Rockify

 I have a new plugin!

Rockify - https://blendermarket.com/products/rockify

What is it? 

It's a plugin for generating rock formations. It's super easy to use, and while it doesn't have a huge number of parameters to tweak at the rock formation end, it's one of those plugins that just has what it needs, works pretty well and isn't buried under complexity.


You get the following rock patterns:

• Stalagtite - cave structure from the ceiling
• Stalagmite - cave structure from the floor
  
  
  
  
  

• Limestone 
• Granite
• Volcanic
  
  
  
  
  

You build an underlying mesh, select the mesh object, and then select one of the patterns from the Rockify tab. Through the magic of Blender's geometry node engine, a complex chunk of rock appears in your meshes place. You can then modify the rock through the following parameters:

• Density - How much of the generative detail you want to pack into your rock formation.
• Scale - The scale of the rock elements.
• Seed - Adjust the random number that currently drives the overall shape. It's good if you want to see alternate variations or to remove something that looks weird.

Limestone column 

Volcanic rock formation instanced with the included Substance smart material.

There's something important to note. The plugin's production workflow uses CPU-intensive modifications that turn Blender's UI/interactivity into a massive stutter-fest. It's not ideal, but it's the cost of modifying your underlying mesh to develop your rock formation, which is very useful. 

The trick is to work on the rock, get happy with it, and then "bake it" by applying its modifier stack. The plugin was developed for generating Unreal Engine-friendly terrain assets, which is also helpful for creating Blender assets that don't gobble up all your system resources.

This workflow makes even more sense when you realise the plugin can only support one object at a time. If you create two meshes and apply Rockify to one object, it will be removed if you apply Rockify to the second object. Solution: create, bake, then create again.