Blender 4.2 - Nodes, Updates, and Matrices?

[@quackers969]

Great video! 4.2's a really exciting update for Geometry Nodes. ^^ I hope you don't mind, but there are a couple of technical notes I'd like to add. This isn't really meant to be a dunk on the video or anything, but I just wanna clear up some details. 2:24 - This isn't true. The old behavior of Realize Instances is basically equal to "Realize All", where it just turns everything into realized geometry no matter the amount of nesting. The new addition is actually being able to restrict how many levels of instancing "Realize Instances" could strip away using the "Depth" option. 11:08 - "Axes to Rotation" doesn't replace "Axis Angle to Rotation", the latter still exists in 4.2 and is not deprecated. What "Axes to Rotation" actually replaces is a specific setup where you chain together two "Align Euler to Vector" nodes with the second one's pivot axis being equal to the first one's alignment axis. This is specifically for cases where you want to align but minimize twisting, so you align to two perpendicular vectors instead of just one. "Axes to Rotation" replaces this workflow, and avoids the headache of having to make sure the correct pivot axis is selected. You just give it two vectors, one being primary and the other secondary, and works off of that. It's a different use case from "Axis Angle to Rotation", which is just a conversion node for one of the common ways to represent rotations (i.e. Euler, Axis-Angle, and Quaternion). 18:04 - To answer the question, Blender has two types of selections: - "Selected" (highlighted orange in Edit Mode) - "Active" (highlighted white in Edit Mode). Multiple elements can be "Selected" but only one of the selected elements could be "Active". It's usually the last one you clicked on when making the selection. The usual way this becomes relevant, is for operations where the "Active" element becomes a reference point for how the rest of the "Selected" elements get affected. Examples would be rotating/scaling with the "Active" element as the pivot point, or copying an attribute value from "Active" to the rest of "Selected", etc. A big use-case would be shortest-path selections, where you can highlight a couple of faces as selected, and have GN calculate the shortest path to the active face, and select everything that falls under that path. Anyhows, I hope that added extra clarity for some people. Wasn't able to resist the urge to explain things in detail lol.☝🤓

[@gavindotjs]

Not a dunk at all! I'm only human, and I appreciate the clarity! Thanks for clearing some things up that I misunderstood and / or glazed over in my research! This is exactly the sort of thing I like to see in the comments!

[@quackers969]

@@gavindotjs Glad my nerding out for a bit was helpful. ^^

[@artscreations5]

@@quackers969 thx dude

[@shmuelisrl]

I was about to comment, but I guess there's no need 😄.

[@EricaCalman]

I kinda prefer axis-angle because I'm a physicist dabbling in art rather than an artists dabbling in math, but it's probably for the best cause its easy for me to convert in my head and probably not so easy for an artist. It might be a minor headache though to in some cases add math nodes where previously none would be needed when using different inputs to generate a rotation angle, but in most cases it should actually simplify things.

[@PCgmesforever]

18:12 I believe in contrary to active selection node, active element node gives you index of only one element meaning you could do operation only to the selection for example, but do it in relation to the active element ( so for example rotate selection around active element)

[@PCgmesforever]

Oh sorry just realised it's already been answered

[@PCgmesforever]

12:41 Looking at the old "axis angle to rotation" I can almost immediately tell what it asks for, what I'm Gona get and how to use it. With the new one I still have no clue so idk if it's more user friendly.

[@nosirve9458]

support blender foreva hehe nice vid as always :D

[@blower05]

but the matrix is just 4x4, merely for the purpose of transformation. If Blender allows creating matrix of any size, it will be truly powerful

[@gavindotjs]

Very true!

[@artscreations5]

Thank u bro

[@bentontramell]

I hope the Blender manual shows the use case for each but, they won't. 😊

[@jbdh6510]

you can participate to the Blender user manual

[@artscreations5]

In ur opinion, di u think that someday we'll have enough nodes to make video games in blender,? because I saw the mouse input node and made me wondering if now blender is trying to move towards vjdeo games

[@gavindotjs]

Great question! There actually is an older version of Blender that had a game engine. The Blender Foundation didn't move forward with it, but I think I saw some of the community resurrecting that version and updating it. I didn't follow that much, but it's worth a google lol Also, Erindale made a series recently on how you can use controller inputs in Blender and modify the .blend file to function as a game! If you're interested definitely check it out! kzbin.info/www/bejne/nKW4gJdsjqt3o9U&pp=iAQB But, to answer your question, no I don't think that's the direction they're going in. I honestly think the mouse position node is just for making more interactive tools

[@artscreations5]

@@gavindotjs thanks a million bro

[@aarrsseennyy]

Axes to Rotation looks now more messy and confusing