Greetings!

Back to low poly today.

Every time I see a stunning low poly scene, it’s got a bunch of those “low poly masses” in it. Big huge jumbles of faces that somehow still look not-ugly. Usually it’s representing rocks or ice or dirt or something else large and messy.

I’d never worried about modeling messy masses like those. If I ever needed one I figured I’d just “throw some random displacement on a mesh.”

Well, I needed one yesterday. And “random displacement” didn’t work. Not right away. It took me about 30 minutes longer than expected to figure out a nice way to do it (the trick is the mesh you start with.)

It turned out nice after that, especially when I stretched it on the Z axis. See, I made icebergs (epic soundtrack included) ↓

(*note: this render was not wholly my idea. Credit goes to a random AI-generated concept I saw on LinkedIn.)

So: save your future self 30 minutes. Learn how to make a big massive mess of low poly goodness ↓

Today’s Technique

DON’T delete the default cube.

Select it, then go to the Geometry Nodes tab and hit New for a new node setup.

This is the system that gave me the best result:

1. Subdivide the cube.

2. Displace the cube horribly, using a noise texture.

3. Instance icospheres on each vertex of the cube, with random rotation and scale.

4. Realize those instances (turn them into a real, editable mesh.)

5. Displace that mesh with more noise.

If we only displace the cube, we get a result with a lot of unpleasant intersections due to it being only one face thick. The piled icospheres give us a lot more mesh to work with, and the triangular face shape ensures no impossible polygons get created, and even better, less displacement is required to make interesting shapes.

Here’s the setup so you can make it yourself:

I promise the nodes didn’t actually look that complicated until I crammed them all together to take this picture. Seriously, this will only take you 5-10 minutes to build & enjoy.

You could probably improve it with size and strength and random seed controls too.

Keep scrolling for a truly cool thing ↓

Really Random Render

Today’s random render is by Michael Obrycki. 

It’s really cool. It feels like a scene from a movie.

My favorite parts of this render:

• The hustle hints that this is a man (or alien)-made world: the sharp, straight edges of the cliffs / monoliths in the background. A subtle but awesome detail.

• The giant orange glowing ring. This is neat because it’s realistic but also feels stylized in a way.

• The human. Helps so much with scale and since he’s wearing a Sith outfit it makes the scene scary.

Score: 9/10 (because something about that tree looks a little fake to me. Maybe the way it’s growing out of solid rock.)

Can't think what to blend?

A “small pocket-sized weapon.” Invent something new that no one’s ever seen, like a…just kidding. Think of it yourself.

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