Scene Nodes offer a number of Data Types for different purposes. In most cases they are straight forward, but especially du to Auto Conversion there are some things that might not be clear on a glance.
Let’s start with an, incomplete, list of how the different data types are converted.
Conversion cases that are especially useful are shown Bold.
Float (Real)
- Float (Real)
- Integer – Will be rounded down
- Vector – All Elements get the value
- Vector2 – All Elements get the value
- Vector4 – All Elements get the value
- String – Will become a string of the numerical value (rounded to three decimals)
- Color – All Elements get the value
- ColorA – RGB Elements get the value, A defaults to 1
- Boolean – <>0 will be interpreted as True, =0 as False
- Matrix – Will be interpreted as V0/Translation Vector > all Elements get the value
- Integer – Will be rounded down
- Vector – All Elements get the value
- Vector2D – All Elements get the value
- Vector4D – All Elements get the value
- String – Will become a string of the numerical value (rounded to three decimals)
- Color – All Elements get the value
- ColorA – All Elements get the value
- Boolean – <>0 will be interpreted as True, =0 as False
- Matrix – Will be interpreted as V0/Translation Vector > all Elements get the value
Integer
- Integer
- Float (Real)
- Vector – All Elements get the value
- Vector2D – All Elements get the value
- Vector4D – All Elements get the value
- String – Will become a string of the numerical value (rounded to three decimals)
- Color – All Elements get the value
- ColorA – RGB Elements get the value, A defaults to 1
- Boolean – <>0 will be interpreted as True, =0 as False
- Matrix – Will be interpreted as V0/Translation Vector > all Elements get the value
Vector
- Vector
- Float – Length of vector
- Integer – Length of vector, rounded down
- Vector2D – First and Second component are used
- Vector 4D – All Components are used, fourth component defaults to 0
- String – Components are separated by commas, all components are enclosed in brackets
- Color – RGB get XYZ
- ColorA – RGB get XYZ, the A component defaults to 1
- Boolean – Length of Vector is used, see Float
- Matrix – Will be used for V0/Translation
Matrix
- Matrix
- Float – Length of V0/Translation
- Vector – V0/Translation is used
- Vector2D – First and Second component of V0/Translation are used
- String – Components of V0 are separated by commas and enclosed in brackets
- Color – V0/Translation is used for RGB
Notes
Especially the use of Integer to control a bool, and vice versa, offers a lot of possibilities.
In the attached scene an explicit conversion of four booleans into a 4 bit binary and a decimal value is shown.
This can for example be used to control a Switch node input based on UI options.