Creating a point cloud using the positions of model instances

This is a scenario that came up on xsibase: suppose you have a model that includes multiple objects, and that you create many instances of that model. How do you create a point cloud that has a point for every object in every instance?

Put the model objects in a group, and put the instances in another group, so that you have a setup like this:

Then you can use Get Data with the groups to get two arrays: an array of the object positions, and an array of the instance positions. The objects are all positioned relative to an instance, so you can work out where to add the points.

Here’s how to do it with a Repeat node. Note that you need just one Repeat node: you don’t have to loop over the object kine.local.pos arrays, you can just use Multiply Vector by Matrix to multiply an array of vectors by an array of matrices. If you understand that, then you’re “thinking in ICE”.

Here’s how to do it without a Repeat node. Again, if you understand this, you understand how to think in ICE.

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