6
$\begingroup$

vertex_normal was a Mesh attribute, available in Blender 2.93's Geometry Nodes. It has since disappeared. The normal attribute is a face-normal, available in the Face domain.

It is often necessary to access the vertex-normal, for instance in a case like this:

enter image description here

.. where tiles are selected and rotated according to vertex normal.

At the moment, the only way I can find to get hold of vertex-mormals is to Point Instance sticky notes all over my mesh, and transfer their instance normals (which are not listed as available,) back into the mesh, as in v_normal_B, below:

enter image description here

Am I missing something? When the team removed vertex_normal, was it because there is a better way? Better still, is there a way of accessing custom normals?

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ If anybody knows the development well enough to know the general plan of attack.. whether this kind of attribute is likely to reappear, so much the better. $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts ♦
    Commented Aug 18, 2021 at 10:14

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
4
$\begingroup$

you can try to get it like this:

enter image description here

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
3
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Aaaargh! I've been ploughing through the docs to figure out how on earth I could have deduced this from them. Did you watch the same video as me? Well, I did :D . And the language seemed so.. well.. non-mathy, and the 'String' seemed not necessary.. so, when I tried it and it didn't work, I gave up instead of re-checking. $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts ♦
    Commented Aug 18, 2021 at 15:04
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Yep, string is not necessary- might be 😅I am watching tons of tutorials….😱 $\endgroup$
    – Chris
    Commented Aug 18, 2021 at 15:06
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ But I am happy I could at least one time help you🤗 $\endgroup$
    – Chris
    Commented Aug 18, 2021 at 15:07
4
$\begingroup$

Since Blender 3.0. there's IInput > NNormal node:

It will give a vertex normal if evaluated for a point domain, like here: geometry nodes - even thickness boundary

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
2
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ I would tick this, but that would seem unfair on Chris.. his answer was right at the time. :) $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts ♦
    Commented Jan 4, 2022 at 16:55
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ @RobinBetts Chris'es answer is still valid for versions prior 3.0 which are and will be used for a long time. $\endgroup$
    – Markus von Broady
    Commented Jan 4, 2022 at 16:56

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .