Time shift node in geometry node
If there is a node which can access geometry data on particular frame will benefit a lot in some time related tasks. Like, get points’ velocity backward or forward ;interpolate geo positions in subframes etc. I know there are workarounds, but if we can have this node, many things can be easier and many impossibles can be possible.
Edit:
A quick doodle of the node in my head.
3 Comments
If you want geometry data on a specific frame, you can use a compare node to check if the current frame is equal to the frame you want to evaluate
There is "scene time" node, you can access both frames and time in seconds. You can modify them with math nodes. If you need substeps (so you're working with simulations) you can access it with the "delta time" scoket in the "simulation zone" input node, it's just a float (1/frame rate)
For example, in a hair simulation , if the hair is collide to an animated object, like a character's head, if I want to use substeps to make the collision more accurate, yes, I can use delta time and repeat zone to get substep of the hair because we have the current position and predicted position based on current velocity. But what about animated collider? We have no simple, direct access at the moment, to get the collider's future position info and here is the exact place the "time shift" node can show its power. "time shift" node as I described before, is a node can directly output the input geometry data at any given frame/time. I saw a feature request is to add an frame offset option to the bake node, and that is some "time shift" like idea, the difference is you have to bake the data before you access the geometry on specific frame.