Pipe Generator

Thank you for the kind words. I'll have an update coming soon. A few minor fixes and the undo implemented a bit better.

Aside from that I'd love to add a spline driven pipe generator as well as a particle system one. That would be very cool.

thank you

So obviously the next is to make it particle driven! :-D

You can call undo with:

with undo label:"Pipe Gen" on doSomething

undo ["undo_item_label" | label: | variable_name ]

FYI it can be sketchy use with caution, ie I would limit how much you do per undo call. Don't forget to garbage collect when you close because you will easily load up the undo buffer with this.

Does anyone have methods of implementing an undo? I noticed the pipes gen doesn't seem to handle them to nicely.

Thank you for that idea Anubis. That should help clear things up a bit more. I've got a huge update coming later tonight or tomorrow morning.

It will have a handful of new controls! I look forward to seeing ways you may have to improve or optimize it then.

This is what I ended up using for the get endChildren function which replaces all 3 previous ones and consolidates them into one.


mapped fn getEndChildren node selectNodes:off ends:#() root:on = if not isvalidnode node then ends else
(
if root or node.children.count > 0 then for child in node.children do getEndChildren child ends:ends root:off
else if iskindof node Point AND findString node.name "End" != undefined do appendifunique ends node
if selectNodes do select ends
ends
)

using Pathname Literals:

fn getEndChildren node = (for p in (execute("$"+node.name+"...pipeEnd_*")) where p.children.count==0 collect p)

and just to warn that i write this right now by memory, so let me know if it works.

I can't help with code, but this looks like one cool tool :)

awesome work.

Thank you Shawn,
I saw your post. I seems to be a very popular thread on the site which is a good thing. The biggest thing for me right now is just optimizing some of the code before I get further into it with more functions and controls.

I just need to figure out a good way to collect the children of a hierarchy going from the selected objects down through their children and selecting the last child but only if that last child is a point helper. The objects leading up to it can be whatever they want.

I just need to figure out a good way to collect the children of a hierarchy going from the selected objects down through their children and selecting the last child but only if that last child is a point helper.

Maybe this can helps:

for each in selection[1] do selectMore each.children

-- that will quickly select all children of selected object

And next you can deselect the last child(s) if it's a point helper:

for each in selection where each.children.count == 0 and isKindOf Point do deselect each

John... I always watch your work with great interest. I've been following the CG Society thread... but obviously I haven't got any useful input yet. But like always want to express support for your skills. Maybe I can think of something to add at some point... as I can see this being a really fun tool.