Twist and Shout: Using Geometry Nodes to Create a Mobius Strip

[@ilirbeqiri]

Thank you @JohnnyMatthews for sharing your knowledge. Saw your video a few days ago. Learned more than one thing new. But I couldn’t stop thinking there should be a shorter way. Then it hit me and so I sat down and recorded my alternative way of generating a Mobius Strip. I have tried more than once to post the video link here, but somehow KZbin qualifies my comments as spam (maybe just because of the link presence) and it gets deleted. Anyway, I'm posting a description of my solution: Instead of deleting the last segment of polygon rings after the Curves to Mesh stage, split the curve circle open using a Trim node. This breaks the curve cycle but closes the gap perfectly by inserting a new segment. Now the first and last row match, but not perfectly. Insert a Set Spline Type node before the Trim, and change the type to Bezier. Then set both handle types to Auto. This takes care of the matching problem but introduces many new segments in between the control points. To reduce them, simply insert a Set Spline resolution node after the original circle and lower the value to zero. Play around with the tilting amount and test it yourself. And that's it. This may not be the best way to describe it, but if you are interested, just hop on my channel and have a look.

[@StarfuryFlames]

nice one!

[@PCgmesforever]

Your tutorials are invaluable. Video quality, script , clarity and the content. All of it adds up to a tutorial of incalculable value for me personally. You have my sincere gratitude.

[@JohnnyMatthews]

You are very welcome and thanks for watching! Thanks for the kind words.

[@dongchanpark1351]

I'm a student studying in Korea! Your lecture was so good that it helped me a lot. Thank you!😀

[@dorex2007]

Up until the last 30 seconds, I thought this was interesting but FAR too involved as opposed to just using mesh. The last 30 seconds sure changed my mind. Excellent work Johnny

[@grobknoblin5402]

These are super cool!!!! currently working my way through your catalogue I've been jumping around but I watch you so often I though I might as well go through every vide start to finish! Your knowledge of geo nodes and math are insane!!!!! at around 18mins you talk about subtracting tau after dividing tau by the point count: how did you learn this type of thing? it seems like magic to me I have no idea what I would even google to begin to understand why to do that. Do you have any tips or plan to do any courses on how to get good at knowing the math to get good at Blender and nodes?

[@man_art_man]

Yes! I love Möbius stuff 😅

[@3DRodney]

wow. you use a lot of nodes here in ways that I was unfamiliar with. One of my main hurdles with geometry nodes has been knowing what nodes are available and what has changed from each version of blender. For example, the sample index node has only been available since v3.4, and I believe only allows retrieving the index values since v3.5 alpha. Not really sure how to word this, but I would love to learn your evaluation strategy when researching node functionality (maybe what resources you use, etc), perhaps that could be a topic for a future video? I know that sounds pretty wide open and maybe not doable, but in any case your knowledge and skill base is remarkable and impressive.

[@mickyr171]

Not sure if anyone has pointed it out yet but if you add a "set spline cyclic" after the "set curve tilt" and turn off cyclic, then a "merge by distance" after the "curve to mesh" you can plug in an "edge neighbors" to the A slot of a "compare" node set to equals and set the B slot to 1 then use that boolean output to the "merge by distance" and complete the shape that way, it does take some playing with the distance in the "merge by distance" node though, your way is probably more accurate lol but thought id share anyway after experimenting

[@zboy303]

Great work, Johnny. Love seeing how you reason out the various steps. Still trying to get my head around storing attributes as a boolean! It makes sense, but I would probably have tried to store them as indices and then have run into trouble.

[@JohnnyMatthews]

I’m sure there are 20 other ways to make this work. This is just where my brain went.

[@OrangeJambo]

Very inspiring. Thank you!

[@flavio8430]

Fantastic tutorial, learning a lot -- thanks for sharing! I noticed that, when I assign a material to the Mobius node, the line where the ends meet is shown -- to correct that I added a "Merge by Distance" node at the end of the Mobius node.

[@JohnnyMatthews]

I realized too late that I forgot to add that. It is actually in the source file on my Gumroad.

[@aniki8385]

Mate, your lessons are great, thank you!

[@JohnnyMatthews]

You’re welcome, thanks for watching!

[@mikaelgonzalez2739]

Pretty cool! Kind of long but manages to solve all problems encountered by simpler solutions. However, do you know how to apply smooth shade to the flat part without smoothing the side angles? Auto-smooth does not seem to work here! Keep it up Edit: increasing resolution does the trick, but I imagine it takes a toll on process heaviness.

[@palpytine]

Two questions: Why named attributes and not capture attributes? And why not specify the rotation as a number of faces rather than as a fraction?

[@genesis2303]

Couldn't this be easier with ring selection/loop cut selection node? I saw experimental some time ago, maybe it could simplify this?

[@JohnnyMatthews]

Sure, and when they come out I’ll be glad to use them!

[@ruslandad365]

Hey hello You are just cool!!! You solved the problem that I could not solve for so long how to create a custom UV and texture a closed object using the example of a donut Thank you!!!!

[@AshFrankArt]

I'm curious to see how these turn out when 3D printed. Guess I'll have to find out!

[@JohnnyMatthews]

Here was a test print from just the torus knot node www.patreon.com/posts/76996420

[@AshFrankArt]

@@JohnnyMatthews hey that's awesome!

[@exmello]

I found an easier way to do this is to use a Curve Spiral instead of a Curve Circle. Set the height to 0 and rotations to 1. Then merge by distance. Or your way with a curve circle, instead of identifying faces to delete, just Set Spline Cyclic to false.

[@santyricon]

I was just thinking on creating a Möbius strip on blender last night lol

[@santyricon]

BTW, I wouldn't have been able to creating them, lol

[@JohnnyMatthews]

It was a little tricky :) I'm sure you could have gotten it eventually.