Instanced Object Coordinates & finding Parameters in general

Beginners
1

Hi, I’m struggling with the Parameters of 3D Objects.
For a basic wireframe pyramid with multiple height levels, I instanced some Sphere SOPs around a circle. That worked splendidly because I just use the P(0) to P(3) of the transform I use on the spheres (Basically their positions)

Now, where I’d like to connect the spheres with lines, I need the xyz-positions of their centers for the endpoints of the line. Pretty sure I can get them from some parameters, but it isn’t some parameter I named myself or something obvious like absTime.seconds I’m struggling to find what I need.

Any advice on how to find the right parameter of an object in general, and specifically for my little example too?

NetworkExampleCones.toe (7.3 KB)

2

You can do this kind of calculation with the object CHOP:

The calculation here works best in CHOPs, so one of your first steps would look like first converting your instance data to CHOPs from SOPs.

One other quick optimization technique here - animating SOPs is generally slow. You can get the same rotation animation by animating the geometry COMP. The Geo COMP is computed on the GPU, while SOPs are calculated on the CPU, and that difference will give you an easy optimization.

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