Geometry Node Types

The Geometry nodes will transform the shape of your geometry in a non-destructive manner. This way you can always replace the material and the geometry will return to the original shape.

Bubbles in mango juice
Styrofoam displacement
Gold sprinkle flakes
Fuzz applied to the same model

Execute Geometry

Geometry nodes are the only nodes that do not update your material in real time when you edit/set them up.
After any edits to the material you must “execute geometry” before you can see the effect in the Real-Time View. This can be done in a number of ways.

  • The Execute Geometry Node button in the properties panel will only refresh the current material.
  • The  Geometry Nodes button in the Material Graph ribbon will refresh all geometry nodes in the scene.
  • The hotkey Alt+G will refresh all geometry nodes in the scene.
  • In the Real-time View an indicator  in the top right corner will show that the scene contains un-executed geometry nodes. Click it to refresh all geometry nodes.
Tip

If you want to bake your displacement into the geometry, you can export your displaced object and re-import it into your scene.

Note

If you experience problems with opening scenes with e.g. heavy displacement, you can try to open it in recovery mode. This means that the scene will be opened in Performance mode and that no geometry nodes are executed. You can find the option in the Main menu > Help > Open (Recovery mode)…

Known Issues and Limitations
  • Bubbles, Displacement and Flakes are not supported in Render Nurbs Mode
  • When applying Displacement to geometry with hard edges, these edges become split.
  • Raytraced textures (Contour, Curvature and Occlusion) cannot be used to control parameters of any of the Geometry Nodes.