Houdini 20.0 Nodes Geometry nodes

Name geometry node

Creates a “naming” attribute on points or primitives allowing you to refer to them easily, similar to groups.

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Naming points or primitives

This node sets an attribute (called name by default) on the selected points/primitives to a certain value. For example, you can select a single face, or small set of faces, on some polygonal geometry, and “name” it foo (that is, create a primitive attribute name with the value foo) on the faces. You can then refer to the primitives in subsequent nodes using @name=foo.

This is very similar to groups: using @name=foo is similar to creating a group foo and referring to it using @foo. However, name attributes have two differences from groups:

  • Names are more efficient than groups. For example, you can assign different names to hundreds or thousands of individual faces, while creating hundreds of groups, each with a single member, would be problematic.

  • Names enforce the constraint that each primitive can only have one name value at a time (that is, a primitive can’t be included in both @name=foo and @name=bar), whereas a primitive can be a member of multiple groups. This constraint may be useful in some workflows.

Mantra uses named primitives to determine how to bind volumes to shaders during rendering. The Volume Vop node uses named primitives to determine binding if Autobind is on.

Renaming existing named groups

In addition to assigning names to points and primitives, you can also use this node to rename existing named groups, using the Global, From, and To parameters. This works like the Attrib String Edit node. See the help for Attrib String Edit for more information.

Parameters

Attribute

The name of the attribute to create or edit. The default is name, the attribute name mantra and the Volume Vop node look for.

Class

Whether to name points, primitives, or vertices.

Name from Group

Assigns the name attribute to the corresponding name of the group the point or primitive is part of. If it is part of more than one group, the behaviour is undefined. The idea is to provide the inverse to the Partition SOP.

Group Mask

When naming from groups, only groups that match this pattern will be used. This avoids other material groups overwriting your desired partition group.

Number of Namings

The number of naming attributes to create. Click the Add icon.

Group

The list of points/primitives to create/edit the attribute on. Normally this is filled in by Houdini from the viewport selection. See specifying groups for information on the format for specifying point and attribute numbers manually.

Name

The attribute value to set on the points/primitives in the group.

For example, if Attribute is name and this parameter is foo, Houdini will create a name attribute on each of the points/primitives listed in Group and set it to foo.

Enable

Whether to create/edit the attribute. This parameter lets you animate the operation of this node.

You can use the following parameters to rename existing named groups. See Attrib String Edit for more information.

Global

When this option is on, the From pattern is replaced for each occurrence in the string. When off, only the first occurrence is replaced.

From

The string pattern to rename.

To

The replacement pattern for the From string.

See also

Geometry nodes