I've been struggling with this a little today. I thought that if I had a digital asset with the render flag on one node and visibility flag on another node that I could display one thing while passing other geometry to the next node (with no output) - which it does, when rendered. But, not during cooking.

I get it, but it would be nice to be able to display something and output something else. Any way of being able to set an digital asset to behave this way?

you need to set multiple outputs in the parameter interface and then use output sops to designate what sops you want to export

have a look at the collision source sop as an example of this method

other than this, I dont know of another way to display one node and export another

No. You can only do that with objects. Display and render flag only indicate which stream to use for rendering vs interactive, not ‘display’ vs ‘output.’ In SOP context, there is no distinction between the two.

Hey sidenimjay,

Yeah that is multiple outputs - not what I'm looking for.

I was able to solve it using some hscript in combination with python:

opflag and opname and changing the display flag.

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to do. You don't have to display a node to cook, you can just directly fetch the geometry from wherever using an Object Merge SOP.

My advice: Don't use separate display/render flags in SOPs. The cache of all subsequent SOPs will be cleared whenever you render and then go back to displaying the output in the viewport. So you can potentially get a massive recook anytime you render.

If you need to visualize something in the viewport, use guide geometry in the HDA and visualizers where applicable.

are2d2
Hey sidenimjay,

Yeah that is multiple outputs - not what I'm looking for.

I was able to solve it using some hscript in combination with python:

opflag and opname and changing the display flag.

This won't work, you cannot edit locked nodes.