Xpresso – Neon Lights Combinations

[Steve Bentley]

I see what you are doing now – you are trying to enable the whole group. I think you need to both enable and active each xgroup. You may also have to do the opposite to the first when you want the other xgroup to take over.
I got it working here. Let me know if that doesn’t solve it for you and I’ll send my file.

[Steve Bentley]

Ok, Some of what I said before was wrong. The active attribute is being correctly controlled by the small node and being passed to the full xgroup. So you’ve got that right. I had to delete the enable port of the xgroups for some reason and then set them to Enabled manually. With that done and the small xgroup iteration groups set to enabled to (manually) I could get the change to cycle, but only once. Then its getting stuck and I’m not sure why.
BTW I had to use a constant node (set to 0….4) for the main input into the Switch.
Still checking.

[Steve Bentley]

This is a head scratcher. Even simplifying things down so that a Constant feeds a value into the Active port on the xgroup iterations (and the inverse value into the other xgroup), it will only cycle once. It won’t return to the original state when you toggle the value back to 0.

[Fabio Apelbaum]

Yes, I had that happening to me in one of my tests… But remember that the ideal scenario, I will like to have 5 presets… so, that is why I was using an equal node with a constant to match the switch input.

Do you think this has a solution? or do I need to think from scratch on a different way to structure this? I just cant believe it is so difficult to get the Active property to update…. Thats why I wonder if there might be a conflict between the xgroups….

[Steve Bentley]

We didn’t used to be able to pipe a material into an object (or at least change it) so there might be some legacy issues that are creeping in.
I also rebuilt the expresso node as I wondered if some of the User Data might be interfering.
The fact that we can make it switch once means the pipeline does work, but I can’t figure out why it won’t switch again or back.
Its going to be something simple that we’re missing. Jim and Brian will probably set us straight and there will be forehead slapping all round.

Other options:
What about the Mograph shader?
You can also keyframe where you drag materials into each object’s material tag. (but really that’s what should be happening here with the expresso – when you look at this area in the material tag you can see it’s got a controller on it from expresso, so it should be working.)
You could also write a coffee script in expresso as it has multiple inputs and outputs – use it like a multiplexer.

[Steve Bentley]

I got it to work, but not the way you have it now. (nothing wrong with that way but i’ve got QWERTY dents in my forehead so I tried something else.
You can make a link list of the materials from the material manager (just drag them into the link list). Then send in an index value to the link list – that will output the material of choice and send it into the connected material tags.

[Steve Bentley]

You can also use the Material node (Iterators) to output the list from the material manager. This doesn’t change but you can change where that output begins from. So if you had Red, Green Red Green, and you set the First Material node to a 0, as you iterate through a list of the material tags you would get the same pattern. But make the First material node equal to 1 you will get a pattern starting with Green.
This is “Learning to fly by first inventing air”, but with your method not working I thought it might help.

I stripped it down even further- two material nodes and two pairs of material tag nodes with a boole and a NOT to switch between which material gets sent to which pair of tags. Again, one change and then it’s frozen. This should work. But with two of the same tag in the expresso window, they might be fighting. That’s why I suggested a link list of both tags and materials – you can iterate through each and there won’t be any conflicts.

[Steve Bentley]

I just did a quicky to show you the Link List set up. Its not complete by any means but might help
12600_linklistsetup.c4d.zip

[Fabio Apelbaum]

Thank you so much for all! I ended up using your method which gives me the same level of control!

One quick question, I still have the condition to choose which list to use… and that is connected to a slider that I placed in my HUD… what I would like to do is to put some reference in the HUD, so when I move the slider it tells me which list is using assuming I name each least… is that possible?

Here is what the xpresso turned out to be:

Once again! thank you!

[Steve Bentley]

Sorry for the delay. Did you solve the hud?
You can put a Result node in the expresso that is fed by your switch for the List chooser. In the attributes for that Result node, add a User Data element that reflects the output (probably Float and Real instead of the default percentage). Say ok, then select the new User Data tab that has been generated. Now drag the little sprocket icon at the top left of the attribute panel into the Expresso window and hook up the output of the Switch (the same one that is still connected to the Result) to the User data input of the new dragged in node (it will also be a Result).
Now in the Attributes of that node, right click on the Data in the User Data tab (beside the value) and say Add to Hud.