Get Closest Location

Description

Outputs the closest location on a surface, polygon mesh, curve, or point cloud based on the input position. Locations are "glued" to the surface of a geometry so that they stay in the same relative position even as the geometry transforms and deforms, unless you recompute and reset the locations' values at different frames. In the specific case of a point cloud, this node returns a location that corresponds to the closest particle and moves with that particle.

We strongly suggest, when possible, to use the cutoff distance option for performance reason. The smaller the cutoff distance, the faster the execution of this node.

If no location is found within the cutoff distance, a value of Undefined Location is returned for that element. If you try to get an attribute at Undefined Location, the value is filtered — subsequent nodes do not process that element of the data set.

Parameters

Proximity Method

Method used to compute the proximity:

Closest Surface finds the nearest point on the input object's surface.
Closest Vertex or Knot finds the closest vertex on polygon meshes, or the closest knot on curves and NURBS surfaces.
Closest Smoothed Surface is a variation of Closest Surface that helps avoid stretching at sharp corners and other situations. For example, in the image below, the closest location on the smaller cube is the same for all points on the cross-section of the larger cube's bevel. This method detects such situations and compensates by spreading out the returned locations.

Ports

Inputs

Geometry	The geometry on which we want the closest location.
Position	The position from which we want the closest location.
Enable Cutoff Distance	Allows to search only within given distance.
Cutoff Distance	The distance within which to search when the Enable Cutoff Distance option is turned on.

Outputs

Location	The closest location on the geometry from the input position.
Found	Returns true if a location was found on the geometry within the cutoff distance (when the option is on).

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