drive individual instances in table

Hello touch.

I have created a table of instances that form a grid of geometry that creates a field. I am trying to drive each individual instances own x y and z coordinates to correspond to an input that can be flexed. This way each geometry can be “activated” as an input goes over its coordinates or a process similar to that.

Im not sure how to flex the numbers in the table individually and not sure if there is a good way to do this. I have been trying to use a chop to with a ramp whose rgba values drive the position but again this is all the instances and I am not sure if I can do this to an individual instance itself.

Is there a better work around for this solution or am I just missing something simple. Advice would be greatly appreciated

Do you have a sample network you can post?

If you can manage to manipulate your instances in CHOPs it’s generally a much faster approach - though like you’ve pointed out, individual control is often more ideal. In these kinds of circumstances I usually start with a table, which is converted to CHOPs. You have the benefit of manipulating your instances in a table, but can do all of the other interactions, movement, and the like in CHOP math which is much faster.

There’s a healthy set of instancing examples that can be found here:

github.com/raganmd/touchdesigne … g_examples

I appreciate the quick response. The file is where im at right now. Im getting some control with the mouse in for testing purposes. In the example it would be ideal if I could take the mouse inputs and use the math channels to drive the response of the geometry so it would follow its movement.

One work around im trying out now is using the z translate of the geo in the mouse x position to move the objects back in space to bring them in and out of focus to correspond with mouse position. I can predetermine the x values of the geo in table and the effect of corresponding to motion is created. just an idea but not really the way i want it.

I will look through the files, thanks for the link

There are a few things to think about here -

SOP transformations tend to be very expensive as they’re CPU bound. Consequently, it’s usually recommended that you animate your SOPs as little as possible to save your resources.

Transformation operations are generally better handled on the Geometry COMP rather than on SOPs themselves. Geometry transformations are handled on the GPU rather than the CPU, which is a part of what makes the much faster. It’s also worth noting, however, that transforming your geometry COMP will have the effect of transforming all of your instances - effectively acting like a pre-transformation.

If you’re wanting the ability to move individual instances, you’ll likely want to look into render picking - as this can help you identify which instance you’ve clicked on, and which table value you want to update in order to change the position of the instance.

You’ll likely need to learn a bit of python to really dig into what you’re looking to do, so that’s also worth keeping in mind.

I’ve written a bit about instances and python - you can find those examples here:

matthewragan.com/teaching-resou … hdesigner/

Hope that gives you a push in the right direction. Keep the questions coming.

Thanks matthew, this gives me alot to think about and should keep me busy for a while.

Ben