Just chiming in to say I completed this example! Blender noob here so even the materials section at the very end was new stuff to me.
Benjamin Bass
12th June 2022 - 11:16
Thank you! This is very clear. It's great to see a full use case. Question: How can I make the various inputs be automatically randomly generated with each instance of my object?
Simon Thommes
21st June 2022 - 00:58
@Benjamin Bass Currently it's not possible to set this up automatically unfortunately. This is a known issue and the solution needs to be properly designed still, as we want to have a better solution than how it is solved with shader nodes currently.
Tyler Bjarke
27th September 2022 - 05:52
@Simon Thommes I was wondering about this too. As a workaround, could you do something like plug Object Info -> Location into your 'seed' of the random value node? Then if you were to duplicate the objects in various locations, they'd sort of have random starting values? I played with it a bit, and for a second I thought it worked, but my results were inconsistent.
Simon Thommes
27th September 2022 - 17:51
@Tyler Bjarke The object info node still needs an object to explicitly be passed into it, so that would need to be set each time the node is used, which defeats the purpose. In Blender 3.4 (allpha) there is a Self Object node, which solves that issue. However proper randomization still needs to be done. The same approach that is used in shader nodes is purposefully not added to geometry nodes as it is quite flawed. The current plan is to enable reading out custom object properties in geometry nodes an then adding a feature that randomizes a property when duplicating the object. That would allow controlling that seed value explicitly and is more stable.
Stephen Mackenzie
13th June 2022 - 02:09
Excellent….thanks
Fatih Pehlevan
21st May 2022 - 23:14
Excellent!
陈雨冬
23rd May 2022 - 06:44
thx very much
Humberto Rapelli
26th May 2022 - 17:27
Super helpful, thanks!
Jouko Hahkio
3rd June 2022 - 19:32
Clear and informative.
Paulo Barrelas
13th June 2022 - 11:50
Thanks for this detailed explanation and for also showing how to organise the graph.
Mahesh Deshpande
5th August 2022 - 08:55
Helpful tutorial! Is it possible to add Collections as Instances in 'Instance to Points' node?
Simon Thommes
15th August 2022 - 10:47
@Mahesh Deshpande Yes, totally. You can use the Collection Info node to receive a collection as a geometry instance.
Yorsh Panda
28th August 2022 - 16:32
Interesting
Yovany Alvarez
7th September 2022 - 18:35
Nice job!
Judah Lynn
24th September 2022 - 14:38
Outstanding! Such a clear tutorial. Thanks!
Cap Amr Karam
18th October 2022 - 20:04
Excellent….thanks
Neeraj Bharati
18th November 2022 - 11:25
This is super awesome ! Simple and to the point explanation. Great course !!
Jesus Gonzalez Ruiz de Almiron
14th January 2023 - 21:33
Great tutorial! Thanks a lot!
Alexandros Hadjilaou
24th May 2022 - 13:30
Is it possible to instance points in volume instrad of Face/Edge/Vertex?
Simon Thommes
24th May 2022 - 14:19
@Alexandros Hadjilaou Currently that is not possible natively. In the future there will be a node for that. But right now you can make a nodegroup that scatters points on a surface the scale of the bounding box. Move the points around so that they cover the volume of the bounding box and then delete all points outside of the mesh.
Hello ! First thanks a lot for all the great work done here ! Also, Do you plan to add the "modifiers" as geonode > bevel or mirror node for exemple ? It would be awesome to have it all in geonodes, no ?
@Sorcière the plan of the core blender development team is to port the majority of modifiers to geometry nodes. That will happen over time, it's not the number 1 priority at the moment.
Sorcière
27th May 2022 - 23:17
@Simon Thommes Thanks for your quick and complete answer. I look forward to discovering the next versions. As usual it will be amazing :D
Sergio
21st July 2022 - 10:43
Nice example, with the random, points and all the basics for nodes.
schmutzer1
23rd July 2022 - 20:30
First of all, thank you for this marvelous course. It's a long time wish made real
schmutzer1
23rd July 2022 - 20:33
Unfortunately every blend file I try to download is tagged as moved or disappeared immediately after download. Is there analternative place or way to access these files? Thank you very much and congratulations!
Simon Thommes
24th July 2022 - 14:59
@schmutzer1 I'm not exactly sure what that means. For me the downloads seem to be working perfectly fine. The direct links work fine even without being logged in.
You're saying ' tagged as moved or disappeared immediately after download', if it is after the download, that sounds to me like it would be something on your end.
schmutzer1
24th July 2022 - 16:54
@Simon Thommes Hello Simon, thank you for your support. You're completely right. It was a browser specific issue with Firefox. Fortunately it worked fine with Microsoft Edge. Congratulations again for your this great course and I wish you all a nice summer at Blender Studio.
Katie Korwal
26th August 2022 - 19:23
16:49 Could you elaborate a bit more on why you changed the input type from Vector to Float? This is the first time I've come across "float" and looking it up in the Blender Manual was clear as mud. :(
Katie Korwal
26th August 2022 - 19:24
@Katie Korwal correction 16:42
Simon Thommes
29th August 2022 - 10:34
@Katie Korwal Float is a technical term for a number with a floating point. It's the same as what is just called Value in shader nodes.
The reason I'm changing this here is that by default the input was a vector, but I only want to control it with a single value. Blender always implicitly converts between different input types when possible. So the float input that I give in is then converted to a vector by using it for every component of the vector.
Michael Gembicki
8th September 2022 - 17:51
When I change the roundness factor in both the one I made from scratch in 3.3 and the example file opened in 3.1.2 the scale just changes no change in shape. Also in both the example file and my own the seed value is not a slider but a blank number field that when a number is entered nothing changes.
Simon Thommes
9th September 2022 - 13:47
@Michael Gembicki For me, opening the file with Blender 3.3 everything is working just fine. The seed being an input field sounds like the input was toggled to an attribute with the button next to the field. But I just downloaded the exact file in the description and opened it with Blender 3.3 and it's all fine. Can you check that again to make sure?
@Simon Thommes I tried it on a vanilla version of 3.3 and it worked just fine. It must be one of my, way too many, addons causing it. Thanks for the response. I'm enjoying the course.
Simon Thommes
12th September 2022 - 10:31
@Michael Gembicki Ah okay, yes that makes sense then. It seems strange to me how an addon would mess with this file so specifically, but that can happen.
At least it doesn't seem to mess with the file itself. The one you shared also works just fine for me on vanilla Blender
Huiquan Lu
1st October 2022 - 01:49
I wonder what is difference between connecting all parameters to on group output panel instead of connecting each to a group input panel?
Simon Thommes
1st October 2022 - 12:16
@Huiquan Lu I'm not sure if I understand correctly. If you are referring to the group input nodes: There can be however many group input nodes you want and there is no difference between using a single one or multiple. I like to split it up into multiple nodes to organize the nodetree in a more readable way. The group output can only be a single node, as otherwise that can lead to ambiguity.
Huiquan Lu
2nd October 2022 - 06:33
@Simon Thommes Thanks Simon! Yes, that was what I wanted to know. as I watched to the end of the video, I started to figure out why you did those separated input nodes.
Mark Hannen
10th December 2022 - 20:24
This is so amazing.. I am trying to figure out some of the short cuts that you are doing.. one that is confusing me isthe "Z" short cut to toggle the shading... I don't see the Overlay mode as an option... anyone know how to fix that? thanks
Simon Thommes
11th December 2022 - 11:24
@Mark Hannen This is a setting that can be enabled in the preferences. Extra Shading Pie Menu Items under Keymap.
Dan Caldwell
12th December 2022 - 05:11
Thanks Simon! I ran into problems assigning materials to the object. I created a material, assigned it to the object via the link drop down menu and.. nothing happened. I then assigned a material within Geometry Nodes via the Set Material node and it worked fine, but I'm not sure how to edit the material from there.
Dan Caldwell
12th December 2022 - 05:12
@Dan Caldwell I am using Blender 3.4.0 by the way, has something changed between versions maybe?
Simon Thommes
12th December 2022 - 10:53
@Dan Caldwell That is unfortunately just how it works. The issue is that in the material dropdown you edit the material slots of the original data. But while evaluating the geometry nodes there are additional material slots added for new geometry. Those can only be assigned with geometry nodes in turn. What I usually do is assign it both with geometry nodes and to the material slots so I have a context to select and edit the material.
I agree that this is not ideal. But the behaviour is at least consistent and the usability will get better hopefully.
Joshua Houston
23rd December 2022 - 21:53
This crashes on Apple Silicon every time :(
Simon Thommes
2nd January 2023 - 10:37
@Joshua Houston Is this with the latest Blender release? If so it would be useful if you could identify at what step the crash happens and report it as a bug, so the developers can take a look at it.
In Blender under Help - Report a Bug
50 Comments
Join to comment publicly.
Nicholas Cliffe
26th May 2022 - 01:35
Just chiming in to say I completed this example! Blender noob here so even the materials section at the very end was new stuff to me.
Benjamin Bass
12th June 2022 - 11:16
Thank you! This is very clear. It's great to see a full use case. Question: How can I make the various inputs be automatically randomly generated with each instance of my object?
Simon Thommes
21st June 2022 - 00:58
@Benjamin Bass Currently it's not possible to set this up automatically unfortunately. This is a known issue and the solution needs to be properly designed still, as we want to have a better solution than how it is solved with shader nodes currently.
Tyler Bjarke
27th September 2022 - 05:52
@Simon Thommes I was wondering about this too. As a workaround, could you do something like plug Object Info -> Location into your 'seed' of the random value node? Then if you were to duplicate the objects in various locations, they'd sort of have random starting values? I played with it a bit, and for a second I thought it worked, but my results were inconsistent.
Simon Thommes
27th September 2022 - 17:51
@Tyler Bjarke The object info node still needs an object to explicitly be passed into it, so that would need to be set each time the node is used, which defeats the purpose. In Blender 3.4 (allpha) there is a
Self Object
node, which solves that issue. However proper randomization still needs to be done. The same approach that is used in shader nodes is purposefully not added to geometry nodes as it is quite flawed. The current plan is to enable reading out custom object properties in geometry nodes an then adding a feature that randomizes a property when duplicating the object. That would allow controlling that seed value explicitly and is more stable.Stephen Mackenzie
13th June 2022 - 02:09
Excellent….thanks
Fatih Pehlevan
21st May 2022 - 23:14
Excellent!
陈雨冬
23rd May 2022 - 06:44
thx very much
Humberto Rapelli
26th May 2022 - 17:27
Super helpful, thanks!
Jouko Hahkio
3rd June 2022 - 19:32
Clear and informative.
Paulo Barrelas
13th June 2022 - 11:50
Thanks for this detailed explanation and for also showing how to organise the graph.
Mahesh Deshpande
5th August 2022 - 08:55
Helpful tutorial! Is it possible to add Collections as Instances in 'Instance to Points' node?
Simon Thommes
15th August 2022 - 10:47
@Mahesh Deshpande Yes, totally. You can use the
Collection Info
node to receive a collection as a geometry instance.Yorsh Panda
28th August 2022 - 16:32
Interesting
Yovany Alvarez
7th September 2022 - 18:35
Nice job!
Judah Lynn
24th September 2022 - 14:38
Outstanding! Such a clear tutorial. Thanks!
Cap Amr Karam
18th October 2022 - 20:04
Excellent….thanks
Neeraj Bharati
18th November 2022 - 11:25
This is super awesome ! Simple and to the point explanation. Great course !!
Jesus Gonzalez Ruiz de Almiron
14th January 2023 - 21:33
Great tutorial! Thanks a lot!
Alexandros Hadjilaou
24th May 2022 - 13:30
Is it possible to instance points in volume instrad of Face/Edge/Vertex?
Simon Thommes
24th May 2022 - 14:19
@Alexandros Hadjilaou Currently that is not possible natively. In the future there will be a node for that. But right now you can make a nodegroup that scatters points on a surface the scale of the bounding box. Move the points around so that they cover the volume of the bounding box and then delete all points outside of the mesh.
Simon Thommes
24th May 2022 - 14:24
@Alexandros Hadjilaou I did that in the
Points in Volume
nodegroup of this demo file: https://studio.blender.org/training/geometry-nodes-from-scratch/ceometry-components-demo/Sorcière
26th May 2022 - 00:33
Hello ! First thanks a lot for all the great work done here ! Also, Do you plan to add the "modifiers" as geonode > bevel or mirror node for exemple ? It would be awesome to have it all in geonodes, no ?
Sorcière
26th May 2022 - 00:35
@Sorcière and grease pencil !!!
Simon Thommes
26th May 2022 - 15:15
@Sorcière the plan of the core blender development team is to port the majority of modifiers to geometry nodes. That will happen over time, it's not the number 1 priority at the moment.
Sorcière
27th May 2022 - 23:17
@Simon Thommes Thanks for your quick and complete answer. I look forward to discovering the next versions. As usual it will be amazing :D
Sergio
21st July 2022 - 10:43
Nice example, with the random, points and all the basics for nodes.
schmutzer1
23rd July 2022 - 20:30
First of all, thank you for this marvelous course. It's a long time wish made real
schmutzer1
23rd July 2022 - 20:33
Unfortunately every blend file I try to download is tagged as moved or disappeared immediately after download. Is there analternative place or way to access these files? Thank you very much and congratulations!
Simon Thommes
24th July 2022 - 14:59
@schmutzer1 I'm not exactly sure what that means. For me the downloads seem to be working perfectly fine. The direct links work fine even without being logged in. You're saying ' tagged as moved or disappeared immediately after download', if it is after the download, that sounds to me like it would be something on your end.
schmutzer1
24th July 2022 - 16:54
@Simon Thommes Hello Simon, thank you for your support. You're completely right. It was a browser specific issue with Firefox. Fortunately it worked fine with Microsoft Edge. Congratulations again for your this great course and I wish you all a nice summer at Blender Studio.
Katie Korwal
26th August 2022 - 19:23
16:49 Could you elaborate a bit more on why you changed the input type from Vector to Float? This is the first time I've come across "float" and looking it up in the Blender Manual was clear as mud. :(
Katie Korwal
26th August 2022 - 19:24
@Katie Korwal correction 16:42
Simon Thommes
29th August 2022 - 10:34
@Katie Korwal
Float
is a technical term for a number with a floating point. It's the same as what is just calledValue
in shader nodes. The reason I'm changing this here is that by default the input was a vector, but I only want to control it with a single value. Blender always implicitly converts between different input types when possible. So the float input that I give in is then converted to a vector by using it for every component of the vector.Michael Gembicki
8th September 2022 - 17:51
When I change the roundness factor in both the one I made from scratch in 3.3 and the example file opened in 3.1.2 the scale just changes no change in shape. Also in both the example file and my own the seed value is not a slider but a blank number field that when a number is entered nothing changes.
Simon Thommes
9th September 2022 - 13:47
@Michael Gembicki For me, opening the file with Blender 3.3 everything is working just fine. The seed being an input field sounds like the input was toggled to an attribute with the button next to the field. But I just downloaded the exact file in the description and opened it with Blender 3.3 and it's all fine. Can you check that again to make sure?
Michael Gembicki
10th September 2022 - 21:13
@Simon Thommes Yeah, redownloaded example and same issues. This is my blend file saved from 3.3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/158sFbzycay3jrPzwDRaUAYPYIJ8MOP0T/view?usp=sharing
Michael Gembicki
10th September 2022 - 21:20
@Simon Thommes I tried it on a vanilla version of 3.3 and it worked just fine. It must be one of my, way too many, addons causing it. Thanks for the response. I'm enjoying the course.
Simon Thommes
12th September 2022 - 10:31
@Michael Gembicki Ah okay, yes that makes sense then. It seems strange to me how an addon would mess with this file so specifically, but that can happen. At least it doesn't seem to mess with the file itself. The one you shared also works just fine for me on vanilla Blender
Huiquan Lu
1st October 2022 - 01:49
I wonder what is difference between connecting all parameters to on group output panel instead of connecting each to a group input panel?
Simon Thommes
1st October 2022 - 12:16
@Huiquan Lu I'm not sure if I understand correctly. If you are referring to the group input nodes: There can be however many group input nodes you want and there is no difference between using a single one or multiple. I like to split it up into multiple nodes to organize the nodetree in a more readable way. The group output can only be a single node, as otherwise that can lead to ambiguity.
Huiquan Lu
2nd October 2022 - 06:33
@Simon Thommes Thanks Simon! Yes, that was what I wanted to know. as I watched to the end of the video, I started to figure out why you did those separated input nodes.
Mark Hannen
10th December 2022 - 20:24
This is so amazing.. I am trying to figure out some of the short cuts that you are doing.. one that is confusing me isthe "Z" short cut to toggle the shading... I don't see the Overlay mode as an option... anyone know how to fix that? thanks
Simon Thommes
11th December 2022 - 11:24
@Mark Hannen This is a setting that can be enabled in the preferences.
Extra Shading Pie Menu Items
under Keymap.Dan Caldwell
12th December 2022 - 05:11
Thanks Simon! I ran into problems assigning materials to the object. I created a material, assigned it to the object via the link drop down menu and.. nothing happened. I then assigned a material within Geometry Nodes via the Set Material node and it worked fine, but I'm not sure how to edit the material from there.
Dan Caldwell
12th December 2022 - 05:12
@Dan Caldwell I am using Blender 3.4.0 by the way, has something changed between versions maybe?
Simon Thommes
12th December 2022 - 10:53
@Dan Caldwell That is unfortunately just how it works. The issue is that in the material dropdown you edit the material slots of the original data. But while evaluating the geometry nodes there are additional material slots added for new geometry. Those can only be assigned with geometry nodes in turn. What I usually do is assign it both with geometry nodes and to the material slots so I have a context to select and edit the material.
I agree that this is not ideal. But the behaviour is at least consistent and the usability will get better hopefully.
Joshua Houston
23rd December 2022 - 21:53
This crashes on Apple Silicon every time :(
Simon Thommes
2nd January 2023 - 10:37
@Joshua Houston Is this with the latest Blender release? If so it would be useful if you could identify at what step the crash happens and report it as a bug, so the developers can take a look at it. In Blender under
Help - Report a Bug
Elliott Stark
29th January 2023 - 01:52
material