Endless Flight Loop with Geometry Nodes - Blender Tutorial
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- čas přidán 27. 07. 2024
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In this session we create looping noise, animate it to match the frame length, and then create a simple flight simulation with raycasts. Enjoy!
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Inspired by work from Calder Moore: / 1476258340204265474
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Contents:
00:00 - Intro
01:03 - Set up displacement
03:58 - Create looping noise
07:27 - Animate the loop
13:15 - Understanding Raycasting
15:50 - Control aircraft steering
19:30 - Control aircraft altitude
23:43 - Control aircraft roll
26:48 - Smooth flight path
29:35 - Adding an airplane
30:33 - Inverse Hull
31:30 - Shader
37:54 - Isometric Camera
To keep the elevation lines at a more constant thickness, you can do it like this:
Less-Than-Threshold = ColorInvert( Desired-Threshold ) * ColorInvert( DotProduct( Normal, ) )
I think one of the answers to Blender Stack Exchange ( search 211883) gives a more exact contour-thickness? Basically arccos of the same ... for constant angle on the spherical approximation of the surface (Dot 0,0,1 is just N.z.. N is normalized)
1:08 into the video and we've started by deleting the default cube, adding in a cube, deleting that cube and then adding in another one. Truly the expertise of a blender master.
Great use of the raycast node! I'm still wrapping my head around it and it's nice to see creative examples like this.
Thanks Joey! I still need to come up with ideas for the Duplicate Elements and Accumulate Field nodes. Need more r&d time
I love seamless noise. Back in the bad-old days this was achieved with lookup tables of pseudo-random values. Your solution is ridiculously cool. Thank you.
Thanks! This works with all 4D textures as well so if you need a Voronoi base sand dune but you need it to tile for games, this has you covered
Some info gems in this one. Love the stylized look!
You're an absolute gem. I love learning from you. Thank you.
The Scene Time node is in 3.1 and above. To do the same thing in 3.0, add a value node and type #frame into it.
It's a function on the vector math node
It was impressive! Good programming skills are required here. My respect to you!
that looks epic, cant wait to try this out
Good luck!
I’m transported back to 1983 and memories of playing Zaxxon. Nice!
Zaxxon, yes! Thanks for the arcade flashback.
this is amazing. your geo nodes tutorials, along w Manuel from Entagma's, are absolutely the best on CZcams
Thanks so much! That's amazing to hear 😁
Loved to do this tutorial...(and others from ErinDoes) because I learned a lot and enjoyed the style he used... but the best is the way how he explains maths translated to nodes and then in graphs.... I can now say to my maths teachers that I understood all the stuff they tried in the past. Nothing like a graph to understand most of maths in a visual way. Difficult to synthetize that and translate in a 3D world. You are amazing!
Great idea and amazing effect!⚡🧨
Very Nice! following your flower tut now, but have had plans to do a study with flight sims in Unity, and this seems like a great way to visualize my aircraft model in flight quickly, easing the consideration of time (at least in my mind) to create world maps in a full sim environment.
Sounds like a big project! Good luck!
Just brilliant! THANK YOU! Dg
Thanks, learned a lot. Clear & detailed, Cheers
I love how you showed your custom node and explained why yours was better or what yours does instead, this was the best way custom nodes should be implemented in a geonodes tutorial, newbies have to learn the basic nodes first before getting custom ones, and youve done an amazing job, you are well ahead of your time in the tutorial game.
Thanks so much Jose!
Thank you, my endless love.
Thank you!
Finaaalllyyy a viideeoooo!!! Love it man!
As soon as I had an idea I just did it 😅 I've been totally dry with so much freelance stuff going on recently
@@Erindale it takes a lot to blow my mind with geometry nodes since I work with humongous trees all the time... When I saw the raycast stuff in this video, it blew my mind, I'm not even joking. Hopefully gonna get more stuff like this hahahahha
So this is the power of geometry nodes. Awesome job
Only the beginning
the wizard of geometry nodes... just it
Excellent Erin :O)
Mate, I wish your voice wasn't so soothing..... I need to keep up momentum for my thesis but you're relaxing me! hahaha
Thank you.
This was awesome!
Glad you enjoyed!
Awesome!
God bless you!!!
It's easy to create pitch controls. Just duplicate the altitude raycast, move it back, subtract from the original, and angle the craft along the Y axis using it. I also made the plane slow down and speed up. It's actually a lot of fun to change the landscape to see how the plane reacts. Great game.
NEW TO BLENDER ! LITERALLY HAVE NO CLUE WHAT TF ANY OF THIS MEANS AND DONT THINK I CAN TRULY LEARN THE REASONS OF EACH NODE USE HERE! I would love to know where I could go to learn in depth of each node so I can truly understand why you can just know which one you want to use
just 1 tiny critique: i'd compare forward , so the tilt initiates the movement. awesome stuff, i could catch some useful infos! thx
Yeah definitely could be added for smoother motion over bumps as well
As a blender beginner that barely understand what's going on all of this feels like magic to me.
Keep on the path! It's super rewarding to learn all this
instead of ray casting to get the ship's height you could just use the same noise setup with less detail and offset it by a little bit. Works great. Honestly the limitation of the node based system just makes me want to code. The lack of access to previous frames, the lack of loops. It is nice to learn though
You could! Even clamping it or squeezing in with a float curve to make it just rise for the peaks
And another dose of nodular black magic from the voodoo master himself !!
Thanks Erin for all that knowledge you're sharing each time, even to math-impaired fools like myself. You're teaching more than just Blender skills, be aware of that ! XD
I'm glad it's making a difference!
@@Erindale It is, my good sir, it is !
Not only I am doing things I never thought I'd be able to do, but I'm also understanding (albeit slowly because, ya know, maths !) how to do it and how to apply that logic to other process and similar endeavours...
I am struggling at making this nodular thought process more natural, because I am a man of letters, not numbers, but it helps to have you explaining numerous things.
So thanks again for your time and patience !
Make sure its not 3.0.1- Blender made some wrong with theire versions and mixed up 3.0.1 with 3.1. go on Blender > all versions > go for 3.1 and there you have" scene timer" & everything. thanks Erindale , Notice: also the smaller submenu by drag out a string out of you node is showing now in 3.1
Bless your math brain.
You're way comfortable with geo nodes, I can barely keep up!
Anyone else having trouble with the view node with geo nodes? I can't seem to get mine to work properly.
You have to use alt + shift + left click instead.
If you use ctrl + shift + left click like you would with shader nodes, it lets you see the selected node in the spreadsheet instead.
sir your voice is amazing
Much obliged
This really cool! Maybe you could rework this with a Top Gun Maverick theme. With the new movie out the video might reach more people ?
For those following at home. The "Dot Product" node is a type of "vector math" node.. :/
is anyone else having troubles with the shader? when i mix the two mixRGB nodes (at around 36:40 ) my nodes dont mix and i can only see the white edges. does anyone know what could be wrong?
Edit: i got it, one of my Inverse Hull nodes were in the wrong place. (did I mention how great of a tutorial this is. it's truly amazing, it was well put together and it helped me learn alot.)
Love and learnt a lot from your tutorials. Wouldn't it be a bit easier to compare the z-value of the position > 0 the get the height only on the top of the cube instead of normal dot product?
In this case yes but the dot product method will work for any vectors you choose to compare so much more flexible to know! Eg you can use the edge vertices node subtract the verts from each other, normalise, then dot product, then absolute and you're now able to select by edge direction 👌
@@Erindale yeah, you are absolutely right
Thanks. I hadn't played with Geometry Nodes before. I am using Blender 3.0.0 and I noticed there are some differences for sure. The is not "Dot" node that I can find, plus I can't open search by dragging the way you do. I got part way through your tutorial and branched off on my own. I am currently rendering an animation of flying over endless snow. I plan to also do one over open water. Thanks for getting me started.
Yeah 3.1 is out now and has the drag search option. Dot product is a function of the vector math node! If you post your results on social media tag me - I love seeing what people get up to
@@Erindale I will do. I am waiting for this animation to render. It will probably take 20 hours or so from my quick calculation. When it is done, I will be putting it on both my other YT channel and on Pexels.
I am guessing that the scene property is also in a later build. I am using #frame/100 to do the animating. I have never tagged anyone before. Do I just put in your username with @ in front? The same as at the beginning of this comment.
Yeah if your putting it on CZcams then you can tag me in the description or comments like that and I'll get a notification
@@Erindale OK I'll do that for sure.
@@Erindale I just uploaded a test animation on my other channel Larchmedia. This will give you an idea of what I am doing. I am making a few tweaks to the settings before doing the full-length version. Thanks Again!
For the angle of the plane, I think you had your subtract swapped, because the wing would raise in the direction it moved sideways, which is backwards. However, in your clip at the very end it seems you had corrected it. Also, when I used an object input for my plane vs. the cube, the Vector Rotate didn't work. I ended up plugging the rotate value right into the Rotation spot on the Transform node and it worked well. I'll post my results on Twitter & here once I render it. Thanks for the great tutorial!
Yeah you're right. In the video I added some text to say sample in a positive direction and that's what fixes the banking for me. It also allows you to bank and then move into the turn which feels more natural. Strange the vector rotate didn't work for you but glad you got a workaround!
@@Erindale Here's my result. czcams.com/video/dmN1ijpxgWg/video.html
Quick question, how did you get so proficient with geo-nodes? You're amazing with them!
Too much practice 😅
for some reason my inverse hull does not work and does not allow me to color change my object using the attributes in the shader, the scale node just changes the dimensions of the cube and not the size of the outline. Not sure what i did wrong :/
I have found it :-)
Is there any amount of difference in the solidify work-around used here and a normal solidify modifier?
You want to be able to assign your materials inside Geo Nodes so it makes it simpler to just make the solidify in Geo Nodes too.
Would we now use the named attribute node now? Instead of a capture attribute node to do the shader?
Yeah store named attribute on the mesh and read it out in the shader
Hello there, I really thankfull for your tutorial. I watched your video about using weight map into geometry node. Is there a way to input multiple weight map group beside manually inputing in the modifier group input bar. I want to use a lot of combination of weight map. I would love to have a method where it can be captured or transfered like attr inside a mesh. Is this possible now?
Right now we have to bring the names in via the modifier. They can be captured, transferred and modified inside the node tree though. There should be named attribute nodes coming soon though to get/set attributes
@@Erindale Thank you. Glad to hear that the method to get the attr by name will be added. Thank you for the answer.
If I wanted to make the cube longer, how could I make it so the noise isn't repeating on the surface? I've created a larger landscape using this tutorial but there are a few hills that are obvious they are repeating.
The part where I talk able the scaling, you can do it in there. You can also increase the noise detail and then make the texture bigger so the hills look about the right size but there'll be proportionally more of them per cycle
How can I color the surface to whatever I want? can I add my own image/or color ramp to the surface color? It won't seem o register each time I try and connect something
Make sure you've assigned the material in geometry nodes. Your own images should work fine although you won't have any UV maps so you'll have to set it to box mapping and maybe use the Position socket of the Geometry input node in shaders. Beyond that, hard to say without seeing your nodes. Maybe ask with a screenshot on my discord server!
@@Erindale you're so thoughtful and helpful! I really appreciate it. Also didn;t know you had a discourd. I'm going to join immediately! THank you
Would there be a good way to add random instances that track with the terrain? I have been try to add some trees. Instances on the object surface of course just move up and down. I tried instancing based on noise with the same vector as the terrain and it tracks properly but adds only dense clumps of trees.
Have you found a solution for this? I'm working on the same problem and the best I've managed is getting the trees to move along one axis but they don't follow the height of the terrain and I don't generate new ones as the scene plays out. If you ever figure this out I'd love to hear about it.
@@DoctorRobotronic I haven't made much progress yet. I'll check back in if I figure it out.
@@John0Phillips I got as far as getting the trees to follow the speed of the land mass and not move up and down, but they aren't placed vertically correctly and it doesn't seem to be able to be solved by using a math node to just change the height by a flat amount. What I did was I distributed the trees on the original cube, not the displaced one, and then I made a node group from the displacement and replaced the scene time with just a value of 1 representing where the trees are at frame 1. This is the best results I've gotten so far but I'm nearing the point of giving up and just moving on to a new project as I'm not sure it'll be worth the effort, since I won't be able to make the trees loop anyway.
Not sure if this works but maybe try mixing in some of MaxEdge's leaf spline tutorial
I've got this working. What I did was distribute points on the top of the terrain cube. I got those tracking along the x coordinate by taking the x value from the Combine XYZ node used early on in Erin's tree (before he manipulates it with the sin/cos). To get them to sit on the terrain as it moves, I used another Raycast node acting on each of those points. Using the points as the source position for the Raycast, you can then get the hit position that the points are supposed to 'snap' to. Provide that position to another Set Position node for your points. There may be a more elegant way, but this works pretty well for me. OH. One last important bit. You need _another_ set position on those points to reset their x position when they arrive at the edge of the terrain (otherwise they'll just keep going away from the scene). For that I used a Compare node. If less than -0.5, reset it to 0.5 so it can begin its journey again. When I'm done I'll drop a screenshot of the node tree somwhere.
This is amazing. So much to absorb. My main interest is seamless offsets. How can I make it look like it's not moving from one direction to the other - have the texture move on the Z axis? I tried changing the initial axis to Z, and shuffling the sine/cos, but didn't get good results.
A bit of a weird solution but if you plug your multiply (scene time, divide, multiply) into the Z instead of the X channel and then just before you combine your xyz vector before the noises, you add the previously unused Z channel to the Z channel we generate. So where you have that Sine coming from Y, add the Z to that before it goes into the CombineXYZ before the noise textures
@@Erindale I think this is what you're saying. czcams.com/video/qvcoEprLPoM/video.html
Unfortunately, the way I have this set up, doesn't loop. I would be happy to join your Patreon to get some help with this.
Love the tutorial! If i distribute objects on the top surface, is there a way to move the objects along the surface?
The issue is spawning and unspawning. You could make a longer strip of points and then translate that as the hight map moves while raycasting down at the surface so it looks stuck to the surface and then just delete anything where Is Hit is 0
@@Erindale sounds a bit complex to my potato brain but i will definitely give it a try! Thanks!
if I doesn't quite get what you mean on 06:52, is there any explanation that help me out?
With the looping? Look at my more recent looped noise tutorial
hmm…
I can`t understand why do you use raycast at 1st stage, if you already have height of displacement and even you can average it (with Attribute statistics)
Also why do you use another raycast for steering, if you can get averaged normals?
Finding the average displacement wouldn't tell me which direction or how far to move and just using the normal direction doesn't always steer you away from obstacles depending on the ground. Give it a go though! Testing is the best way to understand what you can do with the nodes
Anyone know why in the 'set up displacement section' putting a subtract changes the midlevel and the multiply becomes the strength I don't understand why?
Best way to understand it is just to draw it out on paper. Subtract moves the graph down which moves where the y=0 line is. That 0 position is the mid-level so you're defining where it sits. Multiply is strength because you're literally multiplying the values bigger or smaller. Multiplication always scales away from 0, hense doing mid-level first
@@Erindale Thank you so much for the reply! that was the only thing really troubling me. Your work is incredible! I hope you are doing well!
Lovely Tutorial! I'm a beginner but I followed along and kept up with pretty much every part of it. I had just one issue around 32:00 minutes: I cannot find/activate the "Viewer" Node. Blender Version 3.3.0 Any suggestions?
So basically the animation is running, but it's all in white.
Viewer node is part of the node wrangler add-on you need to enable. The it can be added with ctrl+shift+left click
@@Erindale Thank you for your swift reply! I have the Node Wrangler active.
my spaceship is not rotating... but when it was a plane it was... any idea of the problem?
If the plane was but the spaceship isn't then it must just be a missed connection in there when you added the spaceship
Dumb question: do you also have trouble connecting the noodles in 3.2? I noticed few times you tried to pull one from a socket to another and didn't work immediately and you had to give it one or two more goes. I'm having this issue all the damn time, I thought it was my mouse acting up, but maybe it's a bug in alpha? Has it been already reported? So incredibly annoying
Maybe your nodes are too close together? I've had issues when they're closer than about two grid squares.
@@fuglsnef maybe, but it also happens with nodes that are quite far apart. Of course when I perfectly aim to the socket and click, exactly on top of it, I don't have that problem, but if it's even slightly off center it doesn't work, it's like it doesn't give me a little bit of tolerance around the socket
Yeah looks like some patch to fix dragging in the asset manager and file browser has made pulling noodles significantly harder in node trees in the last few days. Hopefully this gets a fix quickly!
can you show how to add stone that loops same way so it looks realy flying in a square area ? rock or tree would be nice in this scene. thanks Sir ! really great tutorial - that i looking forward. this tiny scale world
or quick: a living diorama with incoming and outgoing objects like cars, peoples etc. its hard to cut out the scene so it looks like a example " snow globe " - thanks Sir
Nothing actually moves sideways in the scene so you would need to come up with a way to do that without it looking obviously different. You could try creating a patch of points on a grid that is as long as one noise wavelength. Then array a few of those so you have enough for the cycle to repeat as you translate it past the ground. You can then raycast it down so the points land on the mesh and delete any that miss.
@@Erindale thanks you awnsered, you are a Legend Sir. thanks for everything ! i will try it.
4:00
23:00
How does he have straight connection lines between nodes???
Theme settings noodle curving
I can't see the wave texture it's black I used emission node instead of the viewer node is it because of this?
Should be fine but if there's not a texture showing then I'd assume there's something wrong with the input vector
@@Erindale Thank you for the response. It was because I didn't select a material in the set material node.😅
Hey sir, i absolute love this tutorial, it can open so much things. please allow me one short questiuon. if i want to have lets say a " slope" so one side is higher than the other, like a hillside, where i can do this ? i tried to replace the cube with my own shape object but it dosent work, maybe you can give a little help, where i can put some extra nodes to achieve this result - have a great day sir, ciao
If you’re replacing the terrain, then you’ll just need to make sure that that is the object that you are raycasting at. Also, because our flight is based on moving the noise displacement and the aeroplane stays still, you’re gonna want a large terrain model if your hand making something so that you can move it physically past the aeroplane
@@Erindale i just need the terrain moving, everything else i will animate by hand, i have a great idea ^^ just needa downhill endless loop, this could be perfetc, just need a cone ish object instead of squared cube, i will try tweak another primitives, i mean, it would be better if i can build everything i one as you did, but for me its enough just to have the looped landscape :D thansk sir reply so fast ! hurra !
yes i understand when i manipulate somethign it will change the end or even everything, so far i understand locig, but combined with math functions, thats my limit, maybe i will try figure it out in another tutorial i think :D this is so big, i tried adding some rotation vectore noides between some operation but nothign changed, i thinks its to easy i tried, so much thanks erindale, thank you and peace
how did calder applying such complex underlayer?
I don't quite understand
I don´t have the Dot Product on geometry nodes
It would be a function in your Vector Math node
What if I have my plane at 10x10 m ?
How do I loop it ?
You have values to control the speed and the land scale so just play with those. It'll loop in a certain frame range, so the size of the plane is secondary
Now input normal is just called Normal and Dot product is just Vector Math now
Dot product has always been on the vector math node but if you use the drag search then you can just type dot product and go directly
Day 1 : I follow your tutorial and reached where aeroplane was added but my results was not similar as I want. I missed few things 😅
Day 2: I start the project from 0, reached where meterials was added, took whole day for me. When I take break turn off my PC and when I open my project file, I got a cube😢. Many feields in geometry node become totally red.
I don't know why it happened 😟
Did you reopen the file in the correct version of Blender? If you've made it in 3.0 or higher and then opend it in 2.93, it won't recognise the nodes
@@Erindale thanks ❤️, it opened finally. I have to run blender 3.2 than I open my file in it. 😅 You saved my whole day progress
how I get that ETK raycast ?
Should be in ETK if you have one of the recent versions. In the Utilities category
How do you add the scene time node? I can't seem to find it?
Thats 3.1+ version node what blender version are you using?
@@ginyeombi6910 Ahhh I'm on 3.0.1. Thank you!
@@corin1960 you can get scene time on 3.0.1 too using value node and #frame driver
@@corin1960 but idk there is other 3.1 node but he said its 3.2 tutorial and work on 3.1
@@ginyeombi6910 bit with frame driver its not seamless thats what scene timer do
when i am playing the animation the plane is intersecting the cube like a glitch
What can i do to fix it ??
That's when the Raycast is below the surface of the cube so just take a position node age and add some Z vector to it and use that in the Source Position socket of the Raycast
@@Erindale will try it
@@Erindale what is the meaning of position node age . actually its just been a week am using geometry nodes
@@Erindale when i am taking my speed lower than one then it is working perfectly
Let's say I want a street in the middle of the noise map . Where and what would i have to add? I want a little car in the middle instead of an airplane.
You would need to use the steering mechanics along the length of a spline and then skin it with a line to make a ribbon and then raycast that straight down to shrink-wrap it to the ground and extrude to solidify. For the car you could just sample the curve position and use that as the position of the car
@@Erindale Ahhh thanks very much . not all i understand but i will try and try until it workds. Thanks so much.
😅 NASA need brain like you. Your thinking powerful in maths is very strong.
Haha thanks so much! Unfortunately they only take American nationals... I already tried 😅
@@Erindale i am quite sure i saw a blender conference talk someone showing his work for a french company, that works with nasa or esa. the talk was about him/them using blender for visualisations. it's been a while, so i can't provide more details
@@Erindale Apply Again 👍😅
I got F for mathematic.
This will help
32:38 😆 Damn it!
😇 I was hoping that someone blender-smarter than me would solve this problem (lines always with the same vertical thickness no matter how shallow the faces they're shading). Struggled with this a while back (too?):
instagram.com/p/B3izPXTIr_e/
You can do it with geometry nodes but it's not a perfect or fast solution but essentially creating splines as contours and then meshing them
@@Erindale Thank you for the tip! Will look into it!