I’ve been using geometry nodes alongside normal rigging for certain effects. But in blender3.3, geometry nodes that generates any geometry will cause the rig modifier to not work / do anything. This was not the case in previous versions. Is there a fix to this?
There are changes to how VGs are handled since the last version. There are bug reports, but the general gist of the response is, “That’s how it’s gonna be, get used to it.” Avoiding geometry that’s created in GN and avoiding “join geometry” should work okay still. The fix is to use an earlier version or to change the code and compile it (including one particular recommendation in one of the bug reports which is nearly free of other effects.) No other fix.
I have seen the phrase “Everything Nodes” (or something like that) mentioned in this forum and other places.
So, if they make Skin Nodes and Hair Nodes and Cloth Nodes… well… it would seem that rigging would be important and useful.
Or, am I missing something?
What gets done has more to do with what a particular developer wants to make than what’s important and useful (not entirely though.)
There are a lot of things that people use Blender for. Like you, I think of rigging as very, very important. But there are a lot of people that never or barely touch rigging.
I would not hold your breath regarding rigging nodes. “Everything nodes” is a long-term plan, like five or ten years. I believe that you’ll see broad attribute support replacing VGs in other parts of Blender (non-GN modifiers, constraints, weights for armatures and exports) long before you see rigging nodes.
It’s not impossible that GN devs find a way to make VGs work better from GN, regardless of what they’re currently saying, but what they’re currently saying is, “Get used to it.”
Sorry… could you de-jargonize this a bit for me?
What are VGs?
Thanks,
Cal
Vertex Groups.
Ah! I thought Vampire Goalies. OK, got it. 
One more follow up question?
A “Rig” is one thing, an “Armature” is another, correct?
The OPs question regards “rigging”.
Can GNs be moved with simple armature bones?
Again, thanks,
Cal
I’m not sure you’re going to find really strict definitions anywhere regarding what “rigging” really means.
I consider it to be act of setting up controls to simplify the process of animating 3D graphics. With that definition, a rig might be as simple as using an empty and a small script to drive a shapekey value. Or, it might be a complex structure involving a lot of different modifiers and some set of unified controls to create a pleasant animation intuitively.
Armature deformation would be one way of rigging a mesh. We create bones to simplify the process of moving verts around so that you don’t have to move 10k verts every frame, only maybe 20 bones, and the verts seem to do what you want intuitively. In that sense, an armature would be a component of a rig (probably, the only component for that rig.)
GN modified meshes can be moved with a basic armature modifier sometimes. If you use the GN to instance geometry, and keep in mind that instancing is often implicit (if you join geo to a copy of itself in GN, I think you’re actually creating two instances of the geo, not making “true” geo), then you lose control over its vertex groups, meaning that armature deformation from vertex groups is probably not going to make sense or do what you want. If you are not instancing anything, then the vertex groups, right now, are sticking around okay. Vertex groups are not the only way to interact with an armature, because there are also envelope weights, but envelope weights are bad.