My Exploration into Geometry Nodes

[unskilled]

I’ve slowly been exploring what I can create with GN. There’s nothing groundbreaking here at the moment but there was a discussion in another thread about the Array Modifier and how it essentially cannot do a radial array without external help. I decided to see if I could create a simple array tool that would do both linear and radial.

(For this I’m using 3.6LTS for the time being. Blender Studio has Array Tools for free but I was looking to learn on my own and just have something that replicates the Modifier. Blender Studio’s tools are also separate for linear and radial.)

Answer: Yes, sort of. There’s just not much in the way of UI options for GN. Basically you have the Switch Node. With a checkbox for Linear Array, unchecking makes the array radial. Not exactly the most user-friendly but it does work. I added a few other options to have a Relative offset based on size of original mesh and Align Rotation on/off.

Primitives
Though not always needed it would be nice if the built-in primitives were parametric. GN does offer built-in primitives, however some don’t offer certain parameters, and building them from scratch actually teaches you more.

Cone
It’s curious that the built-in Node doesn’t provide the option for exposing the Fill Type.
I tried to work in a twist option but I haven’t gotten there yet.

Torus
This was interesting and I’m surprised there isn’t a GN built-in. Looking at the Extra Objects-> Twisted Torus I thought I would try to build that option into one ring to rule them all.

Spring
This was pretty straight forward and offers a nice, editable alternative to the built-in primitive.

Gears
This was more complex and I actually made it a while back because I needed gears. I find the built-in tool not friendly for making small gears, and they’re non-editable. The biggest problem I encountered was the boolean for the hub. It created some rather nasty geometry on the flat side where polys were z-fighting. I solved it by moving the hub up slightly, then subtracting that distance from the user parameter for Hub Width.

Torus Knot
Having recently watched a video about knot cataloging in mathematics I thought this could be interesting. I haven’t quite gotten it yet. There’s a formula for this but there seems to be no way to plot a 3D curve in Blender.

The challenge was to create this entirely with GN. So no Add->Curve->Bezier then dropping GN on top of it. If I get this it could be fun to do additional knots.

[JWC]

Looking good, is there any tutorials you followed because I am looking into getting into gn, and I can’t make anything actually meaningful.

[unskilled]

Loosely. I’ve watched a few videos to wrap my head around them, but I think the problem with GN is they excel at making abstract things for motion graphics. Making specific things has not been focused on as much? I’m approaching GN pragmatically. As I need something, how do I build it?

[unskilled]

Found a video on creating the Torus Knot which was super helpful. I wasn’t quite understanding how to plot equations to a curve.

It can create some interesting shapes.

I took that a step back and wanted to make a curve circle. Yes, there’s a node for that but that doesn’t teach me anything.

Now I have a curve circle plus. I can also make it an ellipse without having to go back to graph view and add node for scaling, fill it, and turn it into a mesh.

Back to a challenge to see if I understand the concept.

Butterfly curve

Lissajous curve

Good step forward. It’s been some time since I’ve taken a math class or even studied math on my own. I don’t actually need to understand all the math though, just how to translate a math equation to Blender nodes. The big part was understanding to take parametric functions for an equation to separate xyz values.