2025-05-13 Nodes & Physics Module Meeting

[jacqueslucke]

Check the overview thread for more information about the meeting.

Present

• Cartesian Caramel
• Dalai Felinto
• Habib Gahbiche
• Hans Goudey
• Jacques Lucke
• Lukas Tönne
• Simon Thommes

Since the Last Meeting

• Blog Post: Declarative Systems in Geometry Nodes
• Switch Nodes:
  • Support expanded menus in node group interface (commit)
  • Support Menu type in Menu Switch node (commit)
  • Improved muted behavior of switch nodes (commit)
    • This does technically change behavior when switching booleans with the switch node and integers with the index switch node.
• Warnings:
  • Show link errors directly on link (commit)
  • Show warning when a group output is unused (commit)
• Frames:
  • Highlight frame that nodes will be attached to (commit)
  • Use alternating frame colors (commit)
• File Import:
  • New Import VDB node (commit)
  • Cache data loaded in Import nodes (commit)
  • Show node timings on Import nodes (commit)
• Search:
  • Support searching for math operations and color blend modes in Add menu (math operations, blend modes)
  • Support searching for dynamic node labels (commit)
• Devtalk Proposals:
  • Context Input Nodes
  • Sticky Viewer Nodes
  • Group Defaults Node
• New operator to add new empty node group (commit)
• Allow dragging Group Inputs from panel into node editor (commit)
• New Grid Info node (commit)

Meeting Topics

• Bit Math node
  • Eventually we might need to specify the integer bit width in the node.
  • It would be great if the PR included a use case.
  • The operation label could use the “Bitwise” word too, to further separate the results in search and make the difference with the boolean math node clearer.
  • (e.g., Bitwise Or)
• Don’t jump viewer node if it’s still visible
  • A heuristic for moving the viewer node to the right if it’s far to the left of the viewed node might be helpful in practice. Simon will test that.
• Auto-hide unused inputs if usage depends on menu
• Support separators in node group interface
  • We’ll get Pablo’s opinion on this too, just to make sure it isn’t breaking UI conventions.
• Move spreadsheet context path to side bar
  • Generally good.
  • The “viewer/original/evaluated” drop down could be above the object name.
  • The “Context” panel name can become the object name with the icon with the dropdown enum name in parentheses.
• Simplify adding named frames
  • The operator should be in the context menu.
• Allow detaching frame while dragging node
  • The operator currently mapped to “F” moves to “J”.
  • The order of pressing “G” and “F” is important. In reverse it creates a frame named “G” instead.
  • Simon will try it.
• Fix #138388: Use grid voxel corners as value locations like OpenVDB
  • Lukas worked on a fix to this long-standing issue.
• Mesh: Rewrite face corner normals calculation
  • Hans is looking to land this and searching for a green checkmark.