Hi ,
I have a question regarding the polywire example that ships with houdini. A point sop is used with Add alpha set and later on in a chain the attribute “ alpha is set to equal the width attribute”.

Why has the point sop's alpha been used ?. Would it not of been better to create an attribute first then have it = width.

Rob

you can directly use the width attribute
it seems to me that author of this example is more comfortable with point SOP than AttribCreate SOP, so he used it and since there is no width attribute in the point SOP he used Alpha and later he renamed it to width

also notice that the whole setup is more artist based and is lacking procedurality, but some things you acheive easier in non procedural way, especially if you know exactly what you want to create.

and there is no need for optimisation in this example, because it is evaluated only once and will not be animated, so a few unnecessary nodes won't hurt

Tomas

I think some of the helpcard examples might have been created before there was an AttribCreate SOP

Ahh thanks the details gents . As ever its good to get the why as there are just so many ways to do something.

Rob