Hello,
I am relatively new to Blender but with a few years experience in 3D modelling in other softwares, but I LOVE blender!
I was wondering if anyone could give me a steer on how I might tackle modelling something like this ice cave, and then what kind of procedural materials settings to use to get the translucency.
Hi res and low res suggestions welcomed!
Thank you
That’s amazing 
could we have a look at your ice shader’s node tree if you don’t mind ?
Anyway, keep going 
I think geometry nodes would help you with modelling, to get all those small details would take a while by hand but they are patterned enough that they’d work well procedurally
For modeling you might want to check Geometry Nodes and Mesh to Volume → Volume to Mesh workflow. It lets you join and remesh lots of unconnected geometry of various sizes and mesh density.
Thanks everyone… this is really cool, just the kind of shapes I’d like to base my model on… but I’m not sure what I’m looking at… what is the process here, or could you point me towards a good tutorial for this technique? I really appreciate the help!
its based on this.
voronoi (icicles) and brick texture (cave) + noise booleaned out of a cube.
Then I scatter some points on cone, (more icicles)
Then I remesh the whole lot, (base mesh)
fully procedural, and fairly art directable.
material is glass and rock mixed by a 3d sphere gradient.
denoiser and lots of transparency. bounces.
Cycles.
@lil althou SDF method is very good too, it can be harder if you want to merge and remesh couple simple objects from a collection.
Here is a simple example of joining two objects:
Or you can mix joining objects with entire collections:
For better surface quality you need to play with Mesh to Volume and Volume to Mesh parameters.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/3.3/modeling/geometry_nodes/mesh/mesh_to_volume.html
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/3.3/modeling/geometry_nodes/volume/volume_to_mesh.html
