Getting the attribute type and contents of a node

FBX node objects store the generic properties for a point in space.

The data for the “contents” of a given node—e.g., the data particular to a camera, light, mesh, or NURBS—is stored in another object. That object must be an instance of the appropriate class: KFbxCamera, KFbxLight, KFbxMesh, KFbxNurb, etc.

These classes are called node attributes, and are subclasses of Class KFbxNodeAttribute:

Each node has a node attribute (KFbxNode::GetNodeAttribute()), whose value is either:

A pointer to the node attribute object of the node.
null, i.e., there is no node attribute object for the node.

If the node attribute is not null, then you can get from the node attribute object its attribute type (enum eAttributeType).

Note

Class KFbxNull is used to create node attribute objects representing a null node in the tree. These objects are used by applications that need to represent a null node in its scene graph. A pointer to a KFbxNull object is not the same as null.

Here is how SceneTreeView creates the string that contains the name of the node and the attribute type:

KString GetNodeNameAndAttributeTypeName(const KFbxNode* pNode)
{
    KString s = pNode->GetName();
 
    KFbxNodeAttribute::EAttributeType lAttributeType;
 
    if(pNode->GetNodeAttribute() == NULL)
    {
        s += " (No node attribute type)";
    }
    else
    {
        lAttributeType = (pNode->GetNodeAttribute()->GetAttributeType());
 
        switch (lAttributeType)
        {
        case KFbxNodeAttribute::eMARKER:                s += " (Marker)";               break;
        case KFbxNodeAttribute::eSKELETON:              s += " (Skeleton)";             break;
        case KFbxNodeAttribute::eMESH:                  s += " (Mesh)";                 break;
        case KFbxNodeAttribute::eCAMERA:                s += " (Camera)";               break;
        case KFbxNodeAttribute::eLIGHT:                 s += " (Light)";                break;
        case KFbxNodeAttribute::eBOUNDARY:              s += " (Boundary)";             break;
        case KFbxNodeAttribute::eTRIM_NURBS_SURFACE:    s += " (Trim nurbs surface)";   break;
         ...
        }   
    }
 
    return s;
}

To access properties of a node attribute object that are specific to it being a camera, a NURBS, a light, etc., you can write similar code to cast the object to its appropriate class. This allows you to call the methods for that class:

        ...
        case KFbxNodeAttribute::eNURB:
        DisplayNurb(pNode);
        break;
 
...
void DisplayNurb(KFbxNode* pNode)
{
    KFbxNurb* lNurb = (KFbxNurb*) pNode->GetNodeAttribute ();
    ...
    int lControlPointsCount = lNurb->GetControlPointsCount();
    KFbxVector4* lControlPoints = lNurb->GetControlPoints();