Supercharge Your Geometry Nodes Workflow - Blender Tutorial

Get 40% off the Bundle: www.nodegroup.xyz/procedural-...
I'm going to show you my special technique that opens the door to infinitely more complex, more integrated procedural workflows in Blender. Super easy to do. Super effective.
Solar Trees Masterclass: www.nodegroup.xyz/solar-trees...
Chhatrapati Masterclass: www.nodegroup.xyz/chhatrapati...
Boids Simulation Course: www.nodegroup.xyz/boids
Contents:
00:00 - Introduction
00:22 - New Procedural Modelling Courses
00:56 - Simple Example
05:43 - Solar Trees Example
07:15 - Chhatrapati Example
08:05 - Boids Example

[@Erindale]

I hope this method opens endless possibilities for you! While you're here, take a look at the new courses: www.nodegroup.xyz/procedural-columns-masterclass-bundle

[@NEEDCheese]

Let the ads play for this man!

[@MaxSonicUA]

Brilliant idea. Thank you!

[@Dhruv1223]

Amazing to see bombay is getting love from you :) that's an amazing airport! Cheers from India!

[@Erindale]

My favourite column designs! Such a beautiful piece of architecture

[@metamesh1]

that is super cool! thanks for sharing

[@andreyshell]

Wow, brilliant ideas! Thank you Erin!

[@andreyshell]

I was focused on using Named attributes and Sample it from Object Info. Transmitting parameters between objects is important

[@kenziemac130]

The size of the cursor is giving me quite a bit of discomfort for some reason. Idk why.

[@Erindale]

Submit to the cursor overlord

[@Bulborb1]

It's just hovering there... Menacingly!!!

[@BlenderFun_]

Great technique👍🏻❣️❣️

[@DXPL1C4T3]

Ngl. I didn't see the point entirely at first but then you showed the advanced examples of making instanced controls of field values like curves and my mind was blown. Super clever and great way to instance complex data!

[@Erindale]

It gets so powerful the more complex you’re building. When you get into large scale asset generators and you have objects as scaffolds and other objects generating various parts and lots of nested groups and shared scaffold objects being referenced between different objects… having the control group makes it actually viable to work that big in Blender

[@kovalevskyalex]

Really beautiful way. Thank you

[@Erindale]

I hope it’s useful!

[@davidmcsween]

Mind blown!

[@skatehansen]

Did not fully grasp the use case at first, but as soon as I saw the examples... Ahh, it's just the same as storing parameters on a empty null in Houdini. Still trying to wrap my head around how blender handles stuff. Layering geo nodes in the modifier stack etc.

[@Erindale]

I am still sad that geo nodes is a moodier with an object rather than at scene or file level able to output to multiple objects. Seems like it sold itself a bit short. That said, these tricks with data blocks do let you work around a lot of that!

[@victorfioravante6787]

incrivel !!

[@cintron3d]

¡Gracias!

[@Erindale]

Thank you so much!

[@theguyshetellsunottoworryabout]

J'ai l'impression que c'est tellement de haut niveau que je devrai encore pratiquer un peu avant de revenir et réellement m'en imprégner Merci à vous de partager votre savoir avec nous

[@Erindale]

It’s definitely a technique that you can leverage as you improve!

[@JulianRendell]

Wow!

[@Aaws424]

This is really clever way

[@Erindale]

I hope it’s useful!

[@23lkjdfjsdlfj]

Creating groups without inputs makes things harder for me. You can replace your _controls group with a main project group input that feed into the group inputs of all of your node tool components. This way a main project just has one place to control the main design parameters that affect the design end-end. What you lose with _controls is the ability to create encapsulated reusable asset library components - because you can not provide the required main project attributes to drive your library components (because _controls has no group input).

[@Erindale]

It depends if you need per object variables or global variables. Using data blocks this way is the only way to instance global variables in multiple places. Your “main project input” approach only works on the assumption that you have a single object with a single node graph. Doing that severely limits what you can do as there will always be only a single object output which doesn’t work for a lot of BIM workflows, game asset exports etc

[@Zhiznestatistiks]

Oh yes. Putting curve controls inside node groups. It is so obvious now. It's also a good idea to pin this group somewhere on the interface.

[@Erindale]

Yes definitely! Pinned UI is one of the best things in Blender vs other software

[@khalatelomara]

I actually need a complex system for Muqarnas , this is will be mind blowing to do in geonodes

[@Erindale]

Good luck!

[@gurratell7326]

Great tip! Now imagine having those controls on the outside of the group so you don't have to go inside of it every time you want to change one of them. You can of course open up another editor with it open and pin it, but something less finicky would be nice!

[@Erindale]

I 100% agree. I am just putting together an addon that has a button to update a panel in the 3D viewport populated with any options on the output node of the control group. I’ll make a short/community post about it when I’m done 👍

[@gurratell7326]

@@Erindale Nice! I'm already on your discord so I'll have a lookout for it there :)

[@Erindale]

@gurratell7326 nice! I’ll ping you when it’s done

[@Blendermodeldeaf-ry5nz]

Hi there blender 4.2 lot change. Old Adonis remove screencast key then go get extension.install screencast key There is more than you think hehe. Extension is more high on Blender 4.2.

[@Erindale]

I need to go through updating things properly. I was just waiting for 4.2 to release properly so I know things won’t change further 😅

[@Blendermodeldeaf-ry5nz]

@@Erindale yes

[@galdocstutorials]

If I might be so bold, I actually take this one step further. :) My use case is that I have a bunch of materials and geo nodes groups that use common driver values -- in my case, it's things like palettes that capture the color of a metal, its oxides, and other related shades for rocks and dust and such. The aim is to render similar things but with different palettes for game icon art (a factorio mod; go figure). What I do is I collect them into a group as you did here -- but then, I group one more level deep into a 'generic' group. That one 'generic' has a reference to whichever material I'm using at that moment, and changing it in that one group changes it for every material that uses that group. Thus, to render out a set of images using that material, I just have to change one geo nodes group and one shader nodes group, and I can Ctrl+F12 my way to victory. Dunno how many people really wanna automate batches of things where this'd be useful, but figured I'd share. Thanks for all you do!

[@Erindale]

Heck yes! My actual workflow for generators is similar, I have the controls group with global variables and then nest that inside a “_hub” group that translates generic global controls to use specific outputs. Great to see other people finding this workflow 💪

[@michaelvaughan2986]

Would the control group method work for having multiple objects sharing a single material but with unique shader settings? Or would you need to store attributes in this case? Been hitting a limit in eevee where one material can only accept a certain amount of attributes.

[@Erindale]

Same material with different settings would need to be stored attributes unfortunately as it’s mesh dependent rather than global settings. I’m impressed you’re hitting a limit though. I wonder if you can optimise by joining floats into vectors/colours to bundle to single attributes

[@michaelvaughan2986]

@@Erindale Thank you, great idea, going to try that out.

[@arktessellator_10]

hey man i am making a custom geometry node and in the group input node i am trying to make one input accept field values and not just single value, how TF i change it from single to field value??????

[@Erindale]

On the N panel in that group you can see the different inputs. You’ll see the setting “Single Value” at the bottom of the socket settings.

[@arktessellator_10]

@@Erindale yeah I have clicked on the input for which I want to set it as field input in the input list by openening the N panel and i also see the single value option which rn is unchecked, so doesn't it mean that it should be accepting fields? But the socket has still circle and not diamond shape also when I try to connect some input value node it highlights as red connection. Ig I am missing some point/step. :(

[@nikitakashirin2117]

Cool. Been using similar trick to control multiple materials. Blender allows to build real maze of data-block relations. Is there an addon to get stats about users of particular data-block? The only one i was able to find is Atomic Data Manager. Is there anything better than that?

[@Erindale]

Not that I’ve seen. A few people have addons that print data but really you want a useable node-based, filterable depsgraph… not a simple thing to build. Even just a user map would be super useful. It’s very hidden in Blender.

[@germicidal6020]

Hi Erin! 😀 Can you suggest some books to understand advanced 3d vector matrices system or 3d in general for proceduralism, (useful to understand 3d more deeply)?? I come from engineering background so I know the basic vector calculus (people from science/engineering stream can relate, 😅) (I'm already an intermediate Geo Node User). Like in blender itself, we now have the power of manipulating matrices. This reminds me of stuff like Inverse, transpose, determinant, eigenvalues, etc etc learnt during college. It's just that if I can get a good structured textbook kind of reference, to understand all this advanced maths stuff for 3d, so that I can create complex procedural 3d stuffs with the power of 3d maths. Thanks, as always love your content. 🥰

[@Erindale]

I can’t say I do. I’m not really into book learning for applied knowledge so I tend to just experiment until I understand how things work

[@serbanandrei7532]

They don't want you to know about this secret tehnique!

[@Erindale]

Ton will be coming after me for sharing this

[@serbanandrei7532]

​@@ErindaleI love you man

[@serbanandrei7532]

Also this video was very useful, I can see myself using the datablocks all the time from now on

[@NotSoMuchFrankly]

Blender Foundation HATES this man!

[@totheknee]

But can it blend? (This might be a US-centric joke?)

[@archippusstolo7050]

Naa i think this can cause spagetti. and he selling the 'tutorial' just made a spagetti video for it.

[@Erindale]

Much less spaghetti this way 👌