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Going to try this again from scratch, to see if I can hit the "golden mean."

So I'm having an issue with a Geometry Proximity system that seems to be affecting 3 instances at the same time. Each of the instances is a block of random cubes of varying dimensions, set up so that they don't overlap or leave gaps. The blocks are all 10x40 meters in size, the smallest cubes are 2x2x2 meters.

Here's an illustration of the problem, with the proximity sensor (a set of empty axes) highlighted in orange: Proxmity sensor in the middle affecting all three instances.

The proximity sensor node tree group is here: Proximity Sensor node tree group

And here's how it fits into the node tree (showing the 4mx4mx2m cube generator for simplicity). It controls the scale of the cubes based on their proxmity to the empty axes:

Proximity sensor being used to control the scale of the cubes based on proxmity.

The trouble is, I want to duplicate the original, randomly generated, 10x40 block of cubes, so it will loop smoothly. (The empty axes starts at the right, moves through the center block, then resets). The trouble is, if I just instance the whole 10x40 block and use Transform Geometry to move them to the left and right, the empty seems to work on all three instances at once. If I instance the center the 10x40 block as a point cloud, each instance creates a different arrangement of the cubes, spoiling the seamless loop.

My question is, how do I copy the center 10x40 block without creating a new random arrangement, and in such a way that the proximity sensor doesn't work on all three copies at once?

( Ed note: Hopefully this strikes the right balance between easy to read, and detailed enough to understand the problem!)

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Well... if you're setting scale before and copying later, you're clearly copying the scales.

Copy first and scale later:

  • Option 1, copy points

Option 1

  • Option 2, scale after copy instances

Option 2

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  • $\begingroup$ Very useful node trees! My problem always was trying to copy the center volume of cubes without it rerunning through the random creation and creating entirely new arrangements. That's fine if I want to do just a one-off animation, but for a loop, at least the front and the back have to be copied and added to the end of the "original." The node tree is a kludge anyway (as you've probably seen!) I need to clean it up BAD. That'll be a perfect opportunity to try your ideas. Thank you!! $\endgroup$
    – ArchTeryx
    Commented Dec 12 at 17:44

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