2022-06-29 Geometry Nodes sub-module meeting

Meetings
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The meeting will be open for everybody interested in joining the video call (link below).

Meeting time: 15:00 CEST (Your local time: 2022-06-29T13:00:00Z).

Links

Present

  • Andy Goralczyk (Blender)
  • Dalai Felinto (Blender)
  • Erindale
  • Gareth Jensen (Meta)
  • Hans Goudey (Blender)
  • Iliay Katueshenock
  • Jacques Lucke (Blender)
  • Natasha (Meta)
  • Zhen Dai (NetEase)

General Discussion

  • Hair progress update
    • We have new tools for hair and selection, aimed at merge today.
  • Curve selection (mix/multiply/color/black hair?)
    • Currently it blends black into the deselected hair.
    • But does that work at all for deselected hair?
      • Maybe not a problem, because people don’t tend to do grooming in rendered mode
      • More options are helpful, but maybe not necessary.
  • The name for the new curves data-block
    • “Spline” solved the problem with just the name, but it isn’t correct and doesn’t properly solve the plural problem. A “Curve” containing multiple “Splines” doesn’t make sense.
    • “Point” solved this with “Point Cloud”.
    • This can be discussed further later. There aren’t any great ideas right now.
  • Curves selection outline
    • The outline overlay for curves is often disabled, since it can get in the way
    • Andy mentioned that it should probably just stay consistent and work for curves objects as well.
  • Artist feedback:
    • UV of the surface accessible on hair
      • The UV itself is already propagated with the add brush or the attachement operators.
      • Some attributes could be propagated automatically based on the UVs, but it’s probably best if that’s an explicit choice to keep the tools performing well.
    • Procedural interpolation (i.e. children hair) is a big missing item
      • Some use cases of the hair system are impossible without it
  • UV mode in Attribute Transfer node?
    • For propagation of attributes from the surface to curves like colors, etc.
    • Hans proposed making it a separate node, mentioning that grouping up so much different functionality in a single node might not make sense
  • D14864: Curves: Deform curves based on surface node. (WIP)
    • This solves another basic use case for the hair system
    • It’s still WIP by Jacques. First he wants to get the node working, then worry more about the specific inputs and output sockets

Patch Review & Decision Time

  • D15306: Add “Use Limit Surface” option to subdivision surface geometry node
    • This is a simple patch, basically ready to be committed now
  • D15274: Geometry Nodes: Shortest Path (WIP)
    • The original design was a single node that created a new curve for every path
    • The idea was to separate the path calculation from the curve generation
      • Avoiding a quadratic algorithm might open many more possibilities
    • This could be a field node because it doesn’t modify the mesh
    • “At” should be “at”: Cut at Intersection, for the Mesh Path to Curve node
      • The name is a bit confusing in general, it’s not really “cutting”
      • “Kill at Intersection” or “Stop at Intersection” or “Merge”
    • Geodesic distances are a separate topic
    • A vector field on the mesh might be a way to generalize this, but might be harder to implement, or a separate topic
      • It might be good to name the node so it doesn’t preclude adding more options in the future
    • More feedback could be helpful on the patch. Especially about how to achieve the effect without generating all the redundant data.
  • D14389: Geometry Nodes: Unwrap and Pack Islands Nodes
    • Keep it simple, make it blue
    • Geometry nodes are nodes that have geometry inputs and outputs
  • D10895: T86838 Geometry Nodes: Add Mesh To Volume Node
    • An old patch that’s finally ready to be committed.
  • D15042: Geometry Node: Image Info
    • We can ask Brecht about this before committing
    • Some screenshots in the description would be helpful

Help Needed

  • Nothing was mentioned specifically, but the team is currently focusing on getting Hair available for Blender 3.3.

Next Meeting

The next meeting will be on Wednesday 13 July, 15:00-16 CEST (Your local time: 2022-06-29T13:00:00Z), which is 2 weeks from this meeting. Again it will be open for everyone interested. The provisional meeting agenda will be linked in the #geometry-nodes channel before the meeting.

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Sorry, not very related to the meeting per say.

I was wondering if there was plan to include the fast solver to the Boolean node.

For instance I had use many boolean for my procedural train project. To make it working I had implemented many switch node with a main one to toggle all my boolean at once.

Took, maybe 10 second to calculate everything, depending on curve (track) resolution.

Had always wonder why the fast option is only available on the modifier.

There is also a RCS about it.

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There are no specific plans to work on that right now, but maybe someone else is interested in looking into it.

Personally, I would be more interested in spending time improving the performance of the existing exact mode.

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Make sense !

User would need to be aware of the fast mode downside.

And since it is procedural we can’t just move the geo 2mm to the side to make it works. At least it is harder.

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Checkpoint nodes, any updates ?

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Is there any chance that the smooth attribute node from Iliay can make it into 3.3? It would be very useful alongside the new volume to mesh and volume cube nodes.

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There are 2 problems:

  1. it’s not finished
  2. this version may no longer receive such large features

And I ask you, do not use this thread for such questions.
All comments above do not correspond to her topic - described in the post

1 Like