Convert existing node trees to Geometry Script

[BradyAJohnston]

Hi mate!

I don't suppose you've got functionality for going the other direction, converting nodes to code? This would save me a lot of time for not having to rebuild all of the node trees in code form manually.

I've created and maintain a project that relies on a bunch of pre-built geometry nodes groups (https://github.com/BradyAJohnston/MolecularNodes) which I am looking to convert to actual code (geometry-script) so that it can be version-controlled better than the currently opaque .blend file that they live in.

Any advice? cheers for the great project, which I will definitely be utilising in the future!

[carson-katri]

This should definitely be possible, I'll look into it. Your use case is very interesting, looking forward to seeing some geometry script in there!

[BradyAJohnston]

I gave a talk at BCON last year on the use case if you want to hear me talk more about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adhTmwYwOiA

I'll hold off on converting anything immediately to see if there is an easy solution, but otherwise I'll go through and start converting them manually probably in like a month or so when I've got some more time to dedicate to it. I also personally find that prototyping functions manually inside of Blender is faster, to then be able to quickly save it out as code for git to read would be great.

[carson-katri]

I have a prototype for this implemented in #13. Let me know if you have any problems converting more complex node trees.

[BradyAJohnston]

Ooh very exciting, thanks for the quick turn around. I'll give it a test run and try it out!

[tbscode]

I've been playing around with geometry script for some time now, and I love it!
This would be a killer feature for existing geometry node projects, I see that there is already a draft implemented.

Is this still in development? Can I try this somewhere?

[carson-katri]

@tbscode If you go to this page (or just select the nodes-to-script branch), you should be able to download the addon ZIP. Let me know any issues you run into when converting.

[tbscode]

Thanks, jup using this link I could download the current build: https://github.com/carson-katri/geometry-script/archive/refs/heads/nodes-to-script.zip

Though I think I still need some missing commits for the blender 3.5 update ( I'm on 3.6 & linux ).
Currently I'm just getting:

*some weird lib error*

Read prefs: "/home/tim/.config/blender/3.6/config/userpref.blend"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/tim/Data/local/programms/blender-3.6.2-linux-x64/3.6/scripts/modules/addon_utils.py", line 333, in enable
    mod = __import__(module_name)
  File "/home/tim/.config/blender/3.6/scripts/addons/geometry-script-nodes_to_script/__init__.py", line 22, in <module>
    from .api.tree import *
  File "/home/tim/.config/blender/3.6/scripts/addons/geometry-script-nodes_to_script/api/tree.py", line 9, in <module>
    from .node_mapper import *
  File "/home/tim/.config/blender/3.6/scripts/addons/geometry-script-nodes_to_script/api/node_mapper.py", line 124, in <module>
    category.draw(CategoryStub(), None)
  File "/home/tim/Data/local/programms/blender-3.6.2-linux-x64/3.6/scripts/startup/bl_ui/node_add_menu_geometry.py", line 459, in draw
    if context.preferences.experimental.use_new_volume_nodes:
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'preferences'

I suppose just cloning this repo to $HOME/.config/blender/3.6/scripts/addons/* should also work, so I'll try merging this locally and test it then.

[tbscode]

Yeah got it to work.
Seems to work generally pretty well, so far I saw one issue.
The new Simulation nodes output doesn't seem to be correctly serialized:

paired_output=<bpy_struct, GeometryNodeSimulationOutput("Simulation Output") at 0x7fb804f59988>

Should I report my findings somewhere else, as separate issues?

[WenbinTan]

i think that function (Convert existing node trees to Geometry Script) is useful, When i have an idea, i usually use node trees to validate it. if it work, then i will convert it to python code.
So I'm also looking forward to this feature too