicz_Daveborkiewicz]

Can I dynamically update paths on a frame by frame basis with this approach?

Judging by examples it seems more suitable for static remaps like switching between different os etc

[Stephen.Blair · Accepted solution]

path mapping or string_replace, either way you're limited to using regular expressions to update the paths

[Daveborkiewicz_Daveborkiewicz]

string_replace operator with this kind of selection expression '*.((@node == 'volume') and (name == '*volume*'))' works well. I thought I need to target procedural on which that expression runs but it seems that runs on entire scene sent to Arnold. Very cool, saved a lot of time on rebaking many 1000 frames caches.