Reorder channel node

Reorders the first input CHOP’s channels by numeric or alphabetic patterns.

This CHOP reorders the first input CHOP’s channels by numeric or alphabetic patterns. Either a channel pattern specifies the new order, or a number sequence specifies the new order.

If the second input, the Order Reference is present, the Numeric Pattern and Character Pattern are ignored, and the first input CHOP’s channels are reordered to match as well as possible the reference CHOP’s. In this case, Method is not used.

Channel values are never affected.

Examples

All examples assume the Remaining Position is At Ending and the Remaining Order is Same as Input.

Input	Numeric Pattern	Result
A B C D	3 2 1 0	D C B A
C B D A	3 1	A B C D
A B C D E [1-5:2]		A C E B D
A1 A2 B1 B2	1 2	A1 B1 A2 B2
c4 c2 c3 c1	c[1-4]	c1 c2 c3 c4

Parameters

Reorder

Method

There are 4 different reordering methods, plus the optional second input reference sort.

Numeric Pattern	The names are sorted by a numeric pattern, as entered in the Numeric Pattern parameter.
Character Pattern	The names are sorted by a character pattern, as entered in the Character Pattern parameter.
Base Name Sort	Reorder channels by their alphabetic name first, then their number (ie. chan1 is ordered by “chan”, then by `1`).
Numeric Suffix Sort	Reorder channels by their number first, then their name (ie. chan1 is ordered by `1`, then by “chan”).

Numeric Pattern

This reorders the channels by channel number. Normally the index order is 0,1,2,3... etc.. The first channel is at index 0. Standard numeric patterns are allowed such as 0-6:1,2 or !*:1,3`.

Character Pattern

This reorders the channels by channel name. Standard character patterns are allowed such as ch[XYZ] or chan[1-15:2,5] or chan? ch*.

See Channel Name Matching Options in the manual section, Standard Parameters of CHOPs.

Remaining Position

Channels that do not match are called “remaining” and can also be ordered: they can be placed at the At Beginning or At Ending (in reference to the position of the matched channels),

Remaining Order

The channels that did not match can have the Same as Input order, or can be sorted “AlphaNumeric”ally.

Common

Some of these parameters may not be avaiable on all CHOP nodes.

Scope

To determine which channels get affected, some CHOPs have a scope string. Patterns can be used in the scope, for example * (match all), and ? (match single character).

The following are examples of possible channel name matching options:

`chan2`	Matches a single channel name.
`chan3 tx ty tz`	Matches four channel names, separated by spaces.
`chan*`	Matches each channel that starts with `chan`.
`foot`	Matches each channel that has `foot` in it.
`t?`	The `?` matches a single character. `t?` matches two-character channels starting with t.
`r[xyz]`	Matches channels `rx`, `ry` and `rz`.
`blend[3-7:2]`	Matches number ranges giving `blend3`, `blend5`, and `blend7`.
`blend[2-3,5,13]`	Matches channels `blend2`, `blend3`, `blend5`, `blend13`.
`t[xyz]`	`[xyz]`matches three characters, giving channels `tx`, `ty` and `tz`.

Sample Rate Match

The Sample Rate Match Options handle cases where multiple input CHOPs’ sample rates are different.

Resample At First Input’s Rate	Use rate of first input to resample others.
Resample At Maximum Rate	Resample to highest sample rate.
Resample At Minimum Rate	Resample to the lowest sample rate.
Error if Rates Differ	Does not accept conflicting sample rates.

Units

The units for which time parameters are specified.

For example, you can specify the amount of time a lag should last for in seconds (default), frames (at the Houdini FPS), or samples (in the CHOP’s sample rate).

Note

When you change the Units parameter, it does not convert the existing parameters to the new units.

Time Slice

Time Slicing is a feature which boosts cooking performance and reduces memory usage. Traditionally, CHOPs calculate the channel over its entire frame range. If the channel does need to be evaluated every frame, then cooking the entire range of the channel is unnecessary. It is more efficient to calculate only the fraction of the channel that is needed. This fraction is known as a Time Slice.

Unload

Causes the memory consumed by a CHOP to be released after it is cooked and the data passed to the next CHOP.

Export Prefix

The Export prefix is prepended to CHOP channel names to determine where to export to.

For example, if the CHOP channel was named geo1:tx, and the prefix was /obj, the channel would be exported to /obj/geo1/tx.

Note

You can leave the Export Prefix blank, but then your CHOP track names need to be absolute paths, such as obj:geo1:tx.

Graph Color

Every CHOP has this option. Each CHOP gets a default color assigned for display in the Graph port, but you can override the color in the Common page under Graph Color. There are 36 RGB color combinations in the Palette.

Graph Color Step

When the graph displays the animation curves and a CHOP has two or more channels, this defines the difference in color from one channel to the next, giving a rainbow spectrum of colors.

Usages in other examples

Example name	Example for