Houdini 20.0 Nodes Geometry nodes

Connect Adjacent Pieces geometry node

Creates lines between nearby pieces.

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Since 13.0

This node creates a set of polygons that connect points together from nearby pieces. This is useful for creating a Constraint Network that constrains or glues together adjacent objects in a simulation.

The name primitive attribute is used to determine which primitives in the input geometry belong to each piece. The output geometry contains a name point attribute to identify the piece that each point belongs to.

Parameters

Connection Type

Specifies how connections between nearby pieces will be created.

Adjacent Pieces from Points

Each point will be connected to the closest point from another piece. The Max Connections parameter can be used to allow connections to multiple nearby pieces.

Adjacent Pieces from Surface Points

The centroids of nearby pieces will be connected together. Before searching for adjacent pieces, points will be scattered across the surface to aid the detection of close surfaces.

Adjacent Points

Connections will be made between raw points, ignoring any name attribute. This is useful if the geometry is already packed, or constraints are being built for the sand solver.

Assume Uniform Radius

When connection Adjacent Points, any pscale attibute found will be assumed to be the same for all points. This allows a much faster query to be performed.

Piece Attribute

Specifies the string primitive attribute used to determine which primitives in the input geometry belong to each piece. This attribute will be transferred to the points of the output geometry. The default value is name, which is the standard attribute used for rigid bodies.

Find Boundary Connections

Only create connections between adjacent pieces that have different values of the Cluster Attribute. This can be useful for creating constraints between pieces at the boundary between different material types.

Cluster Attribute

Specifies the primitive attribute used to determine which pieces belong to each cluster when Find Boundary Connections is enabled. This attribute can be either an integer or a string.

Points per Area

When connecting Adjacent Pieces from Surfaces, points are first seeded on the surface of all the objects. There must be enough points for close points to occur to detect close surfaces. This should be scaled down by the square of the geometry size. For example, if your geometry is 10× bigger, you should have 1/100 the points per area.

Relax Iterations

When connecting Adjacent Pieces from Surfaces, the scattered points will be pushed away from each other to avoid clumping. This is done gradually, to avoid chaotic behavior and to allow control over how much relaxation takes place. More relaxation iterations will result in points that are more separated from each other.

Search Radius

Specifies the maximum allowed distance when searching for nearby points.

If in Adjacent Points mode, this will be multiplied by any pscale attribute. If pscale isn’t present, it is treated as 1 so this refers to an absolute distance.

Max Search Points

Specifies an upper limit on the number of nearby points that can be inspected. Lower numbers will improve performance, but run the risk that only points from the same piece will be detected rather than points on nearby pieces, causing connections to be missed.

Cone Angle

Restricts the search for nearby points to only consider points within the cone defined by this angle from the query point’s normal. This can be used to avoid creating connections to points that are “behind” the query point.

Note

You can optionally turn this parameter off to search in all directions around the point.

Minimum Distance

Max Connections

Specifies an upper limit on the number of pieces that each seed point can be connected to. This is primarily useful when connecting Adjacent Pieces from Points, but may also improve the detection of Adjacent Pieces from Surface Points. However, increasing this value will reduce performance.

Centroid Method

Specifies how the centroid is computed.

Center of Mass

Computes the center of mass of the geometry in the same manner as the Bullet solver.

Bounding Box Center

Computes the center of the geometry’s bounding box.

Convex Hull Center

Computes the center of the points' convex hull. This is more expensive than the Bounding Box Center mode but can produce a more accurate result, particularly for point clouds where the points are not uniformly distributed.

Offset From Centroid

When connecting Adjacent Pieces from Surface Points, each point is moved away from the centroid in the direction of the other point that it is connected to. A value of 0 will leave the point at the centroid, and a value of 1 will move the point to the surface of its piece.

Create Length Attribute

Create a primitive attribute that contains the length of each connection.

Length Attribute

Specifies the name of the primitive attribute used to record the length of each connection.

Inputs

Pieces

The geometry to find adjacent pieces in.

See also

Geometry nodes