New Tool: ICE Tree Trace

[Bradley Gabe]

Greetings Folks-

I'm releasing a new tool for the Softimage community that I had been using extensively on a recent project, and figured plenty of folks might find it helpful.

In a nutshell, it's a tool that helps you find instances of strings inside ICE Trees. 

If you lose track of when and where you were getting or setting attributes, forgot if you were pointing to a specific geometry name in a Shape Instance node, or need to hunt down the names of cache files set in your tree, this tool will help.

Here's the link to the download in google docs (Feel free to post this on whatever Softimage community sites you like).

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1YpeWdrXDofSEFYWW9LUG5LclE

Let me know if you find any glaring bugs. I'll do my best to repair things in the short term.

-Bradley

ICE_TraceRefString:

Tool for tracing instances of strings inside ICE Trees. Can be used, for example, to track down the number of times a specific attribute is called. Via filters, may also be used to determine how an attribute is called, whether by Get Data, Set Data, or other ICE nodes that handle string parameters.

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Usage:

Specify search options, enter a Match String, then press the trace button. If matches are found, the address of the ICE Nodes are listed in the Match List at the bottom of the GUI. If items are selected in the Match List, their corresponding nodes are selected in the scene

NOTE: At present, there is no access in the SDK to directly select nodes inside an ICE Tree node graph interface. ICE nodes are selected in the scene, and may be accessed via the explorer.

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GUI Parameters:

Search Scope:

•     Selected ICE Nodes - Search only within currently selected nodes in ICE Tree
•     Local ICE Tree - Search all nodes in the currently open ICE Tree
•     ICE Trees on Sel Scene Items - Any ICE Tree on selected scene items
•     Global Scene - All ICE Trees in the scene

ICE Node Filter:

• All ICE Nodes - No filter
• Get Data only - Search for string matches only in Get Data nodes
• Set Data only - Search for string matches only in Set Data nodes
• Other Nodes - Search for string matches in nodes that are not Get Data or Set Data (Shape Instance, String nodes, etc)

Match String: String to be searched for inside ICE Tree
Cap Sensitive: Consider capitalization in search string (Overridden by RegExpr matching)

Use Regular Expression Matching: Allows user to specify match strings using regular expression syntax

[Alan Fregtman]

Sweet tool, Brad! Good job. :)

[Dan Yargici]

Agreed, that looks mightily handy, thanks Brad!