hi,

I have a particle system and I would like to do some calculation using the number of nearest particles within certain radius per particle.

And I'm trying to use point cloud open and point cloud iterate nodes in VOP POP to do that.

But I can't work out how to use point cloud open node.

Namely, in the pcopen node help file, it says that I need to specify the file. Does this file have to be an external file on file system? or can it point to a node? and if it's node or what kind of node?

I looked at examples and it had entries like this

opdefObject/pciterateaverage?points.pc
op:`opfullpath(“../attribcreate3”)`

but I couldn't find in help what opdef: or dp: meant…

It would really be great if someone can let me know to what file is in point cloud open and any other common gotchas regarding point cloud.

Thank you very much in advance,

Hey simayi, you can point a pcopen to a node. I often point it to whatever mesh I have connected to my second input of my VOPSOP by using this in the file input of the pcopen

op:`opinputpath(“.”, 1)`

op: is just a way to read the geometry (or result of an operator, even a COP) on the fly without pointing to a file. opinputpath is just an expression to get the path of whatever you have plugged on your node inputs (“.” specifies your vopsop node, 1 specifies the second input )

Hope it helps!

Unfortunately the op: syntax isn't available to read in geometry from POP nodes. You can use a geometry subnet with a POP Merge that merges the geometry from your POP and then have your op: command reference that.

thank you very much…

good to know about the POP node… would've confused me for a long time…

one more quick question… i see there are search radius and max points in pcopen. do you know which one takes precedence?

is there a way of disabling one so it always only uses the other one?

thank you again, :-)

grayOlorin
op:`opinputpath(“.”, 1)`

use op:`opinputpath('.',1)` instead. That way you can put it as the default string in your vop parameter and hide it away so the end user can't access it. If you put (“.”) the vop compilation will complain.