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I have distributed points to the surface of a sphere and instanced another sphere on to those points.

I would like to move the small spheres along the surface of the first sphere. I was planning on taking the cross product of some movement vector with the normal vector from the "Distribute points on faces" node and using that to translate each instance. However it appears that my normal vector contains only (0,0,0). When I output the normal vector to position to check it's value the sphere is on the origin.

What is it that I'm doing wrong? As I understand it the "normal" output should contain the normal vector for each point distributed on the original sphere. Am I misunderstanding the normal output from this node? Thanks for the help.

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  • $\begingroup$ you can see the values like this: [1]: i.sstatic.net/Qr3Hn.jpg and then here: [1]: i.sstatic.net/xcv70.png $\endgroup$
    – Chris
    Commented Jan 19, 2022 at 16:57
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks! I'm pretty new to Blender and didn't even know about this. That's helpful. $\endgroup$
    – Mitch Sanchez
    Commented Jan 19, 2022 at 18:31
  • $\begingroup$ Glad I could help. You are welcome! $\endgroup$
    – Chris
    Commented Jan 19, 2022 at 18:32

1 Answer 1

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you can do it with this node setup (it's not perfect yet, maybe you should stop all 3 axis from unfortunately getting 0)

enter image description here

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enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ Spheres are so convenient :D $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts ♦
    Commented Jan 19, 2022 at 17:47
  • $\begingroup$ I am so totally sorry man….🙈😢 $\endgroup$
    – Chris
    Commented Jan 19, 2022 at 17:48
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks so much for the answer! This is really helpful. I'll have to play around with it some more but I think this will help me get where I want to go. $\endgroup$
    – Mitch Sanchez
    Commented Jan 19, 2022 at 18:33
  • $\begingroup$ You are welcome!! $\endgroup$
    – Chris
    Commented Jan 19, 2022 at 18:36

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