thanks,
are you considering another approach that is more like, the fill volume (random and grid) in the particle system ?
Hi, I’ve been messing around with falloff effects and this is probably the easiest way to achive a rotation in one axis, I’ve seen other setups, but this was what I was able to make by myself after a couple days of truly dedicating time to learning the system. It feel a little more like a hack than the intended way, we should be able to get atributes like rotation.x or something like that, I’d like to know what you have in plan for this kind of mograph stuff.
1 Like
there is a built in rotation attribute, you can use attribute separate to separate an axis and use point rotate node to rotate it
No, the better approach would be to convert to a volume first. Since a polygonal model doesn’t actually have volume data it has to be inferred one way or another, the legacy particle system inferred this data behind the scenes using some rather ancient and hacky methods. I inspected the particle system’s volume distribution and it produced very broken results under the slightest of stress. (See the thread T85898) By converting the mesh to a volume first you allow the user to inspect and edit the data to make adjustments, fixes, and define VDB grids to make attributes from. Hopefully this clears up why this approach was taken.
2 Likes
I think you’re missing these two nodes build specifically for these use cases:
2 Likes
I saw on the blender.chat some of the UI things were being discussed re: this post by Julian
- The shortcut on hover was a great feature for applying/removing modifiers and personally I’d like to see that brought back. The whole ‘active modifier’ thing feels forced.
- I think double clicking on a Goe Node modifier should focus its node tree (similar to how the Amaranth Toolset addon lets you double click on an image texture shader node to focus it on the image/UV editor).
- Having to have the active modifier selected is pretty annoying when you want to eg tweak the material of your instance object but still have the geo node tree available from the instancing object etc. I know pinning is an option but then you have to also unpin and pinning prevents basic functions like renaming a tree, adding a fake user, or creating a new tree.
- Adding a new modifier automatically when you click the “+ New” button in the node graph makes sense and is useful but on other side, adding a new tree automatically when you add a new modifier does not. Adding a new modifier ought to have a button to create new or select from existing just like when you’ve unlinked a tree from it. Or also how a Displace modifier doesn’t automatically create a new Texture datablock. I’ve use Geo Nodes for a handful of professional projects now that have filled with empty
Geometry Nodes.00Xtrees because I wanted to add the same grass or trees or border node tree that was already created on another object.
I like this solution T84927 but I think it should be as well as the empty modifier by default.
5 Likes
Once you rotate the points, is it possible to move them according to local axis of each point, not global?
Set the Point rotate node to Point and it’ll rotate per point
Having to have the active modifier selected is pretty annoying when you want to eg tweak the material of your instance object (…)
Tweaking the material doesn’t change the active modifier. So the nodetree displayed in the geometry nodes should not change. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean here.
The concept of an active modifier is a core part of the design though. It has the overall benefits we see throughout Blender where different editors can show/edit the data based on this shared context. A specific example is the spreadsheet that can show active object data, but also active modifier or active node.
Your other points are more related to pure UI small UX points. I will leave that to the UI team to reiterate on them. I personally don’t fully see the benefit of having quick mouse hover shortcuts for things you don’t do too often (i.e., delete/applying modifiers). Specially if this gets on the way of how active modifer works.
So the nodetree displayed in the geometry nodes should not change. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you mean here.
Just if you’re instancing grass on a plane for example, the plane has the Geometry Nodes tree on it but the grass you’re instancing doesn’t so when you adjust your grass shader, the Geometry nodes graph goes blank.
No, I mean when I rotate the points towards an object for exemple, I want to translate the points in that direction.
If you want to move a point to another point you can just subtract the two points from each other, and normalize the vector to get the direction. Then just add that direction scaled by some distance to the points location.
Thanks for your answer 
So I guess it’s steel work in progress, and that’s not the final result.
I’m confident that you guys will find the solution to make it look like the expected result.
I don’t know anything about programming, Otherwise I would have helped !!
So cheers!!
Yeah that’s the solution for this exemple, but I was wondering in general how to move points according to their new local axis once you rotate them.
Somebody did test if geonode can offset the animation of instances?
Not sure if this is possible, but for example offsetting the ‘local’ time of instances to create crowd effects
Let say that we have an animated model instance scattered such as this kind of common needed scanned models
or in our case a little guy saying hi, how to make them do the wave or randomize their local animation loop?
I believe other soft propose this “time offsetting” feature for instances, correct me if I’m wrong
Was this ever tested/ talked about by the devs?
is there a task about this?
sorry if this was already brought up before
13 Likes
I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but I just downloaded blender 2.92 and started playing around with the geometry nodes. I can definitely see its power in creating random instantiation of objects. However, is it possible to use it as a way to act as a wraper for modifiers and operations? As a simple example (that I made up on the fly), suppose that I have an array of cubes that make a basic spiral staircase pattern that I then want to merge into one object.
Normally I would apply the array modifier,split the object by separate parts, and then use boolean union modifier to combine the cubes. Can I use geometry nodes to combine all of these steps into one modifier that I can then apply, or is geometry nodes not capable of this yet?
1 Like
That’s a good idea, an animation offset node, I can see that. Even more, however, I would want a highly specialized point instance node/array node that allows you to change specified parameters per instance. Animation is one thing, but people will always want to change whatever per instance; simple deform angle, displacement strength, solidify thickness, you name it. As far as proceduralism goes the list is endless. In that sense I think it would be very important to go as general as possible, and allow this node to accept any parameter/attribute, and give it some instructions on how to randomize it, probably like the attribute randomize node.
2 Likes
Not just crowd effects, a bunch of trees with the wind affecting them
Such a needed thing to save memory and at the same time have animation with vegetation
2 Likes
Looks like papercut in case of GN. Not so noticible with shader nodes, but rarely annoys too.