2025-03-04 Nodes & Physics Module Meeting

Check the overview thread for more information about the meeting.

Present

  • Hans Goudey
  • Jacques Lucke
  • Lukas Tönne
  • Simon Thommes
  • Ben
  • Mattias Fredriksson
  • Sean Christofferson

Since the Last Meeting

Meeting Topics

  • Camera Info Node
    • Camera info makes sense as a concept to give this sort of information.
    • It should only provide information that’s stored on the camera or camera object (i.e. remove resolution and aspect ratio).
    • Organization into panels might be nice, but unless we come up with a good organization, that shouldn’t be blocking.
  • Sample Attribute Name Node
    • Seems quite powerful and useful, but the consensus is to wait for lists and have an “Attribute Names” node that outputs a list of the names in the attributes.
  • String Contains/Startswith/Endswith
    • It’s a bit tricky to call operations like “Contains” a “Comparison”.
      • An example of another thing to take into account is upper and lower case comparisons.
    • The PR should explore the design for putting this in a separate node so we have another option to consider.
  • Field Statistic Nodes
    • Looks good.
    • No selection input necessary, it’s a little too confusing, and probably technically redundant with the group ID anyway.
      • If we want to add a selection input later, it should be added to the accumulate field node too.
  • Handling of unregistered custom group nodes
    • Ideally when the addon creating a custom group is unregistered, the node group should work like a regular group.
    • That said, we don’t fully understand the problem yet. It needs more research.
  • Bundles in Simulations and Attribute Fields
    • It’s unclear which geometry should bundle fields be evaluated on. The “referenced attribute” socket from the proposal above would make that much clearer.
    • For bundles, there is no clear place where users can choose a domain for capturing a field on the simulation input node.
  • Python API for evaluated geometry.
    • Currently the only way to find all the outputs from geometry nodes is to iterate over all the object instances from the evaluated view layer. This should make it much simpler to access evaluated goemetry.
    • Needs feedback from Core and Python API modules.
    • Needs more testing.
    • “Empty object” collection instancing currently isn’t included. It would make sense to handle those too.
  • Object Info ‘As Instance’ default
    • Designing this from scratch we probably would have made the same choice too, but at this point the change is too large.
  • Caching for Mesh Tangent Node?
    • Good to have this, it would save people time.
    • The calculation needs to happen twice because there are two outputs.
      • The field input API should be more general so it can compute multiple outputs at the same time. It would be great to resolve that now but it’s not necessarily blocking.
    • The normal could be an input.
    • Jacques has experimented with tangents for hair generation. The “globally smooth” tangents aren’t necessarily required and a faster/simpler algorithm could be added as an option in the future.
  • Fix #135344: Extra space in node editor group panel
    • Looks good to those present.
  • Text file import node
    • The strongest use case is probably motion graphics text import.
8 Likes

Is there a task/issue/pr for text file import node or was it just discussed orally?

3 Likes

Thanks a lot! I didn’t think it’d be called exactly like that, lol.