Geometry Nodes Gets Viewport Preview!

Nodefather Jacques Lucke has done it again. Geometry Nodes just got one of it's most requested features: Viewport preview!

The viewport preview for #GeometryNodes is in master now and will be part of Blender 3.4. #b3d #devfund https://t.co/Cl3K444LHI pic.twitter.com/WerHOPUskt

— Jacques Lucke (@JacquesLucke) September 28, 2022

Veteran noodlers might have attempted the tried and true "Ctrl+Shift+Click" with the hopes of getting a preview of the geometry node result at a selected stage, but were "only" met with a viewer nodes that displayed data in the spreadsheet instead of the viewport updating. Well this latest commit by Jacques does just that, implementing the expected behavior in geometry nodes, and also expanding it to previewing attributes (no more need for shader hacks for previews!)

Here is a list of the current behaviors:

• A viewer node is activated by clicking on it.
• Ctrl+shift+click on any node/socket connects it to the viewer and makes it active.
• Ctrl+shift+click in empty space deactivates the active viewer.
• When the active viewer is not visible anymore (e.g. another object is selected, or the current node group is exit), it is deactivated.
• Clicking on the icon in the header of the Viewer node toggles whether its active or not.
• When a field is linked to the second input of the viewer node it is displayed as an overlay in the viewport.
• When possible the correct domain for the attribute is determined automatically. This does not work in all cases. It falls back to the face corner domain on meshes and the point domain on curves. When necessary, the domain can be picked manually.
• The spreadsheet now only shows the "Viewer" column for the domain that is selected in the Viewer node.
• Instance attributes are visualized as a constant color per instance.
• The attribute overlay opacity can be controlled with the "Viewer Node" setting in the overlays popover.
• A viewport can be configured not to show intermediate viewer-geometry by disabling the "Viewer Node" option in the "View" menu.

Try it out by downloading the latest Blender daily build on the link below: