I just created my first ICE topology mesh. The mesh is the unit cube with the first vertex located at position 0,0,0 (which make it centered at 0.5, 0.5, 0.5). You can modify the vertex information to create the unit cube with its center at position 0,0,0 very easily by changing the point positions describing the cube.

The topology compound is as per the ICE Tree below.

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Below is the String of vertices feeding the vertex position and the String of vertex ordering (CCW) defining the polygonal description of the cube. I created the vertices and the faces in the same order as the existing SI cube.

To create the vertex / edge / face structure of the cube, I used the Half Edge Data structure below. The helfedge is very similar to the Quad Edge data structure and the Winged Edge data structure. I found my little sketch handy when coding data structures for geometry in Softimage.

Each face quad is terminated by the negative -2 indicating to Softimage that the quad definition for that face is complete and the next set of vertice index define the next face quad of the cube. You can change this to be triangle the same way.

With headlight turned on, all the faces are oriented correctly with their normals facing outward.

Man, ICE is fun!

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Feeding the vertex via a string node is cool but not very intuitive. The next step is to build the cube dynamically by feeding it with three scalar inputs: Length, Height and Width.

Hint --- Vertor3D and Build Array ......... Solution tonight!

Cheers!

Using scalar and, scalar to 3D vector nodes, we can control the size of our cube interactively in length, width and height. This cube has the first vertex at position 0,0,0.

Below is a view of the ICE tree

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And another example, this time we drive all the parameters x,y,z to centre the cube in the world coordinate 0,0,0, much like the Softimage primitives.

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So far so good. We now have a cube that we can scale at will in length, width or height.

The cube is a very usefull primitive. I use the cube often as a container for simulation or as an object to compare and scale other objects. But one thing missing in Softimage is real world measurement.

With ICE, this is easy to correct using a multiply by scalar node to create a small compound and modifying the Factor input properties with a combo box.

Below is a small compound called Units that provides various conversion factors for our purpose.

The conversion factors are based on the SI_Unit being 1 decimetre (10 centimetres):

- SI_Units = 1
- Metres = 10
- Centimetres = 0.1
- Millimetres = 0.01
- Kilometres = 10000
- Decimal_Feet = 3.048
- Inches = 0.254
- Yards = 9.144 and
- Miles = 16093.44

To create the combo box, right click the exposed port in the left area of the compound and choose property. Enter in the combo string area the string associated to the combo value. Click add combo, repeat.

Dont forget to export your compound! And voila, real world measurement at your finger tips!

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Using the newly create Units compound, I modified one of the Cube ICE Tree as below.

You can now create a cube at any size in various real world units. If you want, you can clean up the mess and expose only what you need.

Next step, add subdivisions to our cube.

Until next time, Happy Coding!

DB

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I have uploaded in si-community two compounds related to this thread: DB_Cube V1 and DB_Cube_V1a.

you can download them at:

http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1487

Cheers!

Dan

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Indeed very useful for me, Thanks for sharing.

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