Attrib Transfer surface node

Transfers vertex, point, primitive, and/or detail attributes between two models.

See also: Attribute, Attrib Copy, Attrib Create, Point 3 more , Primitive, Vertex, Group Transfer

The attributes may be explicitly specified in the corresponding attribute text field. Exclusion is specified by preceding an attribute name with the carat character (^). All available attributes can be specified by leaving the field blank or entering an asterisk (*) in the field. If the first attribute is preceded by a carat then all attributes are assumed to be transferred except where explicitly excluded. In all other cases, no attributes are assumed except where explicitly included.

Destination attributes are interpolated from the source attributes using a weighted proximity technique. Proximities used in point attribute calculations are determined as the distance between the destination point and the candidate source points. For primitive attribute calculations, the barycenter-to-barycenter distance between the destination primitive and the candidate source primitives is used. In the case of vertex attributes, each destination vertex is first mapped to the closest position and primitive in the source geometry. The vertex attribute is then determined using a barycentric-like interpolation technique. The source detail attribute is simply copied to the destination detail attribute.

The “Conditions” tab contains several parameters that control how the source attributes are combined, or filtered, to give the resulting destination values. The “Kernel Function” can be set to any available metaball kernel. The kernels are parameterized by distance and typically give more weight to source points/primitives/vertices that are closer. The “Max Sample Count” parameter specifies the maximum number of points/primitives/vertices to interpolate from. A maximum sample count of 1 gives nearest neighbor interpolation. The “Kernel Radius” specifies the drop-off radius for the kernel function. As the kernel radius parameter approaches zero, the filter resembles nearest neighbor interpolation. As the kernel radius parameter increases, the filter approaches uniform weighting. The “Distance Threshold” parameter specifies the maximum distance source points/primitives must be to be considered. Switching off this option indicates that no points/primitives will be excluded based on distance. Within the distance threshold, the final attributes are determined solely from the source selection. In cases where all source points/primitives/vertices lie beyond the distance threshold, the destination attributes remain unchanged. The “Blend Width” parameter relaxes the distance threshold and optionally sets a region outside the distance threshold where the influence of the source attributes gradually tapers off. In this region, the interpolated source attribute value is blended with the original destination attribute value using the selected kernel function to produce the interpolation factors. In this blending process, the blend width is used as the kernel radius. The “Uniform Bias” parameter specifies the linear interpolation factor that is used when blending with the Uniform kernel function. The Uniform Bias value is used as the source blending factor, whereas the destination blending factor is set to one minus this value.