Thanks to Your Help, the Radial Tiling Node Was Added to Blender!

General Forums Blender Development Discussion
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Hi everyone,

Some of you may remember me from the Fractal Voronoi noise thread a while back.
So @Raiko and I have been developing a new Radial Tiling node, which we’d like to have some feedback on.

What can it do? Well a multitude of things, here are some examples:

examples
examples1080×1440 1.1 MB

There is a demonstration .blend file to show how the Rounded Polygon Texture node can be used:
Download here: Link to Demonstration File
and a user documentation:
Download here: Link to User Documentation

Please make sure that you use the latest patch build when opening the demonstration .blend file:
Download here: Link to Patch Build

Due to limitations of blenderartists threads I’ve put all the remaining information into the Pull Request.
So please have a look here: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/127711

Additionally a video showing the possibilities of procedural texturing, including the Rounded Polygon Texture node group is linked here:

Here are some screenshots of that video:

VS_1
VS_1960×540 1.65 MB

VS_2
VS_2960×540 2.37 MB

VS_3
VS_3960×540 2.35 MB

VS_5
VS_5960×540 2.35 MB

Some of you reading the title may get a deja vu from the Fractal Voronoi noise thread. And indeed, I need your help to convince other developers of the capabilities of the new nodes.

@Raiko has already shown a few use cases of the new nodes and node groups in the user documentation he uploaded, but as artists you can surely find many more beautiful and practical use cases for them, which is why I’m asking you to try out the new patch build that contains them:
Link to Patch Build
and post your results using them here.

Thanks a lot for your help! Last time Fractal Voronoi Noise couldn’t have been added without your help and I sincerely hope that we can do it this time as well. :heart:

Edit: To dispel any concerns regarding the Voronoi Texture: The Voronoi Texture will not be touched.

PS: It’s actually @Raiko doing all the development. I’m only doing the announcement because blenderartists limits what new users can post.

Update:
The Pull Request for the Radial Tiling node has been merged into Blender’s main branch and it will be officially released with Blender 5.0.
Thanks for everyone who made this possible by contributing to the discussion!

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What is not being mentioned is that the ultimate goal for this is to replace Voronoi textures:

Also this noise type has no underlying basis in any existing software, nor has it been vetted or inspected by any Blender developers other than yourself. It is, in fact, a whim- a personal passion project that in my opinion has no place in an established software

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Buh? Some of these have been wanted by others (including me) for years!

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This one isn’t one you’ve wanted for years because it was invented just a few months ago

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From the original design notes:

“Nevertheless it raises a design question regarding what to do with the Voronoi Texture”

The answer is do nothing with the Voronoi Texture.

If you want to proceed with getting this particular noise integrated into main, you need to do it without touching anything else. If that means code duplication = your patch would not be accepted otherwise, then so be it.

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This is false. Replacing Voronoi was only a thought that was abandoned almost immediately.
Please don’t spread misinformation, especially as part of the moderation team.

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And the Musgrave replacement was also 100% guaranteed to work the same as the Musgrave node- and then, mysteriously, it ended up needing Math nodes to achieve parity, despite all the promises otherwise. So you’ll forgive my cynicism, I’ll believe it when I see it

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This is also false. The math nodes were used for versioning, not to achieve parity with the Musgrave node. You can ask any Blender developer regarding this if you don’t believe me.

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It’s not misinformation when it is words in your own proposal…

It is not false. At best, discusssion on deletion of the Musgrave node was deceiving. Many people were NOT expecting the “create your own math node” solution, when we were told “You’ll still be able to do exactly what you did in the past.” (paraphrasing that).

Some supporters (including myself, which i now regret) thought the new node would incorporate in totality the musgrave controls. That was a key element when I said “sure, go for it”. That’s not the node we got.

And in the end of it all, the require math node can’t even be included with Blender by default due to how Blender deals with asset distribution.

What happened, happened. But let’s not rewrite history…

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First of all it was only mentioned as one of multiple possibilities in the thread, not as a plan.
Secondly scrolling down the thread there is:

First of all I’m not pushing for the removal of Voronoi. My first comment after the initial post already made that clear.

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You’ll need to realize that based on past expereince specifically in this area, “a possibility” is a very large red flag.

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It does. You can ask any Blender developer regarding this if you don’t believe me.
As I stated before the math nodes were used for versioning, not to achieve parity with the Musgrave node.
Secondly the Voronoi Texture will not be touched.
I hope that dispels any concerns.

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I don’t need to ask a blender developer. I was part of the discussion on dev chat.

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The outright hostile reactions to this baffle me.

For once, someone means to bring something innovative to Blender, and this is the thanks they get. :face_with_open_eyes_and_hand_over_mouth:

I wonder, would this be the kind of reaction they would get from e.g. Houdini users, if they’d mean to put this in there?

greetings, Kologe

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Yeah, me too. The Voronoi upgrade was great and this Raiko map looks very interesting as well.
I hope i can find some time to test it.

The notion that we don’t want something because no other software has it is totally absurd.

I hope the Raiko and Hoshinova just ignore the crap and keep developing cool stuff.

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Seconded, because this does in fact appear to allow the generation of structured patterns that are not easily done now (which is very important for architecture and any other manmade environment).

To Raiko and Hoshinova, please do not think Joseph speaks for all of us just because of the shield icon next to his name. Keep up the good work on this, the only caution I would give is that the capabilities of the new texture do not produce too much overlap with existing procedural nodes to prevent unneeded code complexity (ie. the Bricks node).

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I believe my post above explains my reaction.

Gabor noise was (is being) added to Blender, and I think it’s an awesome addition. I never used Gabor in other software, not a factor in my reaction and other software has nothing to do with it.

I’m speaking for myself, and have no shield next to my name.

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Only reasons I could think of are;
Voronoi is well known and can be found in many programs be it Substance Designer, Material Maker, Houdini etc.
If I want to communicate with others, saying; use a “Raiko” but I mean a Voronoi, the result is bewildered faces.

The Linked video only showed one example. can it only make fire?
Just one effect? no idea.

I would love to see gifs of those pretty “multitude of things” examples.
How do they look like when parameters are changed?
How easy is it to get from the honeycomb structure to the heart and then flower etc.

EDIT; reading and trying to understand the PDF: 3Dimensional Textures sounds good. If we can do such deep changes, it might be worth a try.

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This is of course true, and I perfectly understand that.
That said, here’s a quote from the PR linked above:

So the story of this Pull Request begins with the development of a new kind of procedural texture[…]
A prototype […] was made […].
However due to technical and design issues it was decided to split up the entire Raiko Texture node into smaller components and then implement the entire texture as a node group as part of the essentials asset bundle.

(underscore added by Kologe for emphasis)

So I would expect if,- and that’s a big if - the Voronoi-texture as we know it were actually replaced by this, I would very much expect something like a Voronoi-asset or a Voronoi-preset, if you will, to ship with it (which would just be called ‘Voronoi Texture’ all the same).
Ergo no bewildered faces.

But really, I think this is almost definitely an obsolete discussion anyway, insofar @Raiko made a clear statement:

Any insistence by whomever on the contrary is just in pure bad faith and honestly a fairly disrespectful attitude, as I see it.

From what I’ve gathered, it only needed Math nodes if one wanted to get the same results from the same input-values.
Versioning, as Raiko stated.

greetings, Kologe

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So, I downloaded the build from the build bot and the example file but it can not read the Raiko Texture.
It does contain the Raiko Base Texture, the Linear Solver node. The Elliptical stuff from the blend file works as well.

But now I am not sure how to use these maps in combination without working examples. I plugged all kinds of noodles into alll kinds of inputs but besides a single n-gon in a buncho of variations I am not able to generate much.

A set of examples with the Raiko Base Textures would be good.

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