Simplest way to instance Rectangle TOP?

Beginners
1

I’m having a difficult time doing what I think should be a pretty simple thing. I have a Table DAT with a header, and a bunch of values:

index    x    y
0    80.0    1250.0
1    161.9    1236.2
2    243.8    1222.4
3    325.7    1208.6
4    407.6    1194.8
5    489.5    1181.0
6    571.4    1167.1999999999998
7    653.3    1153.4
8    735.2    1139.6
9    817.1    1125.8
10    899.0    1112.0
11    77.79411764705881    1219.1176470588236
12    160.06470588235294    1205.2588235294118
13    242.33529411764707    1191.4
14    324.60588235294114    1177.5411764705882
15    406.87647058823535    1163.6823529411765
16    489.1470588235294    1149.8235294117649

Each of the x,y values represents a coordinate on a 1920x1080 screen. What I want to do is a draw a 5x5 pixel at each of those coordinates. Currently I have a Rectangle TOP configured to show a red 5x5 pixel.

I have a DAT to CHOP that takes the DAT Table and can use that if needed (currently set to Channel per Column).

Any advice? All the resources and tutorials I’ve found online are having me create SOPs and use instancing, which are designed for 3D things. I’m doing this all in a 2D space that will be an overlay onto a video feed. I don’t want to deal with cameras, rendering 3d object, lights, etc. I’m just dealing with 2D shapes. I understand that I can use an ortho camera in the a Geometry COMP but it seems like overengineering.

I also don’t want/need to have to re-draw the pixels at each frame. The pixels only need to get re-drawn if the table is updated. Currently the table is updated when I manually click a button.

Is there no simple way to instance TOPs without using a Geometry COMP?

PixelOverlay.toe (11.6 KB)

2

Geo Instancing would be the most efficiënt way. Ortho cam is not difficult, just set its width to the same amount of horizontal pixels as your 2d output (for instance 1920). Now every SOP size unit is a single pixel in your 2d output. So use a Rectangle SOP of 5x5. If you use a Constant MAT you don’t need a Light in your scene.

1 Like
3

Thanks, I was resistant to SOP, as it seemed counter-intuitive to be working with 3D tools for a purely 2D application. But I can understand that it is the way to go.