Why were face maps removed?

Hmm, the unfortunate thing is that in order to load and save it seems you need to type in the desired attribute name by hand. A solution to this would be to make a bunch of geometry node tools with specific names. Not a great solution, but maybe ok temporarily.

Yeah, itā€™s very basic right now. There are plans for an ā€œattribute searchā€ for the redo panel, which I think means something like this:

Hopefully with ways to filter out what shows up in there for specific tools.

I also find it a bit unfortunate that they removed face maps. :frowning:
Until thereā€™s a better solution, I have made my own addon that makes attributes more convenient to use and worke more similar to how face maps worked before:
image
Its unfortunately part of an bigger addon that is not finished yet, but hopful it will get relase in a few weeks.

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No, itā€™s not.

@argitoth asked for a thread where people would share nodegroups, tips, techniques w.r.t. geometry nodes.
That thread is decidedly not meant to be about any such thing at all, but about updates and discussions w.r.t. the ongoing development of geometry nodes only.

I donā€™t mean to come off as being pejorative or patronizing here, but I think this needed clarification.
Weather a thread like what @argitoth asked about actually exists, I donā€™t know.

greetings, Kologe

I get why it was done - or, at least why the idea was proposed. What I donā€™t get is that it was discussed before release that this was a feature that artists actually use, yet also still killed.

The PR that killed face maps shouldnā€™t have been approved for 4.0, until the new solution was also ready.

Like if Bone Collections hadnā€™t been ready for 4.0ā€¦ thatā€™s fine, understood, but donā€™t also remove the old Bone Layers immediately because Future Plan is Coming.

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It doesnā€™t, but someone should definitely make it

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Yeah, I hope that attributes will have operator buttons implemented that do what the Geometry Nodes are doing in the future. Itā€™s a good idea to move to a node system for capturing attributes, but the UI still needs some work to be as convenient as the old systems.

You can say the same thing about the decision to not implement a patch or a feature now because some future commits will allow it to be implemented in a proper manner.

One year laterā€¦

No roadmap and no discussion on when this design to allow a proper implementation will take place. The patch then is left to rot and the volunteer decides to not bother with working on the Blender project.

This happens all the time in FOSS and is one of the fairly unique quirks about the ecosystem, but Blender is free, gets fast development, and prevents you from having to pay thousands of dollars + subscription. It is good enough and a lot of things actually land eventually (ie. colored wireframes, light linking, high-quality color management, ectā€¦).

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So?

Having a laptop get so hot it burns down the house is a quirk of human life, but we try to solve issues related to those quirks.

How much do I need to increase my annual donation by, so that can I be free of being told ā€œblender is freeā€ when thereā€™s an issue with the software?

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Yeah, that about looks like what I had in mind as well. Hope the devs implement a similar solution, but with more options for attributes.

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I do not recall a Blender bug ever being so bad it caused the destruction of property. If you can verify such a case then you should be on the phone with a lawyer instead of replying on the forum.

The only option is to either keep on trucking with getting the devs. attention or go back to commercial software (because living with the occasional quirky decision and being a little disappointed initially is actually just a part of using FOSS). Getting the BFā€™s attention can be like pulling teeth, but if enough people chime in then it has the potential to make a change in development.

Blender is improving though, for instance it has become far more stable in the past year, and now I find it tough to make Blender crash unless I actually try to break it. The devs. are also working to resolve the biggest performance killer for workbench (instancing).

Last thread they had like that they kept aggressively asking people to not talk in there the way you wish to find people talking freely. Then they shut it down completely.

@thinsoldier : Would you mind rephrasing that? Iā€™m not sure Iā€™m quite following you.

There used to be a free for all geometry nodes thread that they shut down. All threads after that which almost turned into a free for all were shut down or told to stay on a narrow topic.

It sounds like you are wishing for a ā€œwhat are you working onā€ thread focused on geometry nodes. We used to have a great one of those. Starting another one is frowned upon.

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Judging by this:

If a large ā€œshare your geonode bitsā€ thread was frowned upon at some point, it seems to no longer be so.

I see a possible problem with it because of the rapid pace of development, so if the thread goes on for a long time, the earlier work might age out. But I think it if were made a requirement that people add the Blender version theyā€™re using thatā€™d be even better than having to guesstimate it every time from the date of many individual threads.

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I have to admit I miss that thread too.

Also back to the original question I think face maps will come back as attributes one day (hopefully soon)

Iā€™m not aware of it being frowned on- it may have been at one point, but it certainly isnā€™t now. Again, I say this thread should be made :slight_smile:

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If I remember correctly it was considered that the macro thread was too hard to keep up with, also that Geometry nodes did not need its own category and that questions on geometry nodes needed to go into categories like ā€œmodelingā€ etc.

Looking back I do miss that thread, it was very active.
The only problem was that it was a mix of everything, GN development, cool node groups people were making, questions and answers etc.

I personally think that geometry nodes does need a catagory of its own and that in that catagory there should be different sections and discussions. One for development, another cool examples another questions and answers etc.

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Can we just unlock the old thread?

Embrace the concept of ā€œmega threadā€. No splitting things off to other new threads. Just leave it be. As long as people properly hit reply to the post they want to reply to, itā€™s easy enough to follow that particular part of the conversations.


note to self:

Personally, I think I can follow the reasoning of not mixing such a proposed experiments thread with the development thread.

OK, letā€™s try this and see how it goes:

greetings, Kologe

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