Animating a dynamic amount of objects from CSV data using Animation Nodes

Question

Problem

I was given some data from a simulation and am trying to animate said data. I've gone through several other posts where they accomplished this using Animation Nodes, which works for a fixed amount of objects. The problem I'm having is one data file can contain the position/rotation for an undefined amount of objects. What I need is some sort of first step that instantiates the necessary amount of objects and then a second part that animates the objects.

Solution

The solution I'm looking for needs to:

• Instantiate a undefined (dynamic) amount of objects
• All instantiated objects will be the same
• Animate a undefined (dynamic) amount of position/rotation vectors

If there is some better method to accomplish this other then Animation Nodes I am open to suggestions.

What I've tried so far

So far I've been able to animate a fixed number of objects using a loop input. I've played around with using a different character to separate the objects like '$' character. But I still get stuck trying to instantiate the objects dynamically.

Update

Ok so I screwed around a little more and have it now so the objects get instantiated based on the length of a list taken from the first line where the elements are separated with '$' character.

I feel like I'm soo close now but I'm still running into the issue where it doesn't want to add keyframes for the 2nd line.

I've added a screenshot and the .blend so maybe someone else can see what's going wrong here?

Update 2

I understand attachments are typically frowned upon in SE questions but so we can all be on the same page I've attached an example CSV file.

Some more things to note are:

• I can format the simulation data in any manner, if changing the format of the CSV allows me to more easily create animations then so be it
• Remember as long as I can animate an infinite/undefined amount of objects AND keyframes/data points then we're good.
• The approach I've taken at the moment is to have every line (row) = one animation cycle. The information for each object is stored on a single line, I use a the '$' character to divide objects as a little bit of a hack.

Project Files / Example CSV

Example CSV File

Answer 1

I finally gave up on Animation Nodes and just wrote a simple Python script instead. I changed the format of the CSV so 1 line = 1 keyframe. This is simpler but it could probably be more efficient by not forcing you to place keyframes constantly.

The objects are still separated by '$' characters to simplify parsing.

An Example CSV file can be found here

Script below:

import bpy
import csv

# File to open
csvFile = open('example-data.csv')

# Separate by lines
csvFileLines = csvFile.readlines()
csvFileLines = [line.rstrip('\n') for line in csvFileLines]
#Remove first row
csvFileLines.pop(0)

#How many objects should we instantiate?
objectCount = len(csvFileLines[0].split("$"))
print("Objects found: " + objectCount)

objs = []
objs.append(bpy.context.active_object) # First obj added is the current active object
# Get scene
scn = bpy.context.scene

# Instantiate all objects needed
for x in range(1, objectCount):
    objs.append(objs[0].copy()) # Copy first object
    objs[x].name += str(x) # Give unique name
    bpy.context.collection.objects.link(objs[x]) # Link to scene

keyInterp = bpy.context.preferences.edit.keyframe_new_interpolation_type # Remember user selected interpolation type
bpy.context.preferences.edit.keyframe_new_interpolation_type ='LINEAR' # Set interpolation type to linear

for i, line in enumerate(csvFileLines):
    # Find objects
    csvObjectPosRot = line.split("$")
    for r, values in enumerate(csvObjectPosRot):
        # Find values from object string
        csvObjectValues = values.split(",")
        # Set object position
        objs[r].location = (float(csvObjectValues[0]), float(csvObjectValues[1]), float(csvObjectValues[2]))
        # Set object rotation
        objs[r].rotation_euler = (float(csvObjectValues[3]),float(csvObjectValues[4]),float(csvObjectValues[5]))  # Note that you need to use radians rather than angles here
        # Add keyframe for object
        objs[r].keyframe_insert(data_path='location', frame=(i))
        objs[r].keyframe_insert(data_path='rotation_euler', frame=(i))

bpy.context.preferences.edit.keyframe_new_interpolation_type = keyInterp # Revert interpolation type to the users last selection