SDF Presets for Geometry Nodes

Hi! This looks pretty amazing! Does it work with text/strings?

Hi Guys, following up the project that was on hiatus due to some time constraints, I managed to create simple UI to control the nodes by combining the modifiers under the primitives.

By combining the nodes makes it easier to create the UI like this:

I’m did try to use the panel to group and clean up the properties, but somehow I can’t bring the group Panels properties in the UI. It’s still kinda new to me and there’s so little information. But this is still in WIP so I’m still trying to solve it.

Huge thanks to Chuck for the nodes else this will never be possible!

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Hi Jin thanks for your work, I wanted to inform you that I can not run your SDF Preset! it can not run as an Add-On in Blender and I just don’t know how to make it work! care to make a tutorial or explaining how to run it? in the documentation there is no guide how to install it! thanks.
P.S my current Blender version is 4.2

Hi Ansari, SDF_prototyper V2 still in WIP so I haven’t publish it yet. You can get the V1 but you need to use blender 3.6 as Blender removed the SDF nodes starting from version 4.

If you’re talking about the presets by Chuck, you don’t have to install it, you can download from Chuck’s gumroad page and open the file it should be working. You can find the preset nodes in Geometry Nodes Tab. The download comes with pdf documentation on how to use the nodes.

Hey thanks for your reply, I got confused a little, looking forward to your V2 then and the Chuck presets doesn’t work properly for me or maybe it’s little harder to work with, eagerly looking forward to your Add-On, good luck.

Hello Everyone,

I’m happy to announce the release of SDF Prototyper V2! Again huge thanks to Chuck! This will not be possible without your presets!

Download link here:
https://jintat87.gumroad.com/l/SDF-Prototyper-V2

There’s much more potential with Chuck’s Preset comparing to this version but I have not much time to further develop this addon and had to move on. Feel free to explore!

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Thanks for making a more user friendly way to use the nodes.
Would it be possible to add size support for the SDF curves? I tried looking into it but couldn’t get it to work myself.

Hi Snowdaw, you can adjust the thickness size in the first setting. I have limit the minimum size but you can always type in the size you want.

2024-11-02 13-02-30.mkv (1.2 MB)

Hi Jintat87,

Thanks for the quick reply. I didn’t describe it good enough. I meant controlling the curve thickness per control point of the curve with the radius attribute. This would allow a curve to have multiple sizes like a regular Blender curve.

Here is a regular Blender curve with variable thickness due to the control point radius attribute.

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(Multiple posts because of media limitations)

As the SDF curve is made up of spheres this should be possible to do by adjusting the size of each sphere based on the radius of the control points it is between. I am just having a hard time making this happen in geometry nodes.

Here is a screenshot of the variable size on a SDF curve working based on the Z position.

Here is an example of a modified SDF curve group where the point radius is set for all positive indices, so the first one remains the default size. This works as expected when using the viewer to show the actual points geometry. With the first point having a different size.

But for some reason this does not work with the SDF curve as it doesn’t use any other index than 0 for some reason. So this results in every sphere having the size of the first point.

I would show another screenshot, but I can’t due to media limitations and can’t reply anymore due to reply limitations. :frowning:

Ah, The preset nodes setup is far too advance for me to understand. All I did for this addon is to mix the pre-existing node. :sweat_smile:

The screenshot you showed, should be similar with what Glenn have done in his post below:

The best workaround for the addon I’d say is to use the “convert to sdf” or the “SDF Mesh”. These 2 works the same, utilizing the “mesh to SDF” preset node by Chuck.

Perhaps if solution is found, I will implement it into the addon.

Hello all,

I have managed to get it working. It isn’t perfect when the curve intersects with itself again, but good enough for my use cases now.

Here is the modified SDF Curve node group that allows the curve control points to influence the SDF curve size on the corresponding parts.

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This is great, thanks @Snowdaw!

@jintat87, thank you very much for developing and sharing this great add-on. Do you think you could update the add-on to include the curve point radius support? That’d be very useful.

By the way, I noticed that sometimes the menu section with all the settings (Shape Blend etc.) disappears, at least in the Blender 4.3 betas and 4.4 alphas. I haven’t been able to figure out the causes yet, but it happened after adjusting an SDF curve in Edit Mode, for example. Even when I reselected the parent Empty of the curve, the menu didn’t reappear.

Last but not least, if you could realize grouped / nested primitives, that would allow for advanced shaping using Booleans on primitive groups.

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