access to parameters on cloned objects

On 09/02/2014 at 01:37, xxxxxxxx wrote:

Hi,

I have a cloner that clones spotlights and I need to get and set the inner and outer cone angles on the individual clones, not the parameters that seem to be available. I need to animate them individually, so that the cone angles are not the same across all clones.

I tried the technique of cloning a child cloner in blend mode with two spotlights, each set with different inner and outer cone angles, and then applying an effector, but this method effects all cloned spotlights the same way and I can't seem to find a method of changing the individual spotlight parameters. Using this technique, I was hoping to find some way to access the child cloner's falloff weight parameter for the individual clones, but I can't seem to find it.

I played with the python effector, and while I see how to get and set the arrays from the GeGetMoData object, I don't see how to access the actual spotlight object to get to the inner and outer cone angles on the individual spotlights.

Similarly, I don't see how to use the xpresso nodes to get to the individual clones for these particular params.

I see that I can convert the clones to "editable," but there are too many spotlights to make this feasible.

Can someone tell me whether what I want to accomplish is possible? And if so, point me in the right direction?

Thanks.

On 09/02/2014 at 18:03, xxxxxxxx wrote:

You can't do this.
MoGraph is a closed "EcoSystem" that only exposes you to a limited amount of clone properties.

So you would need to make the Cloner Editable,  as you already discovered.

There's a few topics on the web using Per-Anders' "Clone-Info-hierarchy", that makes the process easier to set up, if you want to keep some parameters within MoGraph ( positioning the spotlights, ...)

good luck,
d

On 11/02/2014 at 06:30, xxxxxxxx wrote:

You could dive into the Cache of the Cloner and modify the cached objects, but you would need to
do this everytime the Cloner re-generates its cache (and some objects will be re-used and some
will be not). The data you have access to in XPresso or the Python Effector is pure particle data
without any correlation to their object representative.

Best,
-Niklas