The thing that always makes me sad when I make things like this is that you have to expose so many parameters that your tool ends up becoming overwhelming. I've not fiddled with geometry nodes yet - is there any scope for messing with the UI eg. implementing gizmos in viewport rather than sliders in the properties panels ?
Well you could set up some kind of a rig using geonodes, however strictly UI in the viewport is not supported. Yeah that's true, at least some collapsable menus would be helpful. Maybe they'll make it down the road some day.
Tools to manipulate Geometry Nodes are definitely coming, but it'll probably be a while, still. What is coming sooner is the ability to set GN attributes in the viewport. Think of how you currently set hard edges or Bevel Weights, but for any general attribute.
Even being able to use checkboxes, dropdowns, toggleable sections etc in the GN modifier would make them more manageable, but until that happens it's best to split it up in a few different modifiers (if feasible)
Space colonization? :D I recently ran into L-system for branches e.g. and been obsessed lately. My TA skills are still very low end but I hope to achieve something similar in Godot. Any tips tricks bottlenecs?
Btw love your stuff here :'D silent observer since forever
yeah it's space colonization, seems to give a more "natural" looking tree. the biggest change I made to the algorithm I used was to add a normal to the points so you can add a growth direction bias (it's also very useful in other main application for emitters as scattering tools). Also a good decreasing sides cylinder routine is a must for branches. I split the geometry virtually into trunk (branch 0) and branches the other neat trick is you make the resultant tree a point emitter in it's own right... so it can throw out leaves, fronds or act as the basis for another tree (though it's quite easy to run into the millions of faces very quickly cause things to get very sluggish. I've looked into stitched geometry and not really found anything that works well in all situations so may look at some kind localised modifier solution. It's quite an "in depth" subject probably deserving a thread in it's own right :)
I totally forgot to post it here, but here it is! I have worked on this one for years and now I have reached a relatively ok level. Fast and it's getting more and more reliable. It's now in beta phase, so you can even try it out. :)
The pack UVs around selection is really neat, I couldn't figure out how to do it in Maya with Mel script. Does the straighten UVs work on U-shaped shells or is it tolerance based and would collapse onto itself if the angle of the UVs was too great to start?
It works on any uv shell as long as they are fully quad, with uniform topology, which means the interior vertices have 4 adjacent edges, the outer 3 and corner verts have 2.
In certain cases it's much faster than any other solutions especially on modern machines. A lot of parts are computed in parallel, like creating the data structure, or the UV Packer. There are a lot of pre-cached data as well, making it much faster than the native solutions. The viewport is OpenGL based and it's fairly minimal. (millions of polygons, doesn't matter, not even for the packer)
Yes I saw that in the guy's demo he did, he was selecting a 1mil mesh in the UV editor in real time, very impressive. Autodesk should hire you to increase performance of their native UV editors in both Maya and Max.
a little arcane (and a right pain to workout/code) perhaps but I've managed to get my point emitter to be a "proper" max pipeline object like editable mesh, splines and poly. Doesn't sound much but it saves a lot of faff with each emitter having to handle everything individually can now be moved to a single mod that works on all emitters (as well as all deformer mods working too :D )
a base emitter object with taper mod and a stretch mod added then collapsed back to base emitter object.
Replies
is this one available ?? awesomeee
thanks, yeah no probs
you need to add a mesh smooth modifier to get the smoothing
been working on some improvements to BQT. making it more stable and easier to work with. https://github.com/techartorg/bqt
BQT makes custom UI in Blender possible. (with Python), by allowing devs to use QT in Blender (which by default isn't supported )
Neat, Blender's UI leaves a lot to be desired. That right click context menu has nothing you'd want in it.
drop and drag normal map merger which uses the "correct" maths
not full tested yet but I sure someone will break it 😉
and the ability for my capsule emitter to be an "icecream cone" emitter that a top and bottom radii
useful for creating frond/branch meshes
@Klunk is that a space filling thing that starts from the particles?
kind of yes, though It uses point "emitting" helpers (no motion involved)
So here's a belt making setup I made with geonodes. >>>https://blendermarket.com/products/beltmaker
Wow, that is really amazing. I'm not a Blender user, but it would be really impressive if it did roads.
Thanks! Well there's a setup for roads actually;) You can look it up at blendermarket;) Here's another shot of my belt setup:
very impressive 😀
it is very cool indeed
The thing that always makes me sad when I make things like this is that you have to expose so many parameters that your tool ends up becoming overwhelming. I've not fiddled with geometry nodes yet - is there any scope for messing with the UI eg. implementing gizmos in viewport rather than sliders in the properties panels ?
Well you could set up some kind of a rig using geonodes, however strictly UI in the viewport is not supported. Yeah that's true, at least some collapsable menus would be helpful. Maybe they'll make it down the road some day.
Tools to manipulate Geometry Nodes are definitely coming, but it'll probably be a while, still. What is coming sooner is the ability to set GN attributes in the viewport. Think of how you currently set hard edges or Bevel Weights, but for any general attribute.
Even being able to use checkboxes, dropdowns, toggleable sections etc in the GN modifier would make them more manageable, but until that happens it's best to split it up in a few different modifiers (if feasible)
Space colonization? :D I recently ran into L-system for branches e.g. and been obsessed lately. My TA skills are still very low end but I hope to achieve something similar in Godot. Any tips tricks bottlenecs?
Btw love your stuff here :'D silent observer since forever
yeah it's space colonization, seems to give a more "natural" looking tree. the biggest change I made to the algorithm I used was to add a normal to the points so you can add a growth direction bias (it's also very useful in other main application for emitters as scattering tools). Also a good decreasing sides cylinder routine is a must for branches. I split the geometry virtually into trunk (branch 0) and branches the other neat trick is you make the resultant tree a point emitter in it's own right... so it can throw out leaves, fronds or act as the basis for another tree (though it's quite easy to run into the millions of faces very quickly cause things to get very sluggish. I've looked into stitched geometry and not really found anything that works well in all situations so may look at some kind localised modifier solution. It's quite an "in depth" subject probably deserving a thread in it's own right :)
Well!
I totally forgot to post it here, but here it is! I have worked on this one for years and now I have reached a relatively ok level. Fast and it's getting more and more reliable. It's now in beta phase, so you can even try it out. :)
Here you can read a bit more about it 👉️ https://rapidmxs.com/store/uvreactor/
The pack UVs around selection is really neat, I couldn't figure out how to do it in Maya with Mel script. Does the straighten UVs work on U-shaped shells or is it tolerance based and would collapse onto itself if the angle of the UVs was too great to start?
It works on any uv shell as long as they are fully quad, with uniform topology, which means the interior vertices have 4 adjacent edges, the outer 3 and corner verts have 2.
:)
Nice, I've written a similar straightening tool for Maya. Looks like a great plugin for Max.
Thank You! :)
In certain cases it's much faster than any other solutions especially on modern machines. A lot of parts are computed in parallel, like creating the data structure, or the UV Packer. There are a lot of pre-cached data as well, making it much faster than the native solutions. The viewport is OpenGL based and it's fairly minimal. (millions of polygons, doesn't matter, not even for the packer)
Yes I saw that in the guy's demo he did, he was selecting a 1mil mesh in the UV editor in real time, very impressive. Autodesk should hire you to increase performance of their native UV editors in both Maya and Max.
grabbing this now
Very Impressive stuff ! pi3c3
Heres a attempt at blenders vertex extrude inside maya
shape emitter modifier
with min spacing and texture map density (gradient ramp in this case)
a little arcane (and a right pain to workout/code) perhaps but I've managed to get my point emitter to be a "proper" max pipeline object like editable mesh, splines and poly. Doesn't sound much but it saves a lot of faff with each emitter having to handle everything individually can now be moved to a single mod that works on all emitters (as well as all deformer mods working too :D )
a base emitter object with taper mod and a stretch mod added then collapsed back to base emitter object.
how it works for my tree creator
procedural sphere emitter with a taper mod