Houdini 20.5 Nodes Geometry nodes

Planar Tiles geometry node

Generates rectangular tiles for texture patterns.

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Overview

This nodes generates rectangular planes to create various texture patterns. It is mainly used to create patterns for the Tile Pattern node.

The overall pattern is generated by defining tiles for the first row, which is located at the bottom of the pattern. The defined tiles repeat horizontally until they fill the row. You can also define multiple rows, and each row also repeats vertically until they fill the pattern.

Parameters

General

Orientation

Orientation plane of grid.

Pattern Size

Controls the minimum size of the pattern that tiles must cover.

Row Offset

Offsets the horizontal position of each tile with this amount.

Column Offset

Offsets the vertical position of each tile with this amount.

Row Slide Offset

Offsets each row horizontally with increasing amount based on the row number. This is used to create brick wall like patterns. To add further offset randomness to each row, change the menu on the right side of this parameter from Uniform to Set Varying.

Variation

Sets the maximum allowed row offset variation.

Seed

Controls random selection for variation. Change the value of the Seed if the current variation is undesirable.

Uniform Jitter

Controls the offset to move the points along the plane of grid. This is used to create positional randomness both horizontally and vertically for each tile.

Horizontal Jitter

Controls the offset to move the points horizontally along the plane of grid.

Vertical Jitter

Controls the offset to move the points vertically along the plane of grid.

Seed

Flip Pattern

Flips the pattern 90 degrees.

Clip to Pattern Size

The account for tilable patterns, many more tiles are generated outside the area defined by Pattern Size. When this is on, only tiles that cover the Pattern Size are kept.

Pattern

Use Epxression

When this is off, the tile pattern is given by a nested multi-parameters. Turn this off to create the tile pattern using a custom tile expression.

Pattern Expression

Uses a special expression to define and repeat rows and columns until the pattern size is fully tiled.

Each row is defined in a new line using the following format:

[row_offset] [row_height] | [col_width1] [col_width2]

For Example:
[0.0] [0.2] | [0.2]

Use the additional flags followed by a value for advanced pattern creation:

[row_offset] [row_height] -s #.# | [col_width1 -h #.# -o #.# -v # -r #.#] [col_width2] ... -r #

  • -s (or —slide): Continuous offset for each row that is multiplied by the row number.

  • -h (or —height): This will overwrite the height of the column in the row, ignoring row height.

  • -o (or —offset): The vertical offset of a column in the row.

  • -v (or —visible): Whenever the column in the row is visible or not.

  • -r (or —rotate): The rotation of the column in the row.

  • -r (or —reflect): When columns need to repeat, always start from the first entry or from the last.

Number of Rows

Visible

Sets the visibility of the row. Turn this off to hide the row.

Row #

Offset

Sets the vertical offset of the columns in the row.

Reflect Block

When columns in the row need to be repeated, always start from the first entry or from the last.

Slide Offset

Continuous offset for each row that is multiplied by the row number.

Height

The vertical height of the columns in the row.

Number of Columns

Visible

Sets the visibility of the column. Turn this off to hide the column.

Column #.#

Width

The horizontal width of the column.

Height

This will overwrite the height of the column in the row, ignoring Height.

Offset

This will overwrite the vertical offset of the column in the row.

Rotate

The rotation of the column in the row.

Output Tiles

Output Tiles

When this is on, each tile is created as a primitive. Turn this off to output the tiles as points with spritescale and spriterot point attributes.

Inset

Dilates the edges of the tiles when Output Tiles is on.

See also

Geometry nodes