@Jamez: I did not have a spefic inspiration behind creating Animation Nodes. After I developed my first Blender addon (Sniper) in 2014, I had a couple of ideas for addon for creating some cool effects (mostly animation stuff). I thought about all these ideas a while (not sure which ideas that were at the time) I noticed that all of them share some common behavior. This is why I started Animation Nodes in the first place. I wanted to implement these common functions to make it easier to implement all the other ideas. Also I wanted to develop a node system for over a year already so I was really motivated
Atm the main references I have in the Motion Graphics area is Mograph in C4D and Mash in Maya. Some time ago I watched a few tuts about Ice, but never took a closer look. I never looked a video in which someone used xpresso or Vex (not sure what this is even…).
You can already create groups in AN using the Group Input and Group Output node. Groups are organised a little different in AN than in other node systems. In theory it is possible, I’ll talk about that a little later again when I have more time.
@Jacques, thanks for the info! For someone like myself with a heavy C4D background, AN is an interesting mix of Mograph and xpresso. In C4D, xpresso is merely a node expression system that can be used to hookup various Mograph tool parameters, but it cannot actually create geometry from scratch. This is why AN interests me in that it can create instances, etc via the nodes themselves along with all the expression nodes. Also similar to Houdini Vex nodes operating at the same level as the SOP(surface operator) nodes.
Hopefully when the Blender Institute finally get serious about the “everything nodes” project they will get some input from you!
I did notice some subprogram group nodes, but couldn’t work out how to use them…I will have to look up the documentation. I was hoping that they would work like the material nodes do.
Looking good. Can you share some more info on how was it made?
Do wires collide & overlap? Can it form tighter wire cluster? Is it driven by mesh, splines…? Animatable?
Jacques, I asked this before, could it be that AN manages objects groups somehow…? or is it too complex to implement? like when creating instances they respect the target object groups, so I can do a complex arrange of objects and animations, and then use dupligroups to have the same setup placed somewhere else, rotated and so… very useful! or at least make some new AN group that is managed from the addon itself, right now if I manually make a group and then change some values objects are not properly unlinked and keep showing in dupligroups or it fails in some other strange ways
karlis nice renders, lots of wires in the setup also
thanks kmeirlaen! I know it can be done this way, but try your setup with object instancer node and outliner in ‘groups’ mode; now make 100 copies, then decrease the value, see objects are not unlinked… a native solution would be nice to have, but after bcon I guess
Hi,
I would like to create a flip dot also known as flip disk sign in Blender. A flip dot sign is made up of many small discs with a different color on each side and are flipped 180 to create images text etc. I would like to know how I could go about achieving this effect. I have just started to watch a couple of tutorials about animation nodes but not sure if it is possible, and if so how I would go about do so, or is there another automated way of flipping the dots. I would like to be able to use an black and white image sequence as an input trigger. Very much appreciate any and all help with this, many thanks.
