Extract buffer

Extract buffer exposes data from incoming Geometry through a GPU Buffer outlet. Use it to feed a compute process or inspect data with Buffer to array from Geometry and buffer utilities. It does not output a complete mesh or scene.

Controls

Attribute selects what to extract:

• Position, TexCoord, Color, Normal or Tangent select a standard attribute semantic.
• Attribute 0–8 select an attribute by its index in the geometry description.
• Index selects the geometry’s index buffer.
• Buffer 0–8 select a whole buffer by index.

Attribute extraction and whole-buffer selection are different operations. An attribute can occupy only part of an interleaved vertex record; a whole buffer can contain several attributes. Use Geometry Info to inspect the source layout before choosing an index.

Pad vec3 to vec4 requests four-component records when extracting a three-component attribute. Account for the changed record size in the downstream consumer; this is not a general format-conversion control for arbitrary whole buffers.

Workflow

Connect a geometry producer to Geometry, select a resource actually present in it, and connect Buffer to the consumer. Match the consumer’s element type and stride to the extracted data. For several attributes in one newly packed buffer, use Repack attributes instead.

For custom attribute names and scene auxiliary resources, use the distinct Extract buffer (by name) process documented in Geometry and buffer utilities. That process has Mode and Name / index controls rather than this page’s Attribute selector. Neither process replaces Scene Preprocessor: preprocess a scene before extracting resources from its geometry output.

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