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I'm excitedly playing with the new Geometry Nodes system, but I've run into a limitation. I would like to control the color of object instances created with the Point Instance node, but I can't seem to find a way to do this. Is it at all possible?

I've created the image below using a workaround of deciding the color in the shader graph depending on the object position, but this is very hard to make position-independent and does not give me the same control I would have in the Geometry Nodes graph. A bowl full of differently colored balls arranged in a spiral pattern The Geometry Nodes setup of the scene The shader node setup of the scene

peacememories
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    It's a good question. I've tried setting an attribute with AttributeFill - and using an Attribute input node in the shader - but it doesn't work.

    The docs for the AttributeColorramp geometry node says " The resulting colors are stored on the geometry in a color attribute." - but it's doesn't work as either Attribute or as the color output of the "Object Info" node in the shader ...

     – gromgull Mar 03 '21 at 16:16
  • Use vertex colors. See youtube video for guidance and sample. Min. requirement: blender 2.93 beta – eWilli May 03 '21 at 11:55
  • Awesome colour scheme! – atwright147 Jun 14 '21 at 21:44
  • Hi, were you able to solve your question? i am very interested to find a straight forward answer :) – Ziggy Sep 02 '21 at 12:43
  • it works with 3.0 and cycles as Lumpiluk writes – gromgull Sep 03 '21 at 13:03
  • did you see @jcfrog's response below? – Lowlande52 Oct 26 '21 at 04:38

2 Answers2

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The solution has been added to Blender 3.0.0 Alpha recently and is called the Attribute Transfer node. There's a good YouTube tutorial by Entagma on it.

  1. Set the render engine to Cycles.

  2. Add an Attribute Transfer node before your Geometry Nodes Group Output. Route the output of a node from before your Point Instance or similar node to the Source Geometry socket. Select the source attribute to transfer to the resulting mesh and give it a target name. Depending on the data type of your attribute, you may have to play around with the 2 dropdown menus as well.

    Screenshot of the described Geometry nodes setup

  3. In the shader of the source object you used for instancing, use an Attribute node with Type "Geometry" and the name of your transferred attribute.

    Screenshot of the described shader

Lukas
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I'm not sure to answer your question but I was struggling with setting colors to object instances and I finally managed to apply a texture input by simply using Object>location as Vector input for texture.

I would like to find how to use "emitter" color for instances color input... enter image description here

jcfrog
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