For a learning experience, I am trying to figure out how to procedurally generate & animate organic shapes with geometry nodes. I have decided to model a stomach as my test object.
At the moment I am creating the stomach by merging together multiple bezier segments, which I then draw circles around. With just one bezier segment, I can match my desired mesh shape by varying the curve radius based on Spline Parameter’s factor.
However, this falls apart as I start merging in more bezier segments- as obviously with the spline getting longer, the increasing radius values are spread out further along the new length.
Rather than just going from minimum to maximum radius values over the spline’s length, I’d prefer to be able to set gradients of thickness across its length manually, where I can both increase & decrease in size. How can I go about this?
As a novice to 3D, Blender & GeoNodes, I’m not confident where to start here. I opened up the Loft Splines node and it seems quite overwhelming. Am I meant to edit parameters within it, or is it just done by feeding it certain splines at the Splines input?
For my example- would I just have a bezier curve for each point that the thickness/direction of the stomach changes, and then send all of those curves into the Loft Splines node?
So, I finally figured that out and yes, I can create a bunch of Curve Circles with different radiuses, use Join Geometry, put that into Loft Splines and get a nice mesh outputted! A different approach than what I was taking above in automatically drawing circles centered along the length of a spline (and I’m curious if there’s still a way to set radiuses along its length that aren’t just increasing).
However, I’m running into the problem that I can model by adjusting the radius of a Curve Circle and by Set Position, but I can’t seem to tilt them as I go- Set Tilt doesn’t seem to do anything.
I’m trying to do most things with GeoNodes so that I can easily vary & animate meshes in a more parametric fashion. I’m not a great visual artist for doing things manually, but I am a decent programmer so nodes click with me.
Two discoveries! I noticed the Float Curve node in your screenshot and it actually allowed me to do what I initially wanted to- by plugging the Spline Parameter’s Factor into Value, and having that control my curve radius’s after going through a Map Range, I could essentially remap the thickness at any point along the spline.
However I found that approach tedious to dial in perfectly, and so I did the suggested Lofi Splines approach by manually placing circles in Edit Mode. It made the modelling easier but I’ll see if I can procedurally animate it in the ways I want to as easily.
