Child instances in geometry nodes? Or clumping in general

Support Modeling
1

Hi folks,

How do I spawn child instances using geometry nodes? I saw there was a node in development for this, but it has been abandoned. But I’ve also seen people achieve this (but not show the nodes). I can’t seem to find any solutions via google however (perhaps I am not searching using the correct jargon).

All I want to do is create a set of point instances, and then use those instances to spawn a set of child instances around it, so I can have clumped arrangements of objects (like rocks around a tree base, for example).

Cheers, G

2

Hi, you can use the attribute proximity node to create an attribute around scattered instances and scatter your other objects using this attribute as density

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3

Ah dammit, I thought I was already using 2.93 and was wondering where this was…

Thanks! I’ll look into that node.

Do you know if you can control the scale of objects using that node as well? I wanted to make further away objects smaller - I thought I could use a color ramp to control this more precisely?

4

Here is a node setup for anyone curious:

nodes
nodes3508×839 324 KB

I have a few attribute randomises in there but the chain is simple:

  1. Geometry → Point distribute (main item) > point instance (e.g. tree)

  2. Geometry → attribute proximity > 2nd point distribute (e.g. rocks)

  3. Connect geometry output of 1st point distribute/instance node to the TARGET of the attribute node, then point instance etc.

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