Hi guys

This one is a must to make a HDA for...
What I need many times, is to be able to use an attribute. That I have spent many hours making, only to not be able to use it on nodes, that I would like to past a relative reference to as this would make a simple task simple.

Instead attribute wrangles etc, are needed to grab the attribute. Making simple tasks complex.

I would like to make an HDA to pick point/prim/etc which attributes you want to become exposed in the HDAs' box so it can be copied as a relative reference.

Any ideas how to go about this ??

Can you explain, with an example, what you want to achieve but can't atm? It's hard to understand what you need.

Cheers
CYTE

you can also try RMB on parameter/Reference/Scene Data, navigate to a node you want to reference attribute value from, pick attribute, select element in the viewport, Enter

say you do a measure and want to paste the length into a node somewhere. like the twist section on a sweep node so I could get 10 twists per meter. If I could access the attribute length without any difficulty I would be able to just paste it as a reference and multiply it by the amount of twist wanted.

I was making some barbed wire and I was thinking how much better it would be if I had a node. I could drop down to access any of the the data in my geo spread sheet and paste as ref as a 1 meter wire would twist less than 3 meters

Getyamamout
I was making some barbed wire and I was thinking how much better it would be if I had a node. I could drop down to access any of the the data in my geo spread sheet and paste as ref as a 1 meter wire would twist less than 3 meters

for this particular example you can just use Per Unit Distance option in Twist Per dropdown

@Getyamamount But isn't this the same as right click/copy paramter on the driver parameter and then right click/paste relative reference on the driven parameter? I have that on two shortcuts and do it constantly. It's super fast.

Cheers
CYTE

ok say something has been file cashed so I can't do a copy parameter but the geo has data in the geo spread sheet. If I could drop a node down to access it so the data can be copied from there.

#CYTE that is what I want to do for the data that can't be accessed easy. hence adding the node that would give access to the data. all the nodes job would be is to display the data wanted in a box that the data can be copied from. so EXACTLY the same as right click copy parameter... just a place it can be done for data that is no longer in the chain. or when like the measure node having no access to copy data as it is placed straight into the attributes.

#tamte I found a work around. It was just another situation I would of liked to of had a tool like I am thinking of. making me think about making this tool

Getyamamout
#tamte I found a work around. It was just another situation I would of liked to of had a tool like I am thinking of. making me think about making this tool

I get it, it's useful to quickly reference an attribute quickly

The technique [www.sidefx.com] I mentioned before is ok, but could be improved, like it would be nice if the browser navigated to a node when clicked on and if a picked reference is pointing to one of the input nodes it should put down an index instead of a reference path, otherwise it's pretty useful

More useful way would be to be able to drag directly from Geometry Spreadsheet and that would create a reference to that specific element of that specific node

All those could be RFEs, but the nice thing about Houdini is that nothing is stopping you to make an HDA or a tool as you mentioned as well

If I use vex to get the data, how would I paste the data from a wrangle to a (float,int,string,etc)label so it can be copied?
Can this even be done?

If you want to use VEX to compute the values you create an attribute first and then reference it in the parameter using Hscript or Python expression

The above mentioned Reference/Scene Data option is a shortcut that builds that expression for you without having to type it, even though arguably typing may be faster once you already know the syntax