Geometry Nodes: Nodes Wishlist

Here are 10 nodes I can't wait to get in geometry nodes and why:

1. Displacement

The displacement node would permit essentially any kind of geometry manipulation you can imagine, with enough time and effort. Displacement is so broadly useful for so many purposes, it should be one of the first nodes added to Geometry Nodes. All it needs as inputs is the displacement space, strength, and a vertex group.

2. Mask

Displacement can move any vertex to anywhere else, but it can't remove them. This allows for deletion of mesh vertices, all we need next is something to create vertices..

3. Geometry Primitives

A node to create one of several common types of primitives. Plane, Cube, Grid, Sphere, Cone, Cylinder. These basic shapes in combination with displacement, masking, booleans, join, etc, would allow for incredible freedom to procedurally model any kind of 3D form.

4. Solidify & 5. Bevel & 6. Mirror

Solidify, Bevel and Mirror. Three of the most frequently used modifiers in Blender, rounding or solidifying or mirroring a shape is a common modelling task and hence would be great to have as a node.

7. Image Texture

Textures are always incredibly useful. As inputs they can produce all manner of random or interesting complex shapes or designs. Textures could be used to control the strength of displacements, mask weights, the size or shape of primitives, the thickness of solidify, the roundness of bevel, etc. Of course how textures are mapped is also important, which is why we need..

8. UV Project

With the ability to apply UV Unwrap and UV Project operations onto geometry, we can have fine grained control over how textures are mapped onto objects. This works well in conjunction with materials as well.

9. Vertex Weight - Edit and Proximity

With all these operations potentially taking vertex groups as inputs, it makes sense to have a means to manipulate vertex weights of vertex groups! So I propose the Vertex Weight Edit and Proximity modifiers become a node as well.

10. Repeat

Saved the best for last!

A special node that really takes advantage of the new potential of geometry nodes! This node is like the group node, but with a twist:

The repeat node has one group of input connections on the input node, one group of input/output loop connections that are available at the input and output nodes, and one group of output connections on the output node.

The initialisation inputs can be read every repeat, the loop inputs/outputs can be read from and written to with each loop, and the outputs can be written to at the very end. And naturally the repeat node has a 'count' input to control the number of repeats of the group.

This would allow for creating complex operations that repeat themselves any number of times, potentially a very powerful tool if used correctly.

Final Word

With these 10 nodes, infinite possibilities are opened up for procedural modelling in Blender. Almost any kind of modelling becomes possible with enough manipulation of nodes once we have these tools to use.

Do you agree with my list? Let me know in the comments.