Geometry Nodes

While doing the above test, I made this simple case:


Is it possible to vary the radius of the sweep based on a point attribute (Y Position in this case)?

I’m not using fields because the point instance isn’t there yet, would they help to achieve it?

Edit:
Aha, I forgot the lines have an embedded radius attribute, so this is solvable:

Still, it would be interesting to be able to vary the parameters of primitives when instancing them. In this case, I’m not sure if I could do the same with the Resolution instead of the Radius.

In this case I’d just wait for the point instance to be re-added to fields version of GN. I mean once that’s in, it should be as trivial as getting X of the point position vector, remapping it to your taste and feeding the remap output to the Radius input :slight_smile:

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I wonder, if anyone else also needed the EXACT number of points generated on a surface by “Point Distribute” node in addition to “density” mode?

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Could be done easily if we could get the square meter information

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This has been brought up a couple times by people, so yes. I’m sure eventually something will be worked out.

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I assume we are talking of accessing the number of generated points, It would be nice.

Iadd to the wishlist, that It would be great to be able to do the opposite: specify the number and access the density, and also, specify the density like the current implementation but clamping the max number to a desired value.

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I continued experimenting with the Geometry nodes on animated characters:

Something I noticed is the “Mesh to Curve” seems suspiciously slow. On a mesh with 30k points, it runs at about 0.57 fps. I had to replace the character to share an example file, hopefully it helps out:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yrhqqdl1wzogb9h/mesh2wire_slow.zip?dl=0

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I hope that we’ll somehow be able to set the twist method to Z-Up for curve primitives such as spirals.

I have a few doubts about nodes marked as legacy and it’s status of update or equivalents (and if possible ETA):

  • Point Instance - No solution found yet
  • Align Rotation to Vector - Vector Rotate should do it?
  • Attribute Randomize - Random Value should do it?
  • Attribute Fill - Not needed anymore or I’m wrong?
  • Vector Math (add) - Current Vector Math without Attribute inputs?
  • Raycast - No solution found

Instance to points was committed today

https://developer.blender.org/rB617954c1438096810ce8e47f09c25c8311baac4d

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There are solutions. They are just being developed.
For example, Instance on Points just got committed today:

https://developer.blender.org/rB617954c1438096810ce8e47f09c25c8311baac4d

There was a proposal to remove all hardcoded named atttributes, but it was not taken. If I understand it correctly the current plan is to have a Store Named Attribute node.

Yeah that node is supposed to be a replacement for Attribute Randomize.

Not sure what you mean. In Field workflow we just connect fields, attributes are also referenced by a field. Like the Position node can just connect to the Vector Math node and it just works. Recent master added a new socket shape so it’s pretty easy to visualize it now. The diamond shape without hole is a field that can be a reference to an atribute; diamond shape with a hole is currently a constant but it can become a field if a field is plugged in.

it’s being worked on, there is a patch so it should be here soon
https://developer.blender.org/D12638

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Thank to you both for the clarifications :slight_smile:

All is more or less what I was expecting :slight_smile:

What are those diamond-shaped sockets ? and the diamonds with holes in them ? this is going too fast for me heehee

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Here is the description:
https://developer.blender.org/D12584

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Is it right that the points of a uniform radius spiral are misaligned on each rotation?

One thing that’s lovely with the Fields is how they are independent of object-specific inputs, which makes it very easy to create presets.

So this camera culling setup:

Can rather easily and elegantly become this:

One thing I couldn’t find, is how to make the Node Group an Asset, in the new Asset Browser.
It would be nice to store useful node groups and easily reusing them in the future, unless this feature is already there and I’m not aware of it.

P.S. I’m using the Set Position as placeholder there, since the Delete Geometry isn’t in yet.

Edit:

So we can make nodegroup assets by rightclicking on the input field of the node group. They end up in the Shading group which is a little weird, perhaps a separate category would fit the geometry nodes better.
image

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I downloaded the daily build and loaded up a scene I made yesterday, only to be greeted with dashed noodles everywhere. At first I thought that this was indicating some errors in the graph, but upon finding the commit for this, realised that all fields connections are now dashed…yikes…

I am finding this very visually jarring, so am hoping that there will be some kind of theme option to turn this off. To me, the dashed lines really look to indicate some kind of mis-connection or error. The other noodles are now looking thicker and more blurry, which also doesn’t look too good imo. The standard blender theme for nodes has always looked so nice, so I hope I am not the only one that finds this disagreeable. However, I do really like the diamond sockets for fields.

Other than that, the devs are doing an incredible job! It is amazing to see how quickly the new system is coming together. I am loving the new mesh to points node, which is so useful :slight_smile:

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Yes,

the author of this was very well aware people dislike it, but he went with it anyway:
https://developer.blender.org/D12602
https://developer.blender.org/T91563
(check the comment history)

Not only that, but he also uses weak mental gymnastics to justify it:
https://developer.blender.org/rBff7e67afd5de2d0ce6614ecfda9a70735a2479ba

Full disclaimer:

Changes with that much of a visual impact tend to be controversial. So
far the main feedback is that dashed lines can be associated to broken
link, and that there are better ways to represent the flows (or
different information that should be visually represented).

I'm fully aware of that. However dashed lines are already used in the
viewport and outliner to indicate (hierarchical) relation. Besides,
other approaches (double-lines, having the data flow to be more
distinct, ...) didn't pan out in the end (or didn't look as good as
this).
  1. The reason Blender uses dashed lines to draw relationships between objects in viewport are more than likely a consequence of ancient hardware rendering limitations, where drawing semi transparent lines with alpha was more difficult/performance heavy.

  2. For quite a while already, the viewport relationship lines are disabled by default. They are disabled by default exactly because of the issue they’ve now introduced into the node editor - that they look ugly and cause extreme visual noise.

  3. Almost no one works with relationship lines enabled in Blender, mostly for the reason #2. This means that most of the users aren’t aware of this very subjective, Blender-specific interpretation of the dashed line meaning.

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Amazing.

Big UI topics like the visualization of fields in the node editor get procrastinated until a few weeks before a release and then a rushed job like this gets pushed into an important release like Blender 3.0.
Blender relies on nodes more and more so this is important to get it right, not so easy to change anymore after the release already happened.
And the dashed lines are awful.

Judging from ⚓ T91537 Basic File Browser UI/UX reiteration it seems a lot of what was done to the file browser for 2.8 to make it less alien (through countless discussions and going through a long design process) now gets reverted without any discussion a few weeks before release.

All while the spreadsheet editor still has placeholder icons (especially looking at you, face corners) and no one seems to care.

I don’t know, just seems very strange what’s happening.

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Aha, I just looked at those links and read the comments. I am glad to hear that I am not alone on this view. I actually quite like the double line vs singe line idea from lone_noel.

Most of these graph connections are going to end up being fields related, which means that on a large network, you will end up with mostly dashed lines…which will result in a hard to read graph. The only place I have seen something like this work is in UE4 blueprints, but these have a purpose, as you can actually see the animated flow.

1 Like