Tube POP

Summary

The Tube POP creates rows and columns of points in a cylinder or tube shape. The points can be connected with a variety of primitives using the Connectivity menu.

The bottom and top of the tube each have a radius parameter allowing for a tapered tube, in addition to the height parameter.

The Connectivity menu lets you output triangles, alternating triangles, quads, lines, line strips, point primitives or no primitives (None, only points).

You specify number of rows and columns. Columns refers to the divisions around the circles, Rows to the divisions along the sides.

In the Connectivity menu you can create lines and line strips along Rows, Columns or both merged together.

The tube is symmetric around an axis, Y by default, but the tube can be post-rotated and post-translated using the Rotate and Translate parameters.

Anchor will line up the left, center or right side of the tube to X=0, Y=0 or Z=0.

The Details page lets you make a partial cylinder by specifying arcs with any starting/ending angle.

The End Caps toggle will add triangles or quads to fill the end caps and make the tube a closed volume, which still preserves the Dimension since no points are added or removed, only primitives are added.

Dimension: When the tube is passed to other POPs it cannot be known for certain how many rows and columns were specified. However the Tube POP (and other generator POPs) output its Dimensions as metadata to all POPs connected to it, indicating its organizations of points in the points list. A tube has dimensions numCols numRows, which can be used by built-in attributes like _Dim[] or by GLSL code.

You can output point or vertex normals (creating the N attribute), and you can output point or vertex texture coordinates (Tex attribute).

The Tube POP takes an input which will cause the starting tube to have the same bounding box as the bounding box of the input. Then turning on Modify Bounds lets you further transform the tube.

See also Grid POP, Sphere POP, Torus POP, Revolve POP, Dimension

tubePOP_Class

Parameters - Tube Page

Connectivity surftype - ⊞ - Determines the primitive used to connect the points.

• None none -

• Point Primitives points -

• Rows rows - Number of rows in the matrix - 2, 3 or 4.

• Columns cols - Number of columns

• Rows and Columns rowcol -

• Triangles triangles -

• Alternating Triangles alttriangles -

• Quadrilaterals quads -

Line Type linetype - ⊞ - Specifies whether lines should be made of line strip primitives or lines primitives.

• Line Strip linestrip -

• Lines lines -

Orientation orient - ⊞ - Sets the axis for the tube.

• X Axis x -

• Y Axis y -

• Z Axis z -

Modify Bounds modifybounds - Available only when an input is connected to the POP to set bounds for the POP. When Modify Bounds is On the parameters below will further modify the shape of the POP.

Radius rad - ⊞ - Cylindrical radius.

• Radius radx -

• Radius rady -

Height height - The height of the tube.

Columns cols -

Rows rows -

Anchor U anchoru - Puts the left side, the middle or the right side at the origin 0.

Anchor V anchorv - Puts the bottom side, the middle or the top side at the origin 0.

Anchor W anchorw - Puts the back side, the middle or the front side at the origin 0.

Translate t - ⊞ - Translate the points in the three axes.

• Translate tx -

• Translate ty -

• Translate tz -

Rotate r - ⊞ - Rotate the points around the corresponding X, Y and Z axes. Angles are given in degrees.

• Rotate rx -

• Rotate ry -

• Rotate rz -

Uniform Scale scale - Specifies a uniform scale factor in all axes.

Normal normal - ⊞ - Choose whether to create a normal attribute and the attribute class of the normal attribute.

• None none -

• Point pointNormals -

• Vertex vertNormals -

Texture Coordinates texture - ⊞ - Sets the attribute class where the texture coordinates should be created.

• None none -

• Point point -

• Vertex vert -

Parameters - Detail Page

U Closed closedu - Enable closed geometry in U direction.

Angle U angleu - ⊞ - The angle the tube covers along U.

• Angle U beginangleu -

• Angle U endangleu -

End Caps endcaps - Enable addition of end caps

Parameters - Common Page

Bypass bypass - Pass through the first input to the output unchanged.

Free Extra GPU Memory freeextragpumem - Free memory that has accumulated when output memory has grown and shrunk.

Delete Input Attributes delinputattrs - Only output which attributes you specify in this POP - helps isolate attributes into a separate branch.

Operator Inputs

• Input 0: -

Info CHOP Channels

Extra Information for the Tube POP can be accessed via an Info CHOP.

Common Operator Info Channels

• total_cooks - Number of times the operator has cooked since the process started.

• cook_time - Duration of the last cook in milliseconds.

• cook_frame - Frame number when this operator was last cooked relative to the component timeline.

• cook_abs_frame - Frame number when this operator was last cooked relative to the absolute time.

• cook_start_time - Time in milliseconds at which the operator started cooking in the frame it was cooked.

• cook_end_time - Time in milliseconds at which the operator finished cooking in the frame it was cooked.

• cooked_this_frame - 1 if operator was cooked this frame.

• warnings - Number of warnings in this operator if any.

• errors - Number of errors in this operator if any.

TouchDesigner Build: Latest\nwikieditor2025.30000

POPs (Point Operators) is a new Operator Family of TouchDesigner that runs on the GPU accelerated graphics card or chips, and creates/modifies 3D data which is rendered by the Render TOP or passed to devices like DMX lighting, LED arrays, lasers or other external systems.

Dimension is metadata of a POP that describes the structure of the point list, which may be made of rows and columns of points (which is two dimensions of size nrows and ncolumns).

Each SOP has a list of Points. Each point has an XYZ 3D position value plus other optional attributes. Each polygon Primitive is defined by a vertex list, which is list of point numbers.

A sequence of vertices form a Polygon in a SOP. Each vertex is an integer index into the Point List, and each Point holds an XYZ position and attributes like Normals and Texture Coordinates.

An operator whose Bypass flag is set does nothing: All data going into its first input appears at its output unaffected.

The Graphics Processing Unit. This is the high-speed, many-core processor of the graphics card/chip that takes geometry, images and data from the CPU and creates images and processed data.

Attributes are data associated with POP geometry. Points, Vertex (Vertices) and Primitives (polygons, lines, etc) can have any number of attributes.

An Operator Family which operate on Channels (a sequence of numbers (Samples)) which are used for animation, audio, mathematics, simulation, logic, UI construction, and data streamed from/to devices and protocols.