Replace "Align Euler to Vector" with "Align Rotation to Vector" : how?

Question

Please pardon if this is a stupid question. I'm sure it has been asked dozens of times. I've hit a brick wall.

I'm trying (in 5.1) to instance objects on a mesh, perpendicular to the face normals. I managed this before with "Align Euler to Vector", which is now deprecated. I have not found a way to use the "similar" new node. (Or even get things to work with the deprecated node.) Unfortunately, I can't get any real understanding from reading the Blender manual pages. I haven't found anything simple or intuitive which works.

There are hundreds of explanations/examples using the old node (I carefully saved the information), but I can't find anything relevant for the new one.

Can anyone help? Thanks.

  • Grady Pruitt(gradyp) replied

    So you're wanting  a new object to have the same rotation as another object? If I'm understanding this right, then what you want is Copy Rotation.

  • Grady Pruitt(gradyp) replied

    if not, I'm sure @waylow will be along at some point to provide better guidance :D )

  • techworker1 replied

    I'm going for the following - stumbled onto a method.

    The confusing part is that "Instance on Points" needs 2 different node arrangements for alignment:

    • If using "Mesh to Points(Faces)" (one point per face), you need to capture Normals from the faces
    • If using "Distribute Points on Faces", you need to capture Normal and Rotation from "Distribute"

    inst-leaves.png

  • Grady Pruitt(gradyp) replied

    Oh, geo nodes? There's a Instance on Elements node that has a check box for Align Rotation

  • Grady Pruitt(gradyp) replied

    (Instance on Elements can instance on a face)

  • techworker1 replied

    Node trees as follows:

    inst-align-faces.png

    st-align-distrib.png

  • Martin Bergwerf replied

        " I have not found a way to use the "similar" new node"

    As far as I know, the main difference is in the name, so you should be able to just swap them out.

    (The Node actually Aligns the Euler Rotation to a Vector and they apparently realised, that to abbreviate that to Align Euler to Vector was a terrible idea.)

    Not sure, what exactly you want to know, tbh.

  • techworker1 replied

    spikeyxxx My issue was actually not the new node, but misunderstanding the difference(s) in handling Rotation.

    gradyp Instance on Elements is a more elegant way to wrap everything up with less nodes. I hadn't tried it before because it looked intimidating, but it works nicely for the first case above.