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I wished to know how to make a curve normal follow the normals of a nearby geometry. I saw they have asked that already, but slightly different from what I wish I guess... Because in other cases, they input a tilt value, and I don't want that, I want the normals to follow the geometry, only that. Is there a quick way? Like with 'curve to mesh' with "profile curve" (parameter) empty, and then an 'Extrude mesh' with the "offset" set to the geometry normal? I'm trying to make some straps wrap around an arm and align with it.

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    $\begingroup$ To clarify your need: do you want to change the normals of a curve, or do you want to extrude the curve along the normals of a nearby surface ? In the second case, you can use a Sample Nearest node set in Face domain to find the face closest to a curve point, followed by a Sample Index node to recover this face normal. $\endgroup$
    – StefLAncien
    Commented Mar 14 at 7:17

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(Using Blender 3.6.8)

Ignoring the curve normal, and using instead the normal of the nearest point on the cylinder:

  • the Z axis of the instanced red cones is aligned with this normal,
  • the blue surface is an extrusion of the curve made a mesh along this normal,
  • the green surface is an extrusion of the curve made a mesh along the local tangent to the cylinder, computed as the cross product of this normal with the tangent to the curve.

GN Graph

Resources:

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  • $\begingroup$ Nice! That's exactly what I was looking for, just used sampled nearest instead of 'Sample Nearest Surface' and forgot to capture the curve tangent before using it. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – AAA Yerus
    Commented Mar 15 at 2:43
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In blender 4.1, the set curve normal node now has a Free mode, which means you can use any vector as input

enter image description here

By using a sample nearest surface node, you can transfer the normals from a mesh to your curve

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ Wow.. I was just about to insert a comment on OP saying you couldn't do this .. Thanks .. dodged a bullet, there :) $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts ♦
    Commented Mar 14 at 9:21
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    $\begingroup$ Neat... I was with @RobinBetts on this one... had no time yet to explore the new Blender version in detail. Great to know. $\endgroup$
    – Gordon Brinkmann
    Commented Mar 14 at 9:50
  • $\begingroup$ Oh cool! That's good news! $\endgroup$
    – AAA Yerus
    Commented Mar 15 at 2:43

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