Difference between revisions of "Modulo Scalar"

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Revision as of 18:31, 1 June 2011

Modulo Scalar

Node Description & Purpose:
The Modulo scalar node is a function which does modulo division, also known as remainder division. The calculation it does is very simple and looks like this :

Input modulo Input 2

The output is the remainder of Input divided by Input 2. For example :

5 modulo 4 = 1

because the remainder of 5 divided by 4 is 1. As another example :

5 modulo 5 = 0

because 5 divided by 5 has no remainder. Similarly :

6 modulo 3 = 0

because 6 divided by 3 has no remainder.

One of the situations that modulo division is most useful in is for making repeating patterns. Imagine that you wanted to divide the X axis into blocks 5 units long. You would set up a Modulo scalar node so that the Input was the X position and Input 2 was a Constant scalar node with a value of 5. This will output values which look like this :

X value: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Output : 0 1 2 3 4 0 1 2 3 4 0 1 2 3 4 0 1 2 3 4 0

As you can see you now get a repeating series of numbers from the output. Note that for this to work you need to make the Input value the varying number (in this case the X axis position) and the Input 2 value the constant value you are comparing with (5 in this case). If you did it the other way around you would get a output like this :

X value: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Output : 0 0 1 2 1 0 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

As you can see this does not give the same repeating sequence of numbers.

Let's go back to the original example. Imagine you wanted to make every place you get a zero from output as a white dot, and every place you got a number greater than zero as a black dot. You could make a pattern like this (where "o" is a white dot and "m" is a black dot) :

X value: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Output : 0 1 2 3 4 0 1 2 3 4 0 1 2 3 4 0 1 2 3 4 0
Pattern: o m m m m o m m m m o m m m m o m m m m o

That is a pretty simplistic example, but hopefully you see what is meant. Using modulo division is the basis for creating repeating patterns.

Node Type: Function

Settings:

  • Input 2: The value corresponding to Input 2 in the description above.

A scalar is a single number. 1, 200.45, -45, -0.2 are all examples of scalar values.