RE: PutUserData in custom operator

["Mathieu Leclaire" <mleclair(at)hybride.com>]

Great, UserDataBlob is what I needed but I’m still not sure I understand how to read and write them from inside a custom operator though. You mentioned it would be better to do it in a custom command and make them share the same DLL… not sure I understand how to do such a thing. Do I have to link the UserDataBlob through the SPDL? A little example would be appreciated.

 

And btw, I just need to access it during initialization but if you want to elaborate a little more about how you’d manage the case where it would have to be updated every time the operator is updated, I’d be great information to have in case I’m ever faced with such an issue.

 

Thanks for all the info! It really helps a lot!!

 

Mathieu

 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM]On Behalf Of Aloys Baillet
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 5:08 PM
To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: Re: PutUserData in custom operator

 

Hi Mathieu,

Glad you solved the first problem!
For the second you can investigate in 2 different areas, both involving saving data in the XSI scene graph, which is the only way of ensuring data persistence between XSI sessions.
The first one is called UserDataBlob, and the second is UserDataMap, the doc provides good exemples for both to use them.
Then you have to know if the data you're using needs to be updated everytime the operator is updated.
If not (it's just initialization data) you can compute the values and store them in either storage solution BEFORE applying the operator with a custom command: you'll save yourself a lot of headache by doing so. And you can put your CPP custom command in the same DLL than the operator (and thus share some code).
If yes, you'll have to do the same as what you're doing now (store the data in your class), and connect your storage to an output port of your operator. The tricky part is that you'll have to ensure that XSI request the evalution of your operator's storage port before deleting the operator. I can write a little more about that if you need it.

Hope this helps,

Aloys

On 01/02/06, Mathieu Leclaire <mleclair(at)hybride.com> wrote:

OK… I've done more testing and seems the class and pointers works fine… the problem was that I was trying to use PutUserData in a syflex force using the syflex sdk… syflex data is saved using syXset( ctx, (syXforce*)data ); that probably overrides my userdata and that's why I wasn't getting the right results… now I have to figure out how to combine my userdata to syflex's userdata… but I have a few ideas I'll try out… so that takes care of my first problem but my second question still stands so if anyone has any suggestions for that second issue, please share!!

 

Thanks

 

Mathieu Leclaire

R&D Programmer

Hybride

 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM]On Behalf Of Mathieu Leclaire
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 12:04 PM
To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: PutUserData in custom operator

 

Hi, I'm creating a custom operator and I need to initialize and save data for each vertex of a polymesh. Since I have different kind of data to save in the _init call of the operator and reload at each _update call, I figured I'd create a class and put all my data in it then store that object using the PutUserData() function of the UpdateContext. But since I allocate memory in the constructor and delete that memory in the destructor, I think once I pull back my data in the _update function using GetUserData(), it returns me random data since it looks like the memory has already been released. Here is an example of what I'm doing:

 

#ifndef _myVertexInfo_h

#define _myVertexInfo_h

 

class myVertexInfo {

 

private:    

  int _nbPts;

  float* _targetPositions;

  int* _idxPts;

 

public:

  myVertexInfo (int nbPts) {

            _nbPts = nbPts;

            _targetPositions = new float[nbPts*3];

            _idxPts = new int[nbPts*3];

  }

 

 

  virtual ~myVertexInfo (){

            delete [] _targetPositions;

            delete [] _idxPts;

  }

 

  int GetNbPts() {

              return _nbPts;

  }

 

…

};

 

#endif

 

 

Then in my operator's _Init function I do something like this:

 

…

//put local positions in obj2PtsPosArray.

obj2PtsPosArray = inGeom.GetPoints().GetPositionArray();

int nb = obj2PtsPosArray.GetCount();

  myVertexInfo * posData = new myVertexInfo (nb);          

…

ctx.PutUserData( (CValue::siPtrType)posData );

 

Then pull it back in the _update function doing something like this:

 

CValue::siPtrType pUserData = ctx.GetUserData();

myVertexInfo * posData = (myVertexInfo *)pUserData;

Application app;

app.LogMessage( CValue((float)posData->GetNbPts()).GetAsText());        

 

 

But I lose all information saved from the _init call. So what am I doing wrong? How do I allocate memory only in the _init function and release it only in the _term function?

 

 

 

I also have a second question: How can I store this information so that when I load a model containing instances of that operator, it won't recalculate all that information from the _init call but load the data calculated when the operator was first applied. See, I only need to calculate the necessary information when it's first applied, then use the calculated information at every _update call of the operator. But if I export a model containing instances of this operator, when I re-import it (usually by switching the low resolution reference model by a higher resolution one that contains this operator) then it recalls the _init of the operator and recalculates all the values instead of reusing the values that where calculated when first applied. I had the same problem with a previous operator I created but I overcame the issue by adding a "FirstLoad" Boolean parameter to the SPDL so that when it first got applied, it would change that parameter value to false and save the desired data in the rest of the parameters and so when it loaded again in a model, and the "FirstLoad" parameter value was set to false, it would only read the parameters instead of recalculating them. That worked well in that case because I only had a couple floats and a couple integers that had to be saved per operator so I saved them as parameters. Now I have whole arrays of data to save and it's length is dependant on the number of vertices. How should I solve this issue? The only solution I have in mind would be to save it to a file but then we'd have files to manage with the model and paths to check… I'm looking for a way to save that data directly into the operator or somewhere in the exported model so that I can reload it when imported. Any suggestions?

 

 

Thanks for any help you can provide and sorry for the lengthy post, I just figure I'd better give too much information then not enough.

 

 

Mathieu Leclaire

R&D Programmer

Hybride

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Aloys Baillet - XSI Technical Director
Character Dpt - Animal Logic
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