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Jimmy Gunawan edited this page Apr 6, 2017 · 5 revisions

Sverchok is an Add-On that gives you the power of nodes and procedurality from within Blender. You can do parametric modeling ala Grasshopper of Rhino, but also a lot more using nodes just from inside Sverchok node-tree environment.

Instead of having to manually repeat certain process, in Sverchok, you can combo and create a non destructive procedures to tackle all kind of problemss in computer graphics. Sverchok is also very Pythonic that every nodes and concepts of Python can be easily applied when you are working in Sverchok. Any Python module that is compatible with Blender Python 3 can be imported if you will.

Just like Blender Compositing and Cycles Material, you will be using Sverchok inside Node-Tree environment. This means that all your knowledge of using Nodes is applicable in Sverchok. You will be creating nodes and noodles to connect nodes.

Components of Data

You will notice right away that inside Sverchok you are always dealing with components of data. Whether they are vertices (Points), edge indices (Edges), or polygon indices (Faces), or other component data such as Scalar Data, Vector Data, Matrix Data, you can manipulate them in Sverchok as LIST and ARRAY.

A good starting point to dwell in Sverchok is to start with Generators nodes. Whether you want to generate random numbers, range of numbers, or generating parametric primitives (Sphere, Box, etc), Sverchok provides you with some generator nodes.

Having a node alone and setting parameters will not give you anything, unless you preview the data being generated. You can use Viewer Text node, Viewer Node, or Viewer BMesh to see the data. Stethoscope node is also very useful to quickly check the output data at any part of the process.

Sverchok List

Something that is uniquely Sverchok is the way it structures DATA and its ELEMENT as LIST of LIST of LIST. You can think of data inside Sverchok as Russian Matryoshka Dolls. You have big doll at first, but as you open the big doll, you have medium doll, and perhaps many more smaller dolls. But the whole dolls will make a complete set of Matryoshka Dolls.

One definite example is Polygon Mesh Data which is made of Vertices, Edges, and Polygon Faces. At any point in time, you can access and manipulate these components of mesh data.

With some practice you will soon be able to Create your own List, Join List, Separate List, Splitting, Slicing, and do many other operations with LIST in Sverchok.

Tips for Beginners

Read Sverchok documentation for each node and check for more information at Sverchok Github forum, you will often find a LOT of useful information and examples. Sometimes in form of GITS that you can copy paste into Sverchok.

Sverchok developers are usually happy to answer all sort of technical details, but you are also recommended to ask at Blender Stack Exchange and give Sverchok tag.

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