halo cycling,
the best way to understand the copy sop might be to simply see it in action. you asked for an example of when you might use it. well, being that halloween is loads of fun, let's make a pumpkin (or a reasonable facsimile). make sure you have your basic three pane setup running (that being the viewer pane, the network editor pane, and the parameters pane). if you don't, simply go to desktops>training to get what you need. also, ensure that all three of your windows are linked and so will all change together as you go from place to place in the program. look in the upper right-hand corner of each pane and you should see a button with a circle on it. likely, this circle has the number 1 in it already. if you click on this button, you will see that you can unlink the window or change its link to 1, 2, or 3. for this little pumpkin making session, make sure each has a 1 in it.
onto the pumpkin!
1. at the object level, lay down a geometry operation (if you don't see one already in the network pane).
2. with the pointer over the network pane, hit enter. this will take you to the sop level so that you can work on the geometry.
3. in the network pane, you may see a file sop. if so, go ahead and delete it.
4. with the pointer over the viewer pane or the network pane, hit tab and type S. this will bring up all surface operations that begin with the letter S.
5. choose the sphere operation.
note: if you did this with the pointer over the view pane, the sphere will appear automatically in the view pane. if you did this with the pointer over the network pane, a little square appears under your pointer. simply click to lay down the sop and it will appear.
6. in the parameters pane, change the radius values x,y, z to 0.7. you can do this interactively by middle clicking and holding on the word radius and using the number ladder to adjust all three values at once. with the middle mouse button still held down, you can drag left to decrease the number and drag right to increase the number. depending on where you have the pointer on the ladder, the values will be adjusted by the increment chosen. once you have the values you like, just release the middle button. play around with that for a minute as it is very handy. in the end, make sure the x, y, z values all read 0.7.
7. again with the pointer over the viewer pane or the network pane, hit tab and type C. like magic, this will bring up all the operations that begin with the letter C.
8. choose the circle operation.
9. in the parameters pane,
a. change the primitive type to nurbs curve
b. change the orientation to the zx plane
c. change the radius x,y to 0.5.
10. now, with your pointer over the network pane, type C again and choose the copy sop. there are different ways you can “wire” these three sops together, but i find i like using the network pane and the manner in which it shows connections.
11. now you have three unconnected sops that you can see in the network pane: sphere1, circle1, and copy1
12. for ease of understanding, make sure that they are layed out like this in the network pane:
SPHERE1 CIRCLE1
COPY1
note: to drag an operation around, simply left click and hold on the picture and drag it around to wherever you want and release. this doesnt affect its translation in 3d space. it's just a way of viewing connections.
13. now, you will notice the sphere sop has an input and an output arrow, the circle sop has only the output arrow, and the copy sop has two input arrows and one output arrow. the dark arrow that is also found on each sop is the bypass option. we won't be using those right now.
14. left-click on the output arrow of the sphere. you will see a dotted line follows your pointer around, that is the connection line. to finish the connection, left-click again on the left input of the copy sop. now the dotted line has become solid.
15. in the same manner, connect the output of the circle sop to the right input of the copy sop.
note: middle click and hold on the left and right inputs of the copy sop and a popup will tell you what each input is expecting.
16. now click on the display flag for the copy sop and WALAA!!! with just a few steps, you now have the beginnings of a decent looking pumpkin.
post-pumpkin analysis (just like ESPN huh?)
so what did we do?
the copy sop placed a copy of the sphere at each point along the circle sop. to see this interactively, make sure the display flag for the copy sop is selected and then click on the picture of the circle sop so that its parameters are displayed in the parameter pane. then change the number of divisions with the slider. you will see that the number of spheres in the viewpane increases or decreases as you increase or decrease the number of points that make up the circle sop. for a pumpkin, the default of 10 seems to look pretty good.
now add a stem with some other tools and you have yourself a pumpkin worthy of even charlie brown!
hope that cleared it up for you.
will c