WIP assets

mart0nnn · October 1, 2024, 5:06pm

A while back I had this idea to create an industrial asset pack for blender. Something that is inspired by brutalist architecture, and big concrete megastructures from various media.
I also wanted to implement geometry nodes in some shape or form.

While this is a huge undertaking, and I might just forget about this project, I thought I’d share some of my progress.

First of all I made a pipe generator using geometry nodes: The main idea is that you can extrude away to your heart’s content, and this setup would add random pipe-like details to your geometry.

Here is the mesh edge with the geometry nodes:

This is the geometry being generated on:

The geonode setup: (I tried to clean it up…)

I also made a setup where the pipes are arrayed along the curve such as this:

This could also be used as cable arrays, but I do need to implement cable dispalcement due to gravity, etc.
The base mesh is similar to the one used in the pipe asset mentioned above.

Here is the geo node setup and controls:

And here is the secret sauce that arrays the pipes along the curve with the correct normals:

I also realized that geometry nodes now has “menu switch” nodes.
This meant I could make semi-procedural assets that let the user choose between different options.

Here is an example:

Or for example when you have an array of different support strucutres, instead of separate array objects, you can choose wich support model you want:

Anyway this is what I have so far. But once I have more I will share here… maybe…

CDMJ · October 1, 2024, 5:42pm

That all looks very useful, the use of GN seems to be exactly what small studios have been needing.

mart0nnn · October 2, 2024, 2:37pm

Yeah, once properly put together you can save a lot of time for certain effects! The flexibility that geo nodes offer really makes it easy to change things around, thus saving a lot of time not needing to remake effects.

mart0nnn · November 21, 2024, 4:29pm

Newer experiments with this project:

I made a few adjustments to my pipe generator. Now it can generate connection joints where the pipe splits. I also added a function where it takes random pipe segments and turns them into these crinkle-pipes.

So far this is what the geometry node system looks like:

I probably could just get away with simply modeling a few elements, but why do that when I can do this.

Also now for the pipe array asset I now added an option to make it look like the pipes/wires are drooping due to gravity:

For my support structure array asset I now made it so that you can select if bolts appear on the array, and the top-most part of the array instances a separate object.

Added some new metal structure models:

With these assets it now only takes me a few minutes to make some industrial looking structures:

Cheers!

mart0nnn · December 11, 2024, 7:56pm

A quick experiment. I made a geo node setup that randomly generates pipes between two points.

In this case its the two sides of a cube.

In order to make sure that the pipes do not overlap I made a system that adjusts the pipes around each other. This works most of the time.
Here is that setup:

In order to make sure that the cables do not intersect with the pipes I just delete the cables that are a certain distance from the pipes mesh.
In this case the Deleted input is the hanging cable messh, and the Deletor input is the Pipes mesh.

And the “select linked” nodegroup:

There is still a few things needed to make this actually usable, but something like this would probably be super useful for quick environment creation.

Also another node setup that just makes some crinkle pipes.