The Right End Of The Stick: Leaves & Moss With Geometry Nodes

Using Geometry Nodes for supersonic vegetation generation, with artist Simon Thommes.

Geometry Nodes are part of Blender's Everything Nodes initiative, a big project in 2021.

Which is all wonderful and splendid... but why talk about it in a Sprite Fright post?

Well, Geometry Nodes use cases are developed to meet the needs of the Sprite Fright crew. It's all part of Blender's overall philosophy -- use Open Movies as a way of pushing Blender's functionality.

Artist Simon Thommes is slap bang in the centre of this way of working. He's both Sprite Fright's shader artist and involved in the development of Geometry Nodes as a whole.

In the videos below, Simon shares the fruits of this process. Or rather, the moss of this process.

Because one practical application for Geometry Nodes is providing glorious plant-life as a backdrop for Sprite Fright's mayhem. There are a bunch of benefits to this workflow, including the ability to easily apply the moss system modifier to new objects. For more, watch this film.

Simon explains the magic of making moss with Geometry Nodes. [ View File ]

As well as moss, Simon has used Geometry Nodes to alleviate a tree-related frustration: by making leaf distribution node-based, the crew can now add extra branches without having to reorientate each and every existing leaf. Simply throw on some Geometry Nodes and voilà -- the leaves face the way leaves should.

Simon takes the pain out of building a canopy. [ View File ]

Speaking of trees, constructing Geometry Nodes trees is currently a tad complex (though it'll be getting more intuitive very soon indeed). Helpfully, Simon has also provided a file for moss and one for leaves, so you can study them up close and in the wild.

It's worth a little effort: soon, your own hyper-real forest will be just be a node or three away.