I’m making a component using a container. In the container, I have an In CHOP, ‘in2’, whose value I want to export to a Transform TOP. I turn on the viewer for the In, and select the target Transform. When I drag from the In CHOP, the whole node follows, as if the viewer were off for any other CHOP. Took me a while to notice, but the In CHOPs don’t have any channel name, the way a Noise CHOP has ‘chan1’.
Do In CHOPs not have channels? Do I need to create or enable one? How is this supposed to work? Or is exporting from an In CHOP a fool’s errand, that a component should take control data some other way than with In CHOPs?
As a noob, I’m likely to be doing something dimwitted, or not know some exception to how export works. (Viewed a lot of tutorial videos, toyed with TD, but so much more to know…)
No channels appear in the “In” until, in the network upstairs, I connect something to the input of the container.
If I connect a Constant to the input of the In, it supplies a default value and makes a channel exist.
I can forget about the “In” and use a slider. But how to make the slider appear and be usable upstairs, I’m not sure yet. Still watching tutorials…
These, I discovered by fiddling around and dissecting some existing components, especially sCurve which I found fascinating. I don’t think any of these points were clear in the video tutorials, if made at all.
You are correct, the In CHOP will not have any channels until something is connected to it from the network level above. The In CHOP (and likewise Out CHOP) job is to create a CHOP connector on a Component so you can wire things together and pass data into the Component’s network. The second Input in the In CHOP (and likewise the In TOP, In SOP, In DAT) allows you to connect a default data for the In CHOP to use in the event nothing is connected to it via the component level. So lets say you want a CHOP channel with value = 2 as a default until someone connected something in the above level, you can add a Constant CHOP with the value 2 to the second input of the In CHOP.
You may also want to familiarize yourself with the Select CHOP. As your systems grow in complexity and you require more specific behaviors, the Select CHOP will become a natural go to. Since you can specific a path to any CHOP, its more flexible and easier to use than the In CHOP which is hardwired by input connectors. This is also just another way of doing things, so neither is right or wrong, but one may be better for some cases than others.