If they added it, then it must be very recent and I missed it. The build you have was branched from master 6 days ago and I haven’t seen a commit for mesh to volume in the diffusion yet (maybe I missed it).
Yes, that is the expected result, currently you can only create spheres of volumes around points in geo nodes. The “Point Distribute Volume” node works on volumes as inputs and isn’t responsible for how the volume is generated.
Oops sorry, my confusion I was conflating Points to Volume and Volume to Mesh
I searched methods for making arrays of instances and thought what can help to make em just inside GN.
And here the shortest way I can see:
- Point generator. Just generates N points on origin.
- Allow us to read point`s indices. And it would be possible to make insane shapes with position/rotation as functuion from index.
I saw, @Erindale already made arrays, but he use Array modifier + drivers for feedback. AFAIK, drivers and scripts aren`t fast
Of course, point generator may be more complex and include quantity and rules for position and rotation, depending on index/quantity proportion.
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Also. There is still no ability to add group input and output. So if I want to add second, I need to duplicate first. If I suddenly deleted output, and then made a lot of work with nodes, I forced to create empty tree, copy output there, switch back, paste output node.
So why can`t I just add group input/output?
Just case, when you need more than one input:
Have you seen this? It’s what all my groups are designed around adopting
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Thanks for link. Haven`t seen it before, subscribed.
I am glad, it is already started and hope it will be released.
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.
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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.
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I think you’re missing these two nodes build specifically for these use cases:
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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.
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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!!