Merge SOP?

[rurik]

What would be the equivalent of a Merge SOP when you have more than one MAT on the geometry you are merging?
What is the workaround for that?

Thanks
Alex

[malcolm]

No currently no. A SOP can only have one material applied to it. You can render multiple SOPs inside a COMP by turning on all their render flags though.
Why do you want to merge them? Maybe there is another way to achieve what you are looking for.

[rurik]

What I'm trying to do is create two different texture projections on the same geometry. To do that in one version I have the geometry brought in once with a set of UV's I'm using.
Then I bring in a separate version of the same geometry, this time broken up into two parts. On the first part I map the texture a certain way, on the second part a different way.
What I'm trying to achieve is, on this second set of geo, to expose texture offset controls to a user.

So in this case I need two Meshes, two MATs, and two Texture SOPS. I then need to bring them all together in a render.
I then need to enable some kind of switch between the first, UV mapped geo, and the second, custom mapped geo. I asked about switching in a different thread, but any insight on that would be very helpful as well.

Thanks!
Alex

[malcolm]

You can put your SOPs all in one Geometry COMP and use the same MAT, assuming the MATs you wanted to use had the same parameters/maps.

Then you can use a Switch SOP to switch between which SOP you want to render. Point the Render TOP to the Geometry COMP still.

Attached is a sample. Notice how only the Null SOP has it's render flag turned on (the purple circle) so whatever it holds will be rendered.

Instead, if you have two Geometry COMPs and you watch to switch between rendering them, you can animate their 'Render' parameters to make them render or not. Point to the Render TOP to both of them in that case.