SDF Presets for Geometry Nodes

[Glenn_Greenway]

Perfect! Thanks for the speedy response.

[KDLynch (Kelly Lynch)]

Thank you for your work on this… looking forward to trying this out.

[wahidfebrianto]

how to give material or texture ?

[KDLynch (Kelly Lynch)]

you have to use a Set Material node afterwards; I usually put it right before the output node.

[jintat87]

I apologies for the wrong link. Moderator have just informed me. However I’m not able to edit the link anymore. Please get the new link below:

SDF-Assets1-7_inset.blend

[mod1 (mod)]

I thought the red link was a bug. But after check, you just have invalid node in nested group…

[wahidfebrianto]

can you tell me how to do it. node geometry workflow thanks

[jintat87]

Yeah, I didn’t noticed that. I’m not familiar with geometry nodes. Just move things around as long as it works. But I straight ahead combining few nodes together and seems like the issue is gone now.

Currently I combined the mapping, solidify, instance, radial array, mirror, into the primitives. Just so I don’t need to keep adding nodes when needed, I just switch them on and off.

And I combined inset and panel into the boolean node, and another solidify in just so I can solidify the combined sdf nodes.

For the Domain mostly combined some values cos I usually just use the same value anyway.

So I can create something like this with just few nodes.

Might not be ideal for most artists cos it’s heavy but I like it this way.

[Percolator (Glenn Greenway)]

I have a feature request The math involved with SDFs is beyond me but a curve primitive would make anatomical, botanical and general organic modeling much easier. I imagine a ‘network’ of curves making a manifold mesh by way of your SDF union forming, say, a simple tree with a few branches. It might be awfully difficult to achieve though. Thanks for all the hard work you’ve put into these remarkable nodes!

[Charles_Weaver (Chuck)]

Sounds interesting, although it would be a bit complicated to implement. I’ll look into it though!

A simple 3 point quadratic curve would be easier as I could calculate it in 2d (3 points are always on the same plane) and solve a cubic equation.

A cubic bezier would be much more difficult as it would not automatically translate to 3D space, and I’d have to look into quartic equations.

I’ll spend some time tinkering with it and see if I can figure something out. (And if anyone here already has experience with this sort of thing, please speak up! You probably know more than I do!)

[Charles_Weaver (Chuck)]

A temporary solution:

If you convert a curve to points and instance spheres on those points, you can approximate an sdf. Note that this is not a perfect solution, and the result is not an exact SDF. But if you’re just looking for a lazy solution that allows you to use it as a modeling technique, it may be adequate.

[Percolator (Glenn Greenway)]

Thanks, Zorro, that’s really helpful. It might be a ‘lazy’ solution but it’s still works really well. It’s a little like Metaballs and SDFs had a baby! I’ll look forward to future updates.

[Percolator (Glenn Greenway)]

Here’s the default Blender sapling after applying your ‘lazy’ solution. Pretty cool, eh? I didn’t know it would work with multi-spline curves! Now, I’d like to add another SDF primitive to the spline endpoint positions, ultimately respecting their normals, but I don’t know how.

Can anyone help? Thanks!

[Percolator (Glenn Greenway)]

I’ve been able to add SDFs to the ends of curves. I’m still struggling with aligning endpoint SDFs to tangents though, I hope this helps someone.

[BforBlender (Burak)]

Did you solve this problem? I’m currently attempting to do the same thing - rig SDF characters for posing.

[C_Grim (Claire Grimond)]

I managed to rig the controllers of the SDF figures. It was working, but it was extremely laggy and unintuitive. Then I tried to rig metaballs, it was nice (There is a very good conference here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PP14rVhgX9M and here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7R2_F-ZukQ). The issue was with the texturing, but if you have simple characters, it can be fine. Currently, I’m using the volume cube node to merge some base meshes together and obtain the same SDF effects, but it’s quite expensive in calculation and the rendering is extremely long. I’m searching for a way to optimise it.

[BforBlender (Burak)]

Amazing! I’ll keep you posted if I find a solution. Thank you!

[SoundDifferent]

Guys, can some one please shade the zipped blender alpha which contains the SDF nodes?
It looks like in newest builds the removed it.

[lijemo (Lije Morgan)]

Hi, huge fan of these presets! The work you did is absolutely amazing.

I’m wondering if there’s any way for the Mesh to SDF node to work in conjunction with collections? What I’d love to have is a collection that automatically applies a “union” to all of the meshes within that collection, and another collection that automatically subtracts everything within that one via SDF nodes.

The issue that I’m running into is that when using the Mesh to SDF node in conjunction with a collection, there are gaps and artifacts created at the intersection of the meshes within that collection. Ideally, I could union all of the objects within that collection before being passed along the node tree. If there’s any way you know of to create a setup like the one I’m describing, I would be incredibly appreciative! Thank you so much for all of your work on this.

[Charles_Weaver (Chuck)]

Hey, I apologize for the late response. I’ve had a lot going on over the summer, and haven’t been able to stay very active in this community lately.

The main challenge with your suggestion is that the math behind the sdf boolean union only works on two SDFs at a time. Perhaps, now that loops are available, it would be possible to make a group that converts the first two objects in the collection into SDFs, joins them, then repeats for the rest of the objects.