LOL , a little late but blender has "drivers". You don't need animation nodes to animate cogs. Drivers are mandatory for character rigging for instance.
wow this gear ratio stuff is much simpler than I thought! Animation nodes however are proving to be as complicated as I expected them to be, and as powerful. So glad you put these out.
Your welcome, I'm glad these old tutorials are still helping people 😊. The downside of power is unfortunately complexity, but once you get the hang of it, it provides less of a barrier between brain and result.
Fantastic Production quality on these Tutorials, they are very easy to follow and currently the only good tutorials on Animation nodes that i've found. Thank you for making these tuts i'm really keen for the next one working with loops and arrays i've been trying to work it out myself for a few weeks now on and off.
Glad to see you're finding them helpful :) I try to make these tutorials whenever I can, but it's hard to find time to record them, due to the fact that I need about 1 uninterrupted hour, on a day where I don't have homework, and that free hour happens to be before work, as I'm usually pretty exhausted afterwords (in a good way, i love my job, but it's tiring). I have tomorrow and Tuesday off, which means I should be able to record then, and have the next part out by next weekend.
Yeah, you gotta be in the right head space when recording. I myself have wanted to start making tutorials in other areas of blender its hard to find the time with university and work then when you do it is almost never without interruptions. Hopefully your able to work on the next part over then few days im pretty keen know more.
These are REALLY well done! I've been waiting for someone to better explain these. I can't wait for the rest of the series. Thank you for taking the time to do these. Cheers!
Very helpful tutorial Zach. Soon i will watch all about animation nodes because i'm new on this. One thought. There is no need to plug in 2 more math nodes in order to get right rotation. You can set the multiply value at -2 in the very first math node and that do the trick :) Cheers. :)
I just noticed a great potential i mean, now that i've learned how to make gears work, i don't have to that ever again, i just have to adjust some paramethers, i wonder how many other things i can create the node tree only once
OMG its 3 years ago, you definitely find why still I will tell you because Extruded text don't have mesh like objects(cube, spheres, gears etc) we add. I think in order to modify text by our own we have to remesh Text
Is that a coincidence? After watching your first tutorial on Animation nodes I tried rotating 3 gears too, without knowing your next tutorial will be on gears. But, yeah, I didn't use different sized gears :P
This is one of the best AN tutorials i've seen. The animations to explain math and stuff are very cool and did you made them in blender? How do you get those straight lines between nodes?
-Thanks, always glad to hear people learning from my videos -I used to make the animations in blender, but switched to After Effects as it renders faster (but blender is still fantastic for that sort of thing I will make some tutorials after I finish the Animation Nodes videos) -Go to file > User Preferences > Themes > Node Editor > Noodle curving = 0
It would have been much better if you would have explained why the various nodes work they do.. I saw CGMatter video on animation nodes.. They are brilliant.. Just so easy to understand..
man your videos are awesome whats up with the patreon page?? im not sure what that is do you do more indepth tutorials there cause i want to learn everything about animation node without getting bored and your videos are the perfect pacing and the music at the end pretty cool
While my Patreon has the perks of Patron only streams, Access to all my project files (including After Effects clips for all my animations), watching my videos early, and name in the credits, all of my videos do eventually get uploaded to RUclips after some time. These videos to take a lot of time, so Patreon support really does help me make them. With Animation Nodes I'm starting from the beginning, and getting more and more complex. I was holding back until AN 2.0 came out, and now that it is, things are going to get really fun :)
Hey Zach, great tutorials! The Extra Objects extension actually gives gears a custom property with it's teeth count, so you could create a subprogram which takes two gears and returns the gear ratio, simplifying the graph. Edit: Actually, you could put everything needed to mesh two gears in a subprogram! Here's my ndoe graph after implementing this: i.imgur.com/9G5YQZt.png
Hey Zach, nice series, gonna keep an eye for latest uploads ;) Btw, is there a way to use the object's local transformation as a transform input? I think it's currently using the object's world transformation.
I'm not really sure I know what you mean, but if you want to get the new position after it's been transformed by AN, use the object output of the Transform Output node
Amazing tutorial man. I am having an issue though with my mid gear not responding to the rotation from the driver gear. Any Idea what could be the cause? node tree looks exactly like yours.
@@ZachHixsonTutorials Ok somehow it was solved when I checked "Always" in the execution properties. With other 2.8 tutorials it was recommended to uncheck that and check the other options separately which worked until now, but for some reason with this only when always is checked the rotation works. waddyaknow
@@guynao The "Always," option is usually best unless you have a tree that really slows down your performance or you have some kind of niche requirements.
Great video for beginners like me. Btw, couldn't you just add additional Math node with the value of 2, right after that Mah node with the value of -1? Seems a bit easier. What I did after that is used the same principle for the small gear to drive that 18 teeth gear but then I used value 0,33... which of course might cause imperfections after few hundreds rotations :D
It was to make it a bit more easily copy and pastable. If the next gear ratio wasn't 12 / 6, but instead 3/5 or something, then we would need to add the node back in.
Because when teaching people it's important to actually able to see the numbers and what they are doing. Showing the gear ratios, and having them easily adjustable as separate parameters makes it easier to copy / paste and tweak later with different gear setups.
How come when I do a search for math node, I can't find it in the list of math nodes? I did find it in number menu? I was able to complete this tutorial, although I did not understand everything. The next ones seem a lot harder, but I'l give it a try...
Hi, can you include the version of the blender and the version of the "animation node" addon when creating this video in the description. I can not find "Separate Euler" in my Blender ???
I don't know, maybe bug, btw, I reinstall my AnimNode addon using 1.6 version Blender 2.76 + AnimNode 1.0 -> no Separate Euler Blender 2.76 + AnimNode 1.6 -> Separate Euler is seen
my question is definitely out of scope of this (awesome) tutorial, but could an object's metadata (Properties Panel -> Object -> Custom Properties -> Add) be used to store the tooth count? I've tried this (e.g. toothCount = 12) but then I can't figure out how to pull that data into ani-nodes... tried Object -> Object Attribute Input -> "toothCount" -> Debug ... gets me nothing. Thanks!
Here's the way I figured it out: imgur.com/a/fLqCs I created a cube, and added the "TestVar" property to it, with a value of 12. I then used the "Object Attribute Input" node with the "Get" attribute and the argument "TestVar" in order to get the property.
I have don't have that panel when I press F6 while having the gear selected. Edited: Figured it out, if you touch or change anything else right after you make a gear, like changing the rotation or location the F6 property menu WILL NOT pop up.
Just about to tell you that. I read a proposal that looks like that might be changed in the future, you can read it here: wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Kevindietrich/NodeSystem
Can I ask a quick question? So I have been recreating those gifs from the official animation node doc, is there any way to save them as a custom addon for easy reuse? I know python I just don't know where to start. Again I just want to say keep up the good work, not enough people know the hidden potential of this addon or is there enough people putting actually time and effort to make these tutorials!
Your first step would be to dig through the Animation Nodes addon folder. Each nodes is saved as a .py file (this could be changed with the next version) and look at the way the nodes are build. There are also some docs here: animation-nodes-manual.readthedocs.io/en/latest/dev_guide/tutorials/index.html
Thanks. But geez, Blender makes something that's much easier to do in other 3D app's node systems much harder than it needs to be i.e. no need for all of the intermediate nodes apart from a maths node in between.
It's an issue with flexibility VS. simplicity. In order to make something more flexible, you need more options and control over the smaller details. AN isn't just a mograph tool, it's an all out visual scripting language no different than something like Python, just a little higher level (IE: more human readable).
When did I say math is hard? Also the reason I did it this way was again, because it's easier to convey through a tutorial, and easier to duplicate / tweak for people who are just learning Animation Nodes.
Just pointing out how intimidating it might appear to new users to concoct such unnecessarily complicated node graphs. Each gear ratio can be computed with one division node.
That's not a criticism. I just noticed it was more advanced than the one before. 6 nodes for #1 and 14 nodes for #2 and the concept is harder. Your explanation is thorough though.
I wish I had this 4 years ago when I animated 900 gears with brute force. Thanks for the TUT.
respect
LOL , a little late but blender has "drivers". You don't need animation nodes to animate cogs. Drivers are mandatory for character rigging for instance.
5:35 The moment, my mind exploded. Thats so crazy, that thats possible.
Thank you so much for this well explained and easy to understand tutorial!
wow this gear ratio stuff is much simpler than I thought! Animation nodes however are proving to be as complicated as I expected them to be, and as powerful. So glad you put these out.
Your welcome, I'm glad these old tutorials are still helping people 😊. The downside of power is unfortunately complexity, but once you get the hang of it, it provides less of a barrier between brain and result.
buddy you needs to be my maths teacher or engineering professor.... you knows too much :) and explanation is awsome
these videos are gold
many thanks for sharing your knowledge
That music at the end is appropriate. I'll try being brave, Zach. I'll try. Thanks for the great tutorials.
Wow!.....this is fantastic. Hats off to Zach for making this accessible, and hats off to JaquesLucke who coded the animation nodes....
I am an Engineer and I could never imagine to use such technical knowledge into art. Now Singularity is starting to make sense. sense.
Im crying, thank you so much for these! Beautifully done Zach! Hope to see more introductory level AN tuts.
ruclips.net/video/CprfjfN5PRs/видео.html
Fantastic Production quality on these Tutorials, they are very easy to follow and currently the only good tutorials on Animation nodes that i've found. Thank you for making these tuts i'm really keen for the next one working with loops and arrays i've been trying to work it out myself for a few weeks now on and off.
Glad to see you're finding them helpful :)
I try to make these tutorials whenever I can, but it's hard to find time to record them, due to the fact that I need about 1 uninterrupted hour, on a day where I don't have homework, and that free hour happens to be before work, as I'm usually pretty exhausted afterwords (in a good way, i love my job, but it's tiring).
I have tomorrow and Tuesday off, which means I should be able to record then, and have the next part out by next weekend.
Yeah, you gotta be in the right head space when recording. I myself have wanted to start making tutorials in other areas of blender its hard to find the time with university and work then when you do it is almost never without interruptions. Hopefully your able to work on the next part over then few days im pretty keen know more.
oh great tutorials.. just what i needed to get started with animation nodes. huge thanks
This is brilliant!
That's exactly what I was looking for!!!
Thanks.
These are REALLY well done! I've been waiting for someone to better explain these. I can't wait for the rest of the series. Thank you for taking the time to do these. Cheers!
Next video should be up by either tomorrow or Tuesday, so you won't have to wait long :)
Since Andrew Kramer 's/Price Tutorials, it's probably one the best tut i've just ever done!!
Very well done tutorials. Keep it up!
This Animation Node stuff reminds me of Xpresso in Cinema 4d. Great tutorial!
I've never used xpresso, but from what I've seen it's pretty much the same thing
Been wanting to learn this for sometime, great vids. Subscribed.
Thanks
Cool..... thanks
Thank you for teaching. Very clear tutorial~!
Very helpful tutorial Zach. Soon i will watch all about animation nodes because i'm new on this. One thought. There is no need to plug in 2 more math nodes in order to get right rotation. You can set the multiply value at -2 in the very first math node and that do the trick :) Cheers. :)
Your right, it was just easier in the moment to select all of them and copy and paste
you are a hero for us. thanks man
its awesome! I can do it! i'm happy!
BOOM! That rocked! Thanks so much :)
woohoo. This is really cool tut. Sinple explanation ever)) Thank you a lot.
Thank you once again, I love this series.
Thank you for a good tutorial
I just noticed a great potential i mean, now that i've learned how to make gears work, i don't have to that ever again, i just have to adjust some paramethers, i wonder how many other things i can create the node tree only once
Very helpful tutorial! Thanks :D
awesome
01:35 - You can also rotate in object mode, and then Ctrl+A - apply rotationץ
Edit: Seems it doesn't work with text though
Amazing tutorial :D
OMG its 3 years ago, you definitely find why still I will tell you because Extruded text don't have mesh like objects(cube, spheres, gears etc) we add. I think in order to modify text by our own we have to remesh Text
Is that a coincidence? After watching your first tutorial on Animation nodes I tried rotating 3 gears too, without knowing your next tutorial will be on gears. But, yeah, I didn't use different sized gears :P
Amazing!!!
This is one of the best AN tutorials i've seen.
The animations to explain math and stuff are very cool and did you made them in blender?
How do you get those straight lines between nodes?
-Thanks, always glad to hear people learning from my videos
-I used to make the animations in blender, but switched to After Effects as it renders faster (but blender is still fantastic for that sort of thing I will make some tutorials after I finish the Animation Nodes videos)
-Go to file > User Preferences > Themes > Node Editor > Noodle curving = 0
I'll set mine to 10 thank you very much! >w
Dude ! you rock!
It would have been much better if you would have explained why the various nodes work they do.. I saw CGMatter video on animation nodes.. They are brilliant.. Just so easy to understand..
thanks!
man your videos are awesome whats up with the patreon page?? im not sure what that is do you do more indepth tutorials there cause i want to learn everything about animation node without getting bored and your videos are the perfect pacing and the music at the end pretty cool
While my Patreon has the perks of Patron only streams, Access to all my project files (including After Effects clips for all my animations), watching my videos early, and name in the credits, all of my videos do eventually get uploaded to RUclips after some time.
These videos to take a lot of time, so Patreon support really does help me make them. With Animation Nodes I'm starting from the beginning, and getting more and more complex. I was holding back until AN 2.0 came out, and now that it is, things are going to get really fun :)
Where in the node tree would I add the time info / frame to animate the rotation?
Simply apply an object rotation to the first gear, just like we did with all the others
How can i open parameter options at 1:13 ? What is shortcut key?
F6. You cal also just go to the "T" menu on the left of the screen, but it was just easier for me to screen-cap the floating menu instead.
Hey Zach, great tutorials!
The Extra Objects extension actually gives gears a custom property with it's teeth count, so you could create a subprogram which takes two gears and returns the gear ratio, simplifying the graph.
Edit: Actually, you could put everything needed to mesh two gears in a subprogram!
Here's my ndoe graph after implementing this: i.imgur.com/9G5YQZt.png
I tried mimicking your node setup. I am having an issue finding the number_of_teeth attribute! I just get the error "Attribute not found"
Nice Tut!
greeat tuts,, more please lads
Hey Zach, nice series, gonna keep an eye for latest uploads ;)
Btw, is there a way to use the object's local transformation as a transform input?
I think it's currently using the object's world transformation.
I'm not really sure I know what you mean, but if you want to get the new position after it's been transformed by AN, use the object output of the Transform Output node
There is no "seperate Euler" in blender 2.82?
Add > Rotation > Separate Euler. Just checked, it's there. AN 2.1.4 for 2.8
Amazing tutorial man. I am having an issue though with my mid gear not responding to the rotation from the driver gear. Any Idea what could be the cause? node tree looks exactly like yours.
Make sure all the object inputs are set correctly, and if that's not the problem the send me a screenshot of your node tree
@@ZachHixsonTutorials Ok somehow it was solved when I checked "Always" in the execution properties. With other 2.8 tutorials it was recommended to uncheck that and check the other options separately which worked until now, but for some reason with this only when always is checked the rotation works. waddyaknow
@@guynao The "Always," option is usually best unless you have a tree that really slows down your performance or you have some kind of niche requirements.
@@ZachHixsonTutorials Yep that makes sense. Got it all working great now. AN quickly becoming my favourite thing in blender.
@@ZachHixsonTutorials Thanks a lot for the quick reply!
where can I add time info node in this?
Never mind! I figured it out.
Great video for beginners like me. Btw, couldn't you just add additional Math node with the value of 2, right after that Mah node with the value of -1? Seems a bit easier. What I did after that is used the same principle for the small gear to drive that 18 teeth gear but then I used value 0,33... which of course might cause imperfections after few hundreds rotations :D
It was to make it a bit more easily copy and pastable. If the next gear ratio wasn't 12 / 6, but instead 3/5 or something, then we would need to add the node back in.
Instant subscribe!
When will the 4th part release?))
Idk, you'd have to ask my calculus teacher :(
Next week or two max
5:03 Why not just set the multiply input to -2? That would have saved all the extra math nodes.
Because when teaching people it's important to actually able to see the numbers and what they are doing. Showing the gear ratios, and having them easily adjustable as separate parameters makes it easier to copy / paste and tweak later with different gear setups.
How come when I do a search for math node, I can't find it in the list of math nodes? I did find it in number menu? I was able to complete this tutorial, although I did not understand everything. The next ones seem a lot harder, but I'l give it a try...
In AN 2.0 it was renamed to "Float Math," however it will work with integers too
yes a math blender teacher i thought im the only one using math in 3d blender XD
Math gets interesting when you can do interesting things with it :)
HAHA i some times use pemdas in 3d blender XD mostly in time line frames
Hi, can you include the version of the blender and the version of the "animation node" addon when creating this video in the description.
I can not find "Separate Euler" in my Blender ???
I'm pretty sure Separate Euler is in all Animation Nodes builds since the beginning, it's there
I don't know, maybe bug, btw, I reinstall my AnimNode addon using 1.6 version
Blender 2.76 + AnimNode 1.0 -> no Separate Euler
Blender 2.76 + AnimNode 1.6 -> Separate Euler is seen
my question is definitely out of scope of this (awesome) tutorial,
but could an object's metadata (Properties Panel -> Object -> Custom Properties -> Add) be used to store the tooth count?
I've tried this (e.g. toothCount = 12) but then I can't figure out how to pull that data into ani-nodes... tried Object -> Object Attribute Input -> "toothCount" -> Debug ... gets me nothing. Thanks!
Here's the way I figured it out: imgur.com/a/fLqCs
I created a cube, and added the "TestVar" property to it, with a value of 12. I then used the "Object Attribute Input" node with the "Get" attribute and the argument "TestVar" in order to get the property.
Excellent! Thank you sir!
I have don't have that panel when I press F6 while having the gear selected.
Edited: Figured it out, if you touch or change anything else right after you make a gear, like changing the rotation or location the F6 property menu WILL NOT pop up.
Just about to tell you that. I read a proposal that looks like that might be changed in the future, you can read it here: wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Kevindietrich/NodeSystem
appreciate the tutorials man will you make more?
Finished recording the next one earlier today. Just got home from work and started the audio editing :)
Can I ask a quick question? So I have been recreating those gifs from the official animation node doc, is there any way to save them as a custom addon for easy reuse? I know python I just don't know where to start. Again I just want to say keep up the good work, not enough people know the hidden potential of this addon or is there enough people putting actually time and effort to make these tutorials!
Your first step would be to dig through the Animation Nodes addon folder. Each nodes is saved as a .py file (this could be changed with the next version) and look at the way the nodes are build. There are also some docs here: animation-nodes-manual.readthedocs.io/en/latest/dev_guide/tutorials/index.html
Thanks. But geez, Blender makes something that's much easier to do in other 3D app's node systems much harder than it needs to be i.e. no need for all of the intermediate nodes apart from a maths node in between.
It's an issue with flexibility VS. simplicity. In order to make something more flexible, you need more options and control over the smaller details. AN isn't just a mograph tool, it's an all out visual scripting language no different than something like Python, just a little higher level (IE: more human readable).
5:28 “Math is hard” ... only if you do things the complicated way. You could have just taken another feed off that Z-Euler, this time dividing by 1.5.
When did I say math is hard? Also the reason I did it this way was again, because it's easier to convey through a tutorial, and easier to duplicate / tweak for people who are just learning Animation Nodes.
Just pointing out how intimidating it might appear to new users to concoct such unnecessarily complicated node graphs.
Each gear ratio can be computed with one division node.
I have the problem in version 2.0 to drive this gear
Can you provide a little more detail? I would love to help but can't really diagnose an issue based off of what you said
I saw this problem again and again and i found that was my mistake
i didn't understand that first time
Glad you solved your problem :)
Yep
Thanks! And it very nice tutorial
MORE VIDEOS!!!!! NOW!!!! ARRAYS!!!! PLEASE!!!!
Just recorded it today, should be done by the end of the weekend... should
this one was a bit complicated for the second in the series.
How so?
That's not a criticism. I just noticed it was more advanced than the one before. 6 nodes for #1 and 14 nodes for #2 and the concept is harder. Your explanation is thorough though.
KUBA
Mały chemik
it so difficult, too much nodes