The Right End Of The Stick: Leaves & Moss With Geometry Nodes
- Open Movie
- 15 Feb 2021
- 2 min read
- 22 min watch time
Using Geometry Nodes for supersonic vegetation generation, with artist Simon Thommes.
Geometry Nodes are part of Blender’s Everything Nodes initiative, a big project in 2021.
Which is all wonderful and splendid... but why talk about it in a Sprite Fright post?
Well, Geometry Nodes use cases are developed to meet the needs of the Sprite Fright crew. It’s all part of Blender’s overall philosophy -- use Open Movies as a way of pushing Blender’s functionality.
Artist Simon Thommes is slap bang in the centre of this way of working. He’s both Sprite Fright’s shader artist and involved in the development of Geometry Nodes as a whole.
In the videos below, Simon shares the fruits of this process. Or rather, the moss of this process.
Because one practical application for Geometry Nodes is providing glorious plant-life as a backdrop for Sprite Fright’s mayhem. There are a bunch of benefits to this workflow, including the ability to easily apply the moss system modifier to new objects. For more, watch this film.
As well as moss, Simon has used Geometry Nodes to alleviate a tree-related frustration: by making leaf distribution node-based, the crew can now add extra branches without having to reorientate each and every existing leaf. Simply throw on some Geometry Nodes and voilà -- the leaves face the way leaves should.
Speaking of trees, constructing Geometry Nodes trees is currently a tad complex (though it’ll be getting more intuitive very soon indeed). Helpfully, Simon has also provided a file for moss and one for leaves, so you can study them up close and in the wild.
It’s worth a little effort: soon, your own hyper-real forest will be just be a node or three away.
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12 comments
The node setup doesn't work for me in 2.93 Alpha, 2.93 Beta, or 3.0. Any ideas?
Awesome workflow..
Thanks for the great article Chris and thank you Simon for your demos. Geometry Nodes look very promising! I never plug anything into the attribute inputs and I rarely see anyone do so. This kind of confuses me every time I try the new builds. I know this is not the ideal place for such a comment. Is this something that's being discussed on devtalk ore someplace else?
@Aaron Beller Hey, thanks for the note. I'll look into it and get back to you!
@Aaron Beller Hi, the input for the attribute sockets is a string with the attribute name. It will be more useful soon enough once we get the Input > String node.
Nevermind, I didn't see the other replies because they were collapsed
@Dalai Felinto Thanks for the reply anyway! It makes a lot more sense to me now that I know that a string input node is planned.
@Aaron Beller PS. You've probably already seen this, but if not, perhaps it helps: https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/14262/what-can-you-call-from-the-attribute-node/14267#14267
@Christian Bunyan That's a useful reference for sure. Thank you! My problem is not so much that I don't know what to type in there although it could be clearer. My point is that if I'm typing in the attribute anyway than why do I need the input socket of the node? Does it behave differently, how is this intended to be used? I'd love to understand the current design better or participate in the discussion about it. But I'm not entirely sure where to jump in. Have a great day Chris! ;-)
@Aaron Beller The input socket is simply to pass in the string information of the name of the attribute to look up. The reason why there is only the string information is that the attributes are strictly bound to the geometry context and do not exist separately from it.Keep in mind that the whole Geometry Nodes project is still in an early stage so not everything is what we have planned for the final workflow yet. Soon it will be possible to look up the attributes of a geometry in the attribute field with a search functionality
@Simon Thommes Thanks for clarifying Simon! I'll try to be patient. ;-) But it sure is exciting to see such profound new features and changes. I wish you all the best and keep up the great work!
I love geometry nodes, and I'm excited to see how its going to evolve in the future:) NODES WILL TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!.
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