Hi - total sleepy noob question. I was looking at Peter Quints ray sop tutorial. I created a box and a tube. I grouped some points in the box, and stuck a ray sop on it. I then realized that the tube I had created was created at the /obj level, and I can't connect it to the ray sop down in /obj/box_object1. How can I move the tube from /obj to /obj/box_object1?

if youve made changes to the tube at the scene level (/obj) then you can use an object merge, and set the transform to ‘into this object’

if it was done by mistake you probably want to copy all nodes from one object to another and delete the object

the easiest way to do that is to use Modify/Combine shelf tool which does exactly that while appending transform sop to compensate for relative transforms of source objects (rather than just copying the nodes which you could do with ctrl+c/v)

if you want just reference the geometry from other object then use objectmerge as zdimaria said

Thanks for the reply. I tried putting an object_merge node down in the box_object context, and pointed it at the geo at /obj level. When I plugged the object_merge into the ray sop, nothing happens.

Is that the typical way to move a node from /obj to /obj/whatever? I ficured I could cut/paste from one context to another, but no luck. I tried dragging things on top of each other in the outliner view, like Maya allows, but no luck there either.

thanks

Strange - I just saw that second reply. I tried ctrl-x ctrl-v and it works! It wasn't working earlier.

How does the combine tool decide which nodes to merge, down inside the object? I pasted a tube down inside the box object, and now the combine insists on merging that with my sphere. (I'm just playing around at this point….)

Anyway, thanks for all the help.

it copies all nodes from the other objects to last selected object, appends the transform sop to them which will correct their relative transform and merges branches marked with display flag (and if separated in any of the objects then render flags as well)

the point is that you'll get all geometries in one object so you can delete merge sop created by the tool and connect the inputs to the Ray SOP if you wish or use it in any way you want

object merge should work as well so if it isn't doing what you want post your file

ctrl+c/v will copy the nodes but the geometry will be in local space (it will not compensate for relative transforms of the objects as Combine tool does)