Animation Nodes

[Rockbard]

Jacques,
Thanks for your great effort producing AN addon first of all.

I am c4d user, big fan of the mograph module. And looking to your addon and c4d mograph module it seems your addon is pretty complex for simple tasks, just for my taste (no fence please)

Do you plan to simplify the setups in future?

For example in C4d we have pretty simple logic:

1. You adding cloner to object
2. You adding effector to cloner (randomize, transform etc.)
3. Then you can set the falloff for effector

And that’s all. Do you think we can see something similar/ straightforward in AN someday?

Thanks.

[Jacques_Lucke]

@Rockbard: In general yes, I’m slowly making simple things easy now. Step by step. Also when I finally manage to implement a good template system, many things will become much easier as it will also become simpler to share setups.
Of course it won’t work exactly like mograph, mainly because I’m developing a (mostly pure) node system. Most other motion graphics systems don’t work like this. I’m not saying that one way is better than the other, just different. I’m trying to find a new approach and that takes time (+ many trials and errors).

[Rockbard]

@Jacques Lucke

@Rockbard: In general yes, I’m slowly making simple things easy now. Step by step. Also when I finally manage to implement a good template system, many things will become much easier as it will also become simpler to share setups.
Of course it won’t work exactly like mograph, mainly because I’m developing a (mostly pure) node system. Most other motion graphics systems don’t work like this. I’m not saying that one way is better than the other, just different. I’m trying to find a new approach and that takes time (+ many trials and errors).

You are the boss. But sometimes it is nice not to invent the wheel but take the best of all worlds. Great Artists Steal, remember?
Nevertheless, the addon is growing and you added some great features already. Big thanks for the fallof node and fallof MIX system, that was exactly what I’ve imagined for the node mograph.

[JohannesW]

@ Jacques Lucke: Sorry, my fault! I’m running Linux Manjaro and the version that get’s shipped through the packet manager is from the build bot. I downloaded the official release and it works now. (the reason why I thought it wouldn’t work with the official one, is that in the terminal I forgot to put “./” before “blender” resulting in starting the wrong blender version…) So no need to make an extra version… I’m happy now.

[jacobo (Noc2)]

Hi;

I have a question on directional falloff, and indirectly other falloff nodes that don’t have a built-in per piece animation interpolation.

I have series of generated objects that I want to animate (rot y for example) using directional falloff and I want the turning pieces to wiggle at the end of their revolution on y axis (like elastic interpolation) Unlike the delay falloff for example, the directional falloff and some other nodes don’t have the option to interpolate their subsequent animations. How do I go about accomplishing this?

Cheers;

AJ

[anon75652222]

Animation Nodes for Idiots:

Here’s what I’ve got:

I’ve got my beginning and ending keyframes set (LocRot).

Works as shown - except for the rendering.

Yes, I’ve seen this:

“@colkai: You can try to enable “Lock Interface” before rendering. You can find this setting in the Render panel. This is quite often the solution to rendering problems.”

(Not even sure if that’s the solution to my problem)

I’ve looked in all the panels and I’ve not seen it (Blender 2.79 / Animation Nodes 2.0)

I have also seen, and tried, “Bake nodes to keyframes” - successful - no difference.

Stuck.

[Jacques_Lucke]

@jacobo: You can use the Interpolate Falloff node for now. I think I will bring the interpolation input to some other nodes as well in the future.

@unkerjay:
The “Lock Interface” property is in the Render panel (the panel where the Render button is). There is also the “Display” property, on the right side of this property is a small clickable lock icon. This is the option you are looking for.

If this does not solve your problem, try to use this: https://github.com/JacquesLucke/terminal_helper

[Database_Scene]

@Jacques Lucke

@JohannesW: did you download the 2.79 release or from build bot? Please try the release if you haven’t already. I don’t quite understand why it sometimes includes Python 3.5 and sometimes not…
Blender 2.79 officially ships with Python 3.5, but sometimes on Linux Blender uses the Python version that is installed on the system.

It is possible to create a Linux Build for Python 3.6 though, will do this tomorrow. You can also try to build it yourself if you want. If yes, please contact me personally (here on BA, or main, or twitter, or whatever).

Hi Luke, you work is amazing with animation nodes, will probably do a donation via paypal in few days.

Just a question, I tried this version (Python 3.6 friendly) with blender 2.8 build (today) which has 3.6.2 python engine… It doesnt work, of course. Do you think animation nodes 2 will be compatible with blender 2.8 and do you know when?

Thank you so much for your work.

Nicolas

[Database_Scene]

Hi Lucke, you work is amazing with animation nodes, will probably do a donation via paypal in few days.

Just a question, I tried this version (Python 3.6 friendly) with blender 2.8 build (today) which has 3.6.2 python engine… It doesnt work, of course. Do you think animation nodes 2 will be compatible with blender 2.8 and do you know when?

Thank you so much for your work.

Nicolas

[Database_Scene]

Hello Jacques,
I can’t find evaluate sound in AN menu, tried it under Blender 2.78 and 2.79, and only 2 choices in sound submenu (Bake and Sound from sequences). Could you give me help?
I also tried to add AN 2.0 (and 3.6 version a) in fresh 2.80 blender version, but it is not working.
Thank you (AN is amazing!)

[anon75652222]

@Jacques Lucke

@jacobo: You can use the Interpolate Falloff node for now. I think I will bring the interpolation input to some other nodes as well in the future.

@anon75652222:
The “Lock Interface” property is in the Render panel (the panel where the Render button is). There is also the “Display” property, on the right side of this property is a small clickable lock icon. This is the option you are looking for.

If this does not solve your problem, try to use this: https://github.com/JacquesLucke/terminal_helper

Dumb mistakes - I got a million of 'em.

I was keyframing the scene instead of the node.

I, instead, right clicked on the (Interpolation Falloff) node - Voila!

‘Insert Keyframe(s)’

Problem solved (Two actually).

The other was how to use Animation Nodes for text tumbling towards the camera.

See the blend file.

(Odd. It works in Cycles, but not Blender Render)

AN_Tumbling_Test_clean_blend.blend (1.42 MB)

[jacobo (Noc2)]

@Jacques Lucke

@jacobo: You can use the Interpolate Falloff node for now. I think I will bring the interpolation input to some other nodes as well in the future.

Thanx Jacques Lucke. Cheers…

[Jacques_Lucke]

Yes, I think AN will br compatible with Blender 2.8 at some point. But I can’t really tell you when because I’m currently not working on this. I’ll have to wait until Blender 2.8 and its python api becomes more stable.

[anon75652222]

Just curious. I figured out tumbling text (see post above).

As it works it applies to all characters.

What would be the best way to tweak the Offset Matrix Rotations to get different
initial rotations per letter rather than the same rotations applied to all letters?

Random?

[colkai]

I ma having an oddity with AN2 and Blender 2.79. I build a couple of scenes yesterday, one using a spline from points and another copying the example on this page:
https://animation-nodes-manual.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user_guide/nodes/particles/particles_data.html

They worked fine last night, however, on loading the same scene today, one does not work at all and the spline from points version is displaying the result from one frame but only points are shown in the other.
I had been having issues with trying to load up a scene which was built with AN1.1, I tried removing the node tree and rebuilding it from scratch but it didn’t work.
Here is the 2.79 blend file and the 2.78 file using AN1.1

EDIT: Ok, odd.
Loaded clean scene, turnes off the AN addon, saved settings, quit, reload, turned on AN addon and saved settings. Loaded the file and it worked. One point I forgot to mention, when it wasn’t working, when I clicked “details” in the AN tab, all the nodes showed “not measured” and even though the nodes were set to “always” in auto-execute, the time display read 000ms constantly.

Attachments

Dancer_Wire.zip (2.25 MB)Dancer_Wire_279.zip (2.52 MB)

[tungee]

@guy lateur

Added 4 more (mesh driving) nodes.
Source: [ATTACH]376277[/ATTACH]

Add this to mn_node_list.py:

    nodes.append(("Curve", [
        ("mn_CurveInfoNode", "Curve Info"),
        ("mn_CurveLoftNode", "Curve Loft"),
        ("mn_CurveRevolveNode", "Curve Revolve"),
        ("mn_CurveSweepNode", "Curve Sweep"),
        ("mn_CurveSweepAndMorphNode", "Curve SweepAndMorph"),
        ("mn_CurveBirailNode", "Curve Birail"),
        ("mn_CurveBirailAndMorphNode", "Curve BirailAndMorph") ] ))

Short description of the new nodes:

1. Sweep: sweeps a profile curve along a rail curve
2. SweepAndMorph: sweeps a profileBegin curve along a rail curve, gradually morphing it into a profileEnd curve
3. Birail: sweeps a profile curve along 2 rail curves
4. BirailAndMorph: sweeps a profileBegin curve along 2 rail curves, gradually morphing it into a profileEnd curve

Examples:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]376279[/ATTACH]

My pleasure!

Will we see these nodes ever in Animation Nodes Jaques?
If i remain correctly, you wanted to include these nodes in AN some time ago.

Best Regards Tungee

[Database_Scene]

It would be awesome to have an AN compatible with webvr a-frame! Lot of Work probably of course…

[krupa]

Hi all,

I’ve been digging into animation nodes the last few days, loving it and the possibilities but I do keep coming up against problems that I can’t solve - I’ve attached a picture of an attempt I’ve made to create a trail from a sound driven line that I hope to use to generate an on the fly landscape of mapped music. It’s mostly working but if I leave it to run, then the memory starts to fill up pretty quickly and the whole thing grinds to a halt. I have tried using the ‘list slice’ node to truncate the vertex position and edge indices list but although they start sensible and in line with what I’d expect from the setup (20 vertices, 19 edges) when I let it run, these really get out of line and I get a lot of invalid mesh flash ups…

I’m not sure if I’m simply approaching this wrongly or that there’s a better way to truncate a growing mesh, any insight would be helpful as I’ve googled, read all the post titles on the stack exchange tag, and read a fair amount of this thread…

cheers,

Chris

[RayVelcoro]

U should try to upload the image again, its not accessible.

I would like to know if someone could help me with the following thing, with the help of the Blender + Animation Nodes Tutorial - Create a Plexus/Ubertracer/IK particles effect tutorial on youtube I’ve been trying to make something similar. In the first frame of action i would like the target to display all the edges of the mesh (like target.002 is displaying) and start deforming from there. Can anyone help me by explaining how to get there? Please have a look at the file;

1r.blend (2.3 MB) (AN 2.0.4)

[krupa]

Cheers Ray, I may never have known

I’ve sort of worked out how to truncate the mesh, was a (more or less) simple set of maths nodes to get the difference between the edges and vertices t what it should be - realised that each iteration of the line needed one more less edge (if that makes sense…)

however, on trying to render this out, it’s clear that im fundamentally getting something wrong as what is generated each frame in render is somewhat different to how it plays back - should I be putting some method of evaluating this per frame into the mix?

I’ve added another screenshot below, it plays back fine and I can do a viewport render of it all good but when I render with cycles, the trails seem to be unstable, I think it’s as though it’s running continually, really think I’m fundamentally making a mistake…

Chris