Dynamic spread with dynamic spreaded bin problems

The ex9 line is doing some things that are contrary to what I thought it should logically do. For some reason, when the spread count for verticies increases along with the corresponding bin count the line connects to itself momentarily. Also if the bin count is one the line connects from that vert to the other spread.

I would expect a bin count of one on a line to make that sub-spread invisible and I don’t know why the sub-spread would connect to itself momentarily when the bin count increases. Just wondering if there would be need to fix this or if there is a work-around.

Here is an example.

Here is a patch that I was impressed with myself for making. I couldn’t get it to make individual lines with Brownian type paths. I think it may have been because of these problems.

hi rick,

i agree, Bin Sizes of 1 are not so cool with the Line; but you could a) either stop them from happening in your patch or b) filter any 1-sized bins out of the Bin Size and Vertex-spreads before hitting the Line. i’m not sure i solved this problem at all, but there’s some Line-related stuff on my userpage (plug) with the DrawTool3D and the Multiple Line Demo patches ;)

in you example, you are using Queue-nodes to store the points for the lines. when switching from a low frame-count to a higher one, the Queue will fill the new frames up with ‘old’ data before catching up on the input; i believe this is what causes your connections.

the other patch you linked is some kind of buffer, is that intentional? maybe you can explain a bit more …

Hey, your patches look very interesting. The multiple lines looks like it will be very helpful. I have to wait until I can get on my other computer to try them out.

For now I will talk about that buffer I posted a little. It has three input modes:

Mode 0 just inserts the input like a regular queue.

Mode 1 adds the input to the last slice in the current sub-spread and inserts it as the next slice.

Mode 2 does the same for multiplication.

The spread index input dictates where to put the input slices. All the slices inserted with slice index set to 0, for example, are inserted in a group at the top (bottom?, might need fixing) of the whole spread. Higher spread indexes will insert slices in the middle of the whole at the end of their respective groups.

I thought I could use it to make individual disconnected lines with the one line module, but I was having trouble when testing it. Looking at your multi-line example might help, thanks.

Here are some, hopefully, clearer examples. These use the buffer I posted before and involve drawing with the mouse.

left-click : add a point
right-click : start a new line
middle-click : reset

Example 3 is the EX9 line and it almost works except for the fact that it connects to the first point made every time you start a new line

Example 2 is GDI and it is really messed up. I have always had more problems with the GDI line. I suppose the problem is actually in the connect node probably.

The buffer used in these.

I haven’t tried to animate disconnected lines with this new buffer but it was a mess last time.

This one does pretty much what I wanted. The only problem is you have to wait for every subspread to have at least two slices to display the lines. If they are asynchronized this results in some of them popping up with more slices than others. I would like to see “enabled” be spreadable.

i can see what you’re trying to do … but i recommend you flip through the documentation on spreads again; it looks like your patches could be a lot clearer (most nodes only need to appear once). with a firm grasp of the concept you’ll find it easy to solve the problem, i’m sure.

(next time, put everything in 1 folder, and than upload the .ZIP file, so we don’t have to puzzle with your buffer ;) )

Yeah, sorry about that, it was posted pretty slopily. Thanks for all your time and effort guys. Diki, can you be more specific? Where specifically have I repeated nodes unnecessarily for example? I agree some of them are pretty sloppy as far as layout but I don’t know if they could be done with any less nodes.