I am working on creating a rather simple model that I want to use in my first try at an animation. I model is of a heart shaped pillow I received as part of a rehab process. I am adding text to the front and back of the pillow and an image on the back side as well. In general, things seemed to be going well. I used the process described in another thread as you will see below.
As I said, everything seemed to work well. I was able to add the three things I just mentioned and when I would rotate the model, everything seemed to be aligned very well. I wanted everything to be “joined” to I could rotate the “group” in an animation.
As I said above, when I rotate the model, everything seems to be aligned just the way I wanted. However, for the animation it seemed that I needed to create a “group” so I could spin it on the Z axis in the animation. However, when I then selected everything (the heart pillow, the text on the front and back, and the image) things were not showing up properly when I rotated the “group”.
So, since this is my first attempt at creating an animation, here are a couple of questions that I need some experienced users to advise me on:
Do I really need to “join” everything to create the animation?
Is there a way to create the animation by just rotate the entire model? As an example, if I add a keyframe, how do I capture the current view of the model? I will warn you though, if this is possible, I will have to do some more research/learning about lighting so that everything is well lit as the model rotate (which means that someone should point me too someplace to study/learn this aspect.
Any information or links to other things I should go study/learn will be greatly appreciatyed.
I’m not the most versed in animating, but you shouldn’t have to join all your separate pieces together to animate them. You just need all your pieces in their appropriate places when you make your keyframes. Key your start position, then you can move, rotate, and scale your various bits and bobs to your hearts content.
Two caveats though. First, apply your shrinkwrap on the text. This will make your life easier, since the modifier won’t have to constantly recalculate its position relative to the balloon you’ll be moving about, introducing potential for errors. It’ll be real geometry, and will stay where you put it, so long as you’re moving it and the balloon together.
Really, it’d be easier just to join them.
Secondly, if you plan on deforming the mesh on your balloon, that text will end up becoming a nightmare to deal with. Right now, it’s a bunch of randomly applied triangles, which won’t deform well or predictably. Plus, even if it was a coherent quad based mesh, you’d have to apply your deforms so that it conforms with the underlying surface it’s supposed to printed upon. That’d be tedious even for someone who knows exactly what they’re doing.
OK, I don’t think I have done a good job of explaining the problem I am having/seeing. If you look at the image below, you will see the problem I am trying to understand and figure out how to fix.
In both the front and back before the join, both of the text objects and the image object are aligned the way I want them to be. I then “joined” them with the heart object so that I could rotate the “joined” objects during an animation. If you look at the position of the objects after doing the “join” you can see that both of the text objects and the image have been moved.
So why does this matter.
Yes, I know (or at least think I understand) that I could leave things “unjoined” and create an animation by rotating the entire model and not concentrate on the “group”.
Not using the “group” would also mean that I have to figure out how to adjust the lighting for the model so that as I rotate it for the animation, everything would show up with lighting that allowed the animation viewer to see the details of both the front and back of the object.
This is a very simplistic animation that I am trying to develop now. However, in the future for more sophisticated animations, I need to understand how to “join” objects and keep the alignment of objects in place.
OK, I know all of this is part of the “learning process”. I have tried to look at several videos and understand the best way to accomplish what I want to do but so far, as you can see, I have not figured thins out.
Did you apply the shrinkwrap on the text before joining them? If you didn’t, I’d say that’s the problem, since the modifier is effectively being projected upon itself when you joined them together, confusing things.
If you want you do not have to join the objects.
Put the heart and letters in a collection of their own.
Then add a plane (not in that same collection.) and use it to instance the collection of your objects.
You can hide the original objects in the outliner.
You can rotate scale etc the “plane” and it should not effect the shrinkwrap etc of the original collection.
I think this might be interesting however, I do not know how you did this. Is there something I can go read/study about collections and how to use them for something like this?
Collections can de instanced.
An instanced collection acts as if all the objects were one object.
You can select the instanced collection (at once) move it, rotate it and scale it as if the objects are joined.
There a different ways to instance a collection.
The method I used is to add a plane (this could be any object) and give it a new geometry node modifier.
In the geometry node modifier I only used one node (the collection info node), I plugged the geometry output of it into the group output node. What this simple setup does is replace the planes geometry with the geometry of the collection.
In the scene of my screenshot there is a sphere and some text shrink-wrapped to its surface.
I put the sphere and the text into a collection called “Baloon”.
The plane that has the geometry node is the object I have selected.
Note that I have hidden the original collection in the outliner (eye and camera icons), what you are seeing in the 3d view is not the original collection it is the plane that has the geometry node.
You can read the concepts of instancing (particularly collections) and Geometry nodes (beginner level).
Geometry nodes can be daunting at first but this is a very simple setup.
It is also possible to instance a collection directly (without geometry nodes) by right clicking the collection in the outliner and selecting “Instance to scene”
Here is the file if you want to take a look. CI.blend (116.6 KB)
Well, I have tried to do what you said. I looked at your model, and it worked fine. I have tried it with mine and wound up with several problems. In particular:
I created a new collection with all of the items I wanted to be able to view later
I then added a plane
I then added the modifier for the input geometry and selected the new collection I had created
In the input geometry, i selected the new collection and turned on the replace option
I then went to the outliner and turned off the camera for the objects in my collection
I also clicked on the geometry nodes to add it
Now is when the problems began. For some reason, the new collection does not show up. At one point I did get it to show up but I could not rotate it. I am not sure what the heck I am doing wrond.
BTW thanks for sharing your model. It is exactly what I am trying to accomplish. I also would like to know how to view the nodes panel. I could not see it and what was going on with my model. I am uploading a copy of my file so you can take a look at it and let me know what I have done wrong.
It is certainly possible to make text and image as separate objects then either parent them or mod them to the parent object but that seems like a lot of work. If you have a reason, that’s fine, but why do that work? Couldn’t you just do it as an image texture, instead?
UV-unwrap the parent object (pillow) then export the UV layout as an image (.png). Open that image with an image editor like GIMP or Photoshop. Make your UV layout the background. Make one or more layers on top of the background then paint/draw your text and graphics in those layers. Line them up with the grid of your UV layout so that they locate exactly where you want them. Export your graphics, only. Disable or hide the background layer. You will have an image file (.png) of your text which you can then use as a texture for the pillow object.
There are a couple of routes you can take from here:
You can apply the ENTIRE image as the image texture of the object. In which case, you’ll have to add background color texture to your image texture. This is simpler, in terms of your image texture node structure but it takes more work to get the entire texture to be the way you want.
You can use your existing material/texture for your pillow object and superimpose your text on top of it. You do this by mixing your text/graphics image texture with your existing material with a mix node. Make sure that your image texture has an alpha channel. (Transparent background.) Use your image texture alpha/transparency as a “decider” for your mix node. Where the texture image is transparent, the mix node “decides” on the background texture. Where the image has opacity, the mix node “decides” on the image texture.
Either of these methods will work but I prefer the second. (Image texture.)
The reason is that I can keep my original graphics file on hand (the one I used to make the text) and change it at any time. You can just re-output the image texture and the text on your pillow object will automatically change, the next time you render. If you want your edited image to “flow through” to the next render, just use the exact same file name. Blender won’t know that you’ve made changes. Things will just happen “auto-magically.”
Another good reason to use textures is if you want to make multiple copies of an object with slight differences. If you wanted to make a football team where each player has a different number on his jersey, you can make a “master” template of your team uniform then simply change the numbers on the front and the player’s name on the back. If you have eleven players on a team, this method simplifies the work you would have to do. Making a separate jersey for every player would be a PITA.
Like I said, you can certainly do this by blending separate objects, either by joining or using mods. It’ll work just fine but I hope you’ll consider doing it with a texture.
I must not have been very clear. The problem revolves around what @DNorman had suggested. That seemed to work fine when you look at the model he shared. I had done it once but when I tried the second time, I could not get things to work. As I said, I created a collection and the tried to use the collection as the input for a new object with the new object and the modifier for the nodes.
I hope @DNorman will respond and tell me what I am doing wrong. His solution seems to be what I want to do but I keep messing it up somewhere.
Sorry I can not open your file it gives an error, not sure what went wrong.
Not sure what you mean by this “In the input geometry” or this “turned on the replace option”
maybe you are doing something different.
It sounds like you just created a geometry node modifier but did not do anything with it.
It is inside that node group that you need to add a collection info node, select your collection and plug the collection info’s geometry output into the group outputs geometry socket. Did you do that?
To view the nodes panel you need a window in the “geometry node editor” mode.
Select the object with the geometry node. Select the geometry node in the modifier stack (if there are other modifiers)
Once you manage to see the Geometry node editor with the nodes send a screenshot of them, also useful if the outliner is visible.
As you will see in the screen shot below. However, I still do not know how to see the nodes boxes like you did in your earlier answer. Can you tell me how to do that. I would like to be able to share that in this messy thread.
When I did things a little while ago, I was amazed how simple it really was in the end. I did have to do a little messing around with a practice model but once I figured it out, I was amazed. Thank you so much for pointing me in this direction. I just hope I remember it in the future.
BTW: Now that I have this working the way I wanted, my next step will be to create my first animation. I am sure I am going to have plenty of other issues (like lighting as an example) but I will start another thread for those issues. I also noticed though that I might not really need to be able to rotate the collection. I might be able to do what I wanted (for the animation) by just using the mouse to rotate things.
underneath the 3d view you can see the timeline.
The timeline is a separate window from the 3d view, you can change which mode that window is in.
if you click on the clock icon (bottom left of your screen) there will be a popup with all the different window modes.
Like this
A - first click on the clock Icon and you will get this popup, choose the “Geometry Node Editor”.
That will get rid of the timeline and replace it with the geometry nodes editor (you will need to drag the windows top border upwards to see more of the editor.
B - as you have 2 geometry node modifiers on your plane click on the top right corner of the first one to see the nodes inside. (the second geometry node you have does not do anything - it is in red as you have not created a new setup.)
I also suggest you take a look at some very basic tutorials that explain Blenders UI, windows and modes.
It looks like you have made progress though, if it is working you can now select, move and rotate your collection as one piece.
I can see one problem though.
Collections by default have their origin at the worlds origin, if the objects that are in your “heartPieces collection” are not in the center of your scene they will be far from the origin so rotating the instanced collection will give unexpected results. Its pivot point will be at the origin of your plane.
The easiest way to get around this is to move the original objects to the center (hide the plane unhide the origional objects move them to the world center hide them again and unhide the plane)
Not sure I know what you are pointing at the B. I thought I needed the second geometry node based on what I read from your original post.
Do you have any specific recommendations?
I will work on that. In particular when I start working on my animation, that will be an issue.
Again, cannot tell you how much I appreciate your feedback and patience. I am finding that Blender is so strong, and complicated, as is kind of difficult to learn (at least for me). Thank heavens there are people like you who are willing to help. This is the only forum about Blender that I have looked at.
Ok I see what you have done, you used the “geometry input” node instead of making your own geometry node setup. In that case you do not need to add a new one it will work.
It will be harder for you to understand when you see the nodes in the geometry node editor.
The “Geometry input” node looks like this inside the node group.
The difference is that the geometry input node is giving you more options to tweak in the modifiers inputs.
My simple node group does not have any options in the modifier it simply instances a collection.
The result is the same. so if you want don’t worry you can delete the second geometry node (the one with the big “new” button.
Do you have any specific recommendations?
Unfortunately not, I used to recommend seeing these videos, they concentrate on basic concepts and navigation more than teaching you how to “make something”.
Unfortunately they are now very old (Blender 2.8) and a lot of things have changed, (geometry nodes did not even exist when these videos were made.) A lot of the information is still relevant but yes a lot has changed too.
