Geometry Nodes: Complex index handling

Question

I have 4 objects that represent 2 persons' images and names. They have their origins in the same place per person.

I'm trying to make a distributed network of different people groups. 'Group Blue' would have the names and images of that 'group_blue' collection. Eventually I'd add some floating with manipulating the positions of points with scene time and all sorts of effects.

Here are the nodes now:

And this would be the desired end result for this specific issue:

You see, I have only 2 points in the GEOMETRY_NODES_OBJECT now visible and I would like to instance each person's name and image per point.

I just don't understand how to deal with the indexes correctly, I've tried everything I feel :/

(I know it would be SO much more easier if there was only one object per person. But we can't extract the person's name from the image-object currently, so, a workaround is needed)

Answer 1

If I'm understanding you right, you want the first point to be populated with the first (Index 0) and second (Index 1) instances, then the next point with third (Index 2) and fourth (Index 3) instance, so on and so forth... Since you're using two separate Instance on Point nodes for names and images in that list, this comes to mean that you want the first instancing node to use indices $0, 2, 4, 6, 8...$ and the other one to use $1, 3, 5, 7, 9...$

To get the first, you can simply Multiply your Index by $2$. If you take that and add $1$, you'll get the second:

These indices come from their order in the Outliner, and that usually is decided alphabetically. If you want to have more control over the order, and you don't wanna do that by renaming the objects (could be bothersome when you want to add or remove objects later on), you can use separate Object Info nodes instead of a Collection Info, and use the order of their noodles in a Join Geometry node you'd link them all into—it always goes from top to bottom:

(Don't forget to turn on the As Instance option on the Object Info nodes)

However, with both these setups, if you wanted to add a third, or fourth, or fifth object to your groupings, you would need to add a third, a fourth, or a fifth Instance on Point node, with separate indices. Perhaps you'd want to do something like this instead—create your groupings beforehand, merging them into single instances, and distribute using a single Instance on Point node, with no index manipulation at all: