Geonode : Display instances scales as text

Question

I need to display a bunch of fish instances with randomized scale.

They are generated with geonodes. Under each fish, I need to display its ( randomly generated ) scale. As you may know using a random value to feed a {value to string} node generates an error.

Here, the string to curve would generate a text instance to be displayed under its corresponding fish.

Now I still can enter all scales manually ... but ... but ... you know.

Any idea to solve this problem ?

Thanks !

Answer 1

Here is another solution...

This may look cumbersome (to be honest it is), but basically this solution is relatively simple.

Since Geometry Nodes can only create text with the String to Curves node, which does not accept fields as input, you would have to do the following:

1. Since the String to Curves node outputs each digit as an instance, simply create the numbers $0-9$ as well as the dot and reset their position to $(0,0,0)$.
2. Then simply instantiate curves at the desired points, which themselves consist of as many points as the number of digits of your numbers (in this example I use four digits, as this allows numbers with two decimal places to be represented).
3. At the points of these curves then instantiate the previously created numbers. By using the index of the points of each spline, and additionally the option Pick Instance as well as Instance Index you can then pick the desired number.

This could look something like this:

Useful note: In case you are wondering why this works when I use a float value as Instance Index: Funnily enough, when using the Instance on Points node, the float value is not rounded up or down, but always rounded down, so all decimal places are truncated.

_{(Blender 3.4+)}

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Update 1

...and here is a further development of this approach, which can also handle different and multi-digit numerical values (currently no negative values though).

I'm working on it, but I thought it would be good to share this variant:

_{(Blender 3.4+)}

Answer 2

I found a decent solution, or let's call it a workaround :

It is based on the Animation Nodes addon : It creates a collection of 100 texts : 0.0 ; 0.1 ; 0.2 ; ... 10.0.

The collection is named : "Animation Nodes Object Container" (sorry not very self explanatory ...)

Then in Geonodes, we calculate the which text must be displayed, in fact, its index. Off course the collection of texts are well ordered and index order corresponds to number order !

Here is this calculus : My scales vary from 0 to 1.5. I want to map this interval to my set of indexes : [ 0 ; 1 ; 2 ... 99 ].

As you guess, I haven't invented anything here myself. Sources : Animation nodes

Answer 3

There is actually some way to do this in GN, but it only works for a limited number of objects, since you have to manually connect a sub-group for every instance. It's still more flexible than typing numbers by hand (especially when these numbers are changing dynamically):

The trick is to extract from the Random Value's field data a single value via Sample Index Node, convert it into a string and join the digits (and letters) together into one 'dimension instance'. Don't forget to check Pick Instance in the Instance on Points node.

This is how it looks inside the 'Sampler' group:

I know, it's a bit clumsy. But afaik, it's the closest we can get for now.

Here's the file for reference: