03 Interface and Basics -Geometry Nodes For Beginners / Blender 3.0(Fields)

so to get started with this geometry nodes  tutorial we are going to download blender 3.0   alpha this is the closest version which i would  prefer we should start using and although the   latest changes haven't been implemented yet for  whatever we are going to discuss today the basics   this should be enough so i'll keep the description  updated in case if you guys are struggling   with the version in the future so here we are in  blender 3.0 alpha and let's just split our windows   here in the editor menu you should see  a new editor just like the other editors   we have been dealing with previously the new  geometry node editor lets you work with the   nodes and create procedural geometry with it all  right the one good thing about the new geometry   node editor is that it's quite similar to the old  shader editor so just to give you a better example   if i click on new now this will bring geometry  network and in this one from in on the left we   have geometry input and on the right we have  geometry output so basically what this means   is whatever geometry object we are working  on the input that is being called upon here   and whatever changes we do here here here and  the nodes we add so the effect of everything   will be compiled and will be sent to the geometry  output and will be sent back to the viewport   now to work with the geometry nodes all  the short commands the way you navigate   around the view and everything it works exactly  like how you work with the rest of the editors   and if you want to bring up new any new node  simply press shift a and this will give you the   add menu just like how you get the add menu in the  viewport and i'm using left click selection for   this tutorial purpose just to avoid any confusion  so let's bring up one geometry and transform   so here we have a transform node and this node  what it does is basically if we transform whatever   object we are applying this on so in this case  if i drag this in middle of this network it will   automatically pick up that network and connect the  geometry to geometry and same to the output so far   there haven't been any changes that's because for  that to work we'll have to make some changes here so just like how you tweak properties on  any of the side panels or property panels   similarly you can tweak properties here like  the transform scale rotation and if you'd   like you can also animate for instance  if i press i on the z on the transform   and the rotation that will set a key here for some  reason right now it's not showing the keys here   but if i go to the frame number 90  and move this up and turn this around and 180 now this should animate our object from here just like how you  rename your materials or shaders   you can give any name to your geometry node  network so let's call this one my first jio node   so right now we have a very simple thing going  on it's basically very simple animation going on so now some might would ask why go through all  this trouble when you can simply create one cube   here and rotate this one in the  viewport and make a animation key   now the thing is whatever changes we  do let's say this is a local object on this one i'll make an  animation without geometry nodes not really a perfect anime perfect loop but   anyways so what's the difference in  this animation and this animation   this animation what we have made is basically  only working on this object so whatever work we   have done that has been applied to this object now  if we were to transfer this to any other object   then we have to do some manual work like copy  pasting keys or transferring properties or   something like that but in this case the work  is not happening on that object it's basically   whatever the transformation we have done is is  being uh recorded in this in this node network   let me just delete this so in this case  i'll just bring one susan head here now if i bring the same node network my first geo  node and load it on top of this zan you'll see   the exact same animation is going on without  me having to transfer any of the properties and it's working exactly as it is and  whatever updates i do here that will   update the network everywhere and  the animation will be updated so   this is a very small example so whatever work we  do here it's basically being recorded in the nodes   and you can use that effect animation materials  any of the interactions any of the modifiers   all of that is basically a one node group  and you can use that node group on any other   object and it will give you the same result  same output all right so that's the fun part   about this okay so now for some reason  it's uh showing me the keys for the node   that's good to know so we have a transformation  going on and uh if you want to move this node   out of this network you'll simply have to hold alt  and drag it out and that will disconnect your node just drag it over to connect it and hold alt  and drag it out of it pretty simple so i'll just   delete this network with control x now if i just  delete this with x then it will delete that node   and disconnect everything else we don't want that  if you want to keep the network and just remove   this from in between control x is the key and if  you want to cut a network just simply hold ctrl   and right click and slice your network ctrl  right click and drag to cut the wire between two   networks all right and if you want to connect one  node to the last one the final output any anything   you want to preview the output then the short  command is holding the shift shift alt and click   and that will connect any selected  nodes and connect it to the output   so let me show you a better example for instance  i have a transform node and this goes here now let's make a duplicate of this and now in  this case if i want to preview this it won't   show me a preview because the input geometry is  missing for that i have to connect this one here so this one is on the left and this one is  on the right so in in case if you want to   make a duplicate of a node but still want  to keep the previous networks intact then   ctrl shift d is the key and it will  leave the previous networks connected   and then you can shift alt and click and  that will show you the output the final one now here we have two inputs like this  transform node is giving us the value   of minus 2.5 and this one is basically giving  us the value of 3.6 i mean the position of 3.6   similarly i can make one more maybe and  place it right at the top somewhere over here so we have one cube but three different positions now what if i want to keep all of these three  options and make it into one so in that case   i'll go to the geometry and click on the join  geometry and combine all of these three output   so basically from one cube we made three cubes and  any changes if i if any changes i do in this cube   will be seen sorry on all of these duplicates  all right so let's delete all of this i'll just   bring one suzanne head and let's go to the front  view i'll call this network suzanne let's make   something meaningful out of whatever random  experiments we are doing so click drag and   this will connect your transform node or any other  node so i'll make one simple abstract out of this   just to explain the basic commands so we have one  susan head here now let's make a duplicate of this let's transform this one this way let's  add join geometry so that we can see   both of the suzanne heads all right  similarly i'll bring one more connection here and this could be one more suzanne head stacking up here so basically what i'm trying to do is i'm just  making one a simple pile of susan heads arranged   in a kind of like pile now just for the sake of it  just to explain few things i'll bring a few more   and i'll just fast forward this part so that you  guys don't have to get bored with the repetitive   task which i'm doing right now so here i have five  suzanne heads one two three four five and arranged   i basically manually arranged it in future you  won't have to do this there are better ways to   uh achieve some random results like this like  random rotation random scale but just for this   uh first day i didn't want you to complicate  things so once you have these nodes like   405 stacked over here now this these are taking  too much space so if you want to hide these nodes   you can simply press select  all of these or circle select   and then hit h on the keyboard and then that ways  all the nodes will collapse but still these are   taking quite some space here so what you can do  is you can just scale it down like with the s   just like how you scale objects in the  viewport you can scale these down like this so now we have these five nodes neatly stacked but  even then it's really difficult to identify which   node is doing what work i mean if i were to do  some guesswork uh i'm not quite sure which suzanne   head is located where so there are a few things  you can do to make your node network up visually   more readable so if you press n which gives  you side properties just like any other   editor so what you can do is from here you can  change few things about the nodes for for instance   this node this node is the top left so  we can label this one so then top left   and if you'd like you can also give it some color similarly this one is basically  the main right one top right and then give it some color similarly i can rename these as well so at this moment these nodes are the renaming  and all that we might won't need it but this   is just to give you an example that you can  arrange your nodes and you you can color code it   and also name your nodes and that will  actually help you make it more readable so if you hit h again that will expand your  nodes and then you can scale it up if you'd like you can also arrange your nodes in whatever  way you you prefer so let's say if there is   some special arrangement going on of the objects  you can do that that is totally up to you however   you want to make your notes readable that is  up to you so bottom right bottom middle left   top left top right so now these nodes are arranged  in same way these models are   arranged in so i'm just going to hide  these again and scale it down like this now what i would like to do is apply some  subdivision surface modifier on these nodes   so for that i just hit shift a and bring  mesh subdivision surface and then i'll just   drag this one right after the join geometry and  change the subdivision level to two so now all   the models that are going in this network in the  after the join geometry will be subdivided twice   now try to keep the try to read the order  of this node network so what's happening is first we have the main geometry of the the  susan which is this one so after that we have   five different transformations going on this  this this this and this i'm holding shift alt   and clicking on these nodes to preview these now  then all of these four node five nodes are going   into one joint geometry which is basically make  converting all these five models into one model   and then after that we have this subdivision  surface now instead of this if i drag these here   are here then it will only work on whichever  model this one is the top right one so before   going into the join geometry we are using the  subdivision surface and that will only affect   this model so in this case if we want to we want  all these models to have solution surface then all   all the file networks needs to have subdivision  surface which is really not really an efficient   way of dealing with it so instead of that i'll  just drag it here now let's add some few more   simple things to this network so just for fun what  i'll do is i'll add one simple effect which is   called convex hull so let's go to the geometry  convex hull and what this does is basically whatever mesh you have it creates  a nicely packed mesh around it   so in this case what we need is we need convex  hull to work on all these meshes that we have here   these so in that case what we will have to do  is we'll have to use convex hull after the join   geometry node so instead of taking the original  input which is this one we need this input   so i'll cut this network ctrl and right  click and instead plug this one here   and now if i shift alt and click on this one you  can see the convex hull is basically wrapping all   those five suzanne heads with this tightly packed  mesh now again if we want both of these inputs   both of these results to work  together then we'll have to bring   geometry and join geometry you can also do a  quick search join geometry and plug these here but in this case you won't be able  to see the results that's because   the main mesh is hiding behind this convex hull  so now that we have this convex hull instead of   this being solid what i would like to do is  make a wireframe out of this so to do that   what i would need is i would need  all these edges of this mesh to be   to become curves and then we can later make those  curves into wires so first let's select this one   this node the convex hull because we want  this convex hull to become via mesh not these so after the convex hull i'll bring curve mesh  to curve and plug it over here what this will do   is basically convert that geometry into curves  but by default the curves will not render in   the final render or even in the viewport for  these lines to render you will have to give   some thickness to these lines basically you  will have to give it some geometry so to do that   you will have to convert these into mesh again  so now we'll have to make these curves to mesh   now these curves are mesh technically but even now   it doesn't have any thickness it doesn't  have any profile so this profile is missing so what we will do is we'll go to the curves  curve primitive and add one curved circle   and plug this one over here so basically  all those lines are now a thick cube   and uh we are not able to see because of this huge  radius decrease this to around 0.02 or something   and now this should give you a nice wire so now  slowly however simple this art network is it's   slowly stacking up now i like this effect it's  working fine and all that but instead of this   let me just uh decrease the thickness and you  can also decrease the resolution of these wires   so right now these are these wires  have quite a lot of resolution   so you can decrease that from here or you can  just type out 8 or something i'll keep it 16   since we are dealing with such a simple scene so  shift alt click on this one what i would like is   there to be plenty of wires so instead of such a  relaxed uh so much of gap between wires i would   like dense uh wireframe going on so to do that  what i would need to do is take this convex hull   and subdivide this so in that case i'll have to  add one more subdivision surface so you can simply   duplicate this one and keep in mind where we plug  this so since we want this subdivision surface to   subdivide this convex hull which later converts  into wire so we'll have to plug this over here   not here because if i plug this one after   if i plug this one here then what it does  is basically subdivides the entire wireframe like this and we don't want that we just  want this subdivision surface to work on this convex hull and  that will make this nice dense   mesh out of it so just a hint you guys can make  rocks out of it if you want so for instance   you have this one rock you can make one more  rock this way this way just saying there are so   many possibilities so now we have this nicely  dense packed mesh but right now it's covering   all the five heads and i don't want that what i  would like to do is transform this convex hull to   0.84 or something maybe 0.87 yeah this is fine  so now we have some make some nice render out of   so we have quite decent network going on  and uh just to add one more layer of detail   on top of this so that we can discuss a  few more things about organizing nodes   so we have basically the main susan head  geometry going on which is this and then we have   this network going on which basically what it does  is uh creates wireframe of the convex hull now   after that i would like to take the same geometry  that is going in the convex hull wireframe and   scatter some point on top of that don't get into  the details of point scattering at this moment   so this is just to uh conclude this chapter so  point instance and for this point instance to work   we need some input geometry and with this is  a perfect geometry for us to work then we can   plug this into our join geometry but right now in  the instance geometry we don't have anything so   what you can do is either bring uv sphere here and pick it from here you can do that or if you would like  you can also bring one mesh primitive hyposphere from here and plug this one here but  at this moment it's showing us this red wire that   means the geometry is not compatible because this  is a geometry node and this this will only work   with the geometry section uh i mean the geometry  that is created in the node network for that to   work you'll have to change this into geometry and  subdivide change the radius to 0.04 or something   there you go you have few spheres going on here  keep in mind not all the nodes are compatible with   everything so basically you see there are  different input input types different color   coded sockets so just like in the shader  editor there are different uh colors for the   value inputs different color for the color input  we have a different color similarly here you see   on the blue ones are basically the vector inputs  and the gray ones are basically uh the cell   the values which which can be used with the math  nodes and all that and the green ones are geometry   inputs it will take you some time to get used to  the color coded inputs and uh to understand which   nodes are working with which are compatible with  what if you're stuck at some point take some hint   from the the design which will help you read the  compatibility of the notes and all that so now we   have this thing going on whatever abstract we have  so right now we have three major sections one is   this chunk which basically creates these five  heads and then we have this chunk which creates   the net and then we have this chunk which creates  the the simple particles on top of everything   so just to organize what you can do is you can  also use these these two things in the layout   section called frame and readout so read out  what it does is the short command is shift f   if you hit shift f and drag on any of the network  what this will do is it will add one readout this   nice little dot which will let you arrange your  network in whatever way you want so let's say   if you want to place it like this place it like  this you can do that control x will remove that   or let's say if you wanted to make all of these  four inputs or five inputs since all of these   are taking the same common uh input from this  geometry you wanted to combine these then you can   shift f and drag on top of this so this way if you  wanted to add a node before that you can do that   so in case if you forget any of these  commands you can always visit the menus   shift f is make link make and replace links  from here and there are other things called   like all the commands are located here so now  let's just bring one uh frame and drag it here and place it inside this frame and similarly you  can color code these frames and put some label   on top of this now at this moment you might be thinking  like why do i have to arrange put so much   of thoughts why do i have to do all of this and  uh just don't think of it from point of view   like what we're doing today what we making  today it's quite simple thing it's not that   the assignment is difficult or anything it's  just that when you will be working on the   complex examples it would be really necessary  for you to be able to navigate through your   node networks without having to do some guessworks  because all of these things things look like gray   boxy like all of these things look quite same  unless you do some organizing of the notes and   put some thoughts into the colors and all  that you might will end up wasting time doing   some guesswork now one more thing i would like to  discuss is grouping so here after the convex hull   we basically subdivided subdivided this and  converted this into wireframe so these three nodes   mesh to curve curve to mesh and this curve circle  so these three nodes are basically responsible   for creating wireframe out of this now what if  i wanted to make a wireframe of this susan head   now so in that case i would have to again convert  this susan head the top right one this one into   curves and then again back to the geometry and add  one circle which would take too much of space and   unnecessary time to repeat that task again so what  we can do is once you have few nodes which are   there to build some effect you can simply  group those nodes select these three nodes   which are making wireframe this one this one  and this one and hit ctrl g what that will do is   make a group and put you inside that group  you can simply hit tab now you see all three   all those three nodes are gone and  instead of that we have this node group   so you can click here again or hit tab again  to get into this group again you can give this   one a name let's call this one wireframe  and that way you have this nice compact   node going on and this way you can simply  shift d and duplicate this and if you'd like to   apply the same effect on any of these models  you can do that just by adding this simple node   i'll remove this wireframe from here i  don't want this here and 0.01 should be fine   and bring back my subdivision surface there  you have it a simple node network going on just takes some time to organize stuff cage call this one cage and like uh simply drag on top of this and  i'll call this one glitter whatever so now our node network is much more readable and  it's quite easy to jump to the different sections   that we have and however simple the result is at  this moment we are not even trying to accomplish   anything complex i just wanted to give you an  overview of the very basics of how to deal with   the nodes the short commands and everything and  there will be many more commands we will discuss   when dealing with the later chapters so  for now just get comfortable with the nodes   play around with the different primitive types or  maybe just make a different kind of abstract so   i'll leave it to as it is for now and not really  over complicate things on the very first day   looking at it it might would look a very simple  thing and it is actually a simple thing but   think of it from the node point of view and  what we have made it's not really a model   it's not like we have four or five different  objects going on in different arrangement   what we have like i mentioned before is a node  tree going on and this null tree is called suzanne   so if i take any other object now let's say if  i take this uv sphere and if i apply the same   node tree called suzanne on top of this what  it will do is it will make the very very same   composition out of that object as well so now  you can see the difference in using geometry   nodes or manually working on anything but this  node network have done is taken the same object   the input object in this case is uh it's this  sphere and uh we have the same arrangement of the   object the five different kind of sphere arranged  in the same way and then we have the web going on   in the little wireframe and there there should  also be some these particles the glitter which we   had made now if i bring one uh taurus let's bring  a torus here now we can apply the same effect here and we have our third abstract now imagine if we  have some animation going on in this not known   network so we will have three different animations  and uh with just a simple click you will be able   to apply that entire thing the materials the  animation the effect and everything just with   with uh just from within this node network so i  think things will get exciting once we get into   the later chapters when we have the modifiers and  curves going on but let's take each step carefully   and uh so that our foundation is stronger and you  have enough understanding to come up with your   own effects and your own procedures in the  geometry node all right so that's about it   for today i think we have pretty decent simple  composition going on made out of suzanne helds   it's not really a complex effect but that  is not the purpose of today's chapter   what i would like you to do is just take some time  and go easy on your very first day with the nodes   just try to get used to all the short commands  organizing stuff and try to get used to this   whole node based interface however simple  it may sound but try to think of it like   when later we are dealing with a complex examples  when you have maybe hundreds of nodes going on   it shouldn't be difficult for you to keep up with  it and as much as you can memorize these short   commands now it will be easy for you to follow  along with the complex tutorials and what we can   do is however simple this composition is we can  make a nice render out of this and that is what we   are going to discuss in the next chapter however  the simple the process of adding material is in 3d   and blender but when it comes to node network and  geometry nodes it's slightly different than how we   usually apply materials on the objects so we will  have to embed materials within this node network   for it to work so it's going to be a very  quick and short chapter so let's talk about   the materials now so so that we can make vendors  out of whatever assignments we are going to make   in geometry node section so let's jump to the  next section materials in the geometry nodes

Channel: CrossMind Studio

Views: 37,582

Keywords: Geometry Nodes, Blender, tutorial, introduction, for beginners, geonodes, procedural, geometry, Nodes, particlenodes, everything nodes, Blender Free Course, Blender Basics, Blender Procedural Nodes, Nodes for Noobs, Crossmind, Instacrossmind, basics, Houdini, fields, attributes, B3d, digital assets, 3d modeling, motion graphics, procedural motion, dynamic motion, blender procedural modeling

Id: sBJ-HuBL6gw

Length: 35min 17sec (2117 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 25 2021