To put it simply… Points Distribute node converts UV data to the form that Attribute sample texture can work with them, no other node can do it right now.
May I ask you to post these screenshots together with your system info to https://developer.blender.org/T84980 ?
Added. Also it seems that color attribute cannot be added to instances and used in shader editor at all. It just outputs black on all instances. Is this also a bug or a limitation?
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That’s just a limitation, attributes currently don’t work with instances.
@HooglyBoogly is there any chance of getting a usable point id attribute by default that goes from 0-x? As far as I can tell, the current id attribute is a large random number. I guess that point id as well as face and edge id attributes will have to come at some stage to do any sort of procedural modelling operations.
I think we might instead use an “index” attribute for that purpose, because the [0,N] range is incompatible with what the “id” attribute is currently used for (stable randomness after the point distribute node).
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Index sounds good to me, thanks for the reply!
I see, some magic is happening there. I thought the Point distribute node just converts mesh into points wich lays randomly on its surface but it actually does something more. In the future it will become more clear I hope.
@dfelinto By the way looks like the link to the documentation should be update in the first post. It leads to 404 page now.
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sounds more like a big than a feature doesn’t it? Maybe this can directly reported so the developers can tackle it.
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This has been reported before but stashed as “feature request” if I remember correctly. I second the motion !
As a feedback:
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I think we need an “attribute input” node. Where one can type an attribute and link it to several other nodes instead of typing the attribute’s name each time without exposing on the modifiers list (which requires more clicking for renaming the inputs and stuff). This node can have an input slot as well, for exposing on the modifier.
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Also, what about a dropdown menu with built-in attributes?
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Just for not editing the previous post:
I think that the most useful/used attributes should be already “pre-made” (in lack of better words) within the nodes, like a drop drodown (or another solution). Position, scale, rotation, normal,etc, surely will be used a lot, I don’t see the need for typing each word each time they will be used.
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Sorry for spamming, I’m afraid of using the editing function after some people have liked my posts.
JUST TO CLARIFY:
A few days ago, I asked Simon Tommes about an attribute on his shared save file. I didn’t know if the attribute was created by him or if it was a built-in attribute, and we are talking about a simple naming like angle. And this can create a lot of confusion for users, specially when the tutorials around the web start to explode, because each people will have their own naming convention and a user will not know if in fact that naming is something created or something already built in. Worse: they will have to memorize a lot of naming in order to use the attributes.
My suggestion:
A list of the most common used attributes to be used by default for all users. This way, everyone will know what is a user created attribute or a built in attribute. For reference: math nodes have a list of several names, I don’t see a problem for using the same approach for attributes.
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There’s already a socket for attribute names, in the future with a string input node we should be able to specify it only once. At least that’s what I figured.
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I want to propose a change to the Attribute Nodes.
I propose that Attribute Nodes output the (blue) Attribute value instead of the (green) Geometry value and adding an “Attribute to Geometry Node”. They already take as input Attribute…
The reason is because there is no way to multiple or add two Attribute Nodes. For example two Attribute Sample Texture Nodes, or Attribute Sample Texture and Attribute Randomize, etc… If I have Attribute Randomize in line with the Attribute Sample Texture then I lose the values from the texture.
Also, I think this will just make the whole flow of responsibilities more clear.
Hopefully I am not missing something…
You’re in luck, I just added such a page to the manual earlier today. Until we have a drop-down, it should be nice to have a list of all the attributes used and generated by the built in nodes. I can’t link to it yet since the manual isn’t updated.
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The blue “Attribute” socket is just a string string socket. The value is used to look up the data in the geometry. If you passed that on you would just be passing on a string, not any meaningful data.