Blender Utility Geometry Nodes
The last few years I've taken an interest in procedural modeling. I've been learning both Houdini and geonodes and I find that while Houdini is great at computationally expensive highpoly generators and simulations, geonodes excels at making accessible, versatile little utilities. The ability to make your own modifier is something I've been dreaming of for years, and geonodes fills that need.
These are some of the tools I've made in the last two years to help me with my work as an environment artist. I'm focusing on streamlining the stuff I spend the most time on day to day. They were made in Blender 4.1.
Line Decal creates strips of polys from edges marked by the user. You can control the width, vertex color, and UVs. Can also adjust the width on individual points. It will add UV splits where the angle exceeds a threshold.
I used Blender Bash's BB_UprightExtruder as a starting point for generating the geometry. I added stuff for generating UVs and controlling the width, vertex color, and fill UVs. I also extended it to work on objects with more than one mesh island.
Arrays your object in a circle along the local X,Y, or Z axis. Use the object pivot or a custom object as the center of your array. Can offset the array by a specified degree, or set it so the objects in the array are all pointing the same direction.
Like the UVProject modifier, but better. Allows you to mask off faces you don't want it applied to and it doesn't require an additional object to project UVs from. I made this one for ground pieces so I can be sure I always have the correct texel density.
For your cables, pipes, vines, and ropes. Generates a cylinder with parametrized UVs from a series or edges or a curve. Can create variable width cylinders based on a vertex attribute.
Adds a loop of polys to the outer edge of your shapes and sets the vertex alpha on the outermost loop. Can optionally reproject UVs. You can save texture memory by using this for large signs and symbols.
Deforming arrays along curves has always been tedious, so I made this as an alternative. Arrays objects along a series of edges. Can set the rotation and toggle them to orient along the edges. I use this one to stamp out decals in cool patterns.
Sometimes you just need a pebble, ya know?
Does what it says. Makes blockout stairs with controls for size and number of steps.
Vertex colors are commonly used blend between two texture sets and control the sharpness of the transition. Sometimes you just want some fast variation and would rather not take the time to paint verts.