Blender-School: Random Flow

 The city I'm building for Scene 002 continues at a slow pace. I realise I could save time by using Blender Guppy's excellent Random Flow add-on. It's great, but I always struggled to remember how to use it effectively, so lets get into it...

Documentation (updated recently after a significant change to the add-on's UI)

Random Flow

"Random Flow is a random mesh generator designed for fast and easy hard surface prototyping and concept art. This is a fast-changing add-on with lots of new functionalities in the future."

For science fiction environments, you often need to model a lot of surface detail that isn't particularly purposeful. Often, you are breaking up empty space with geometry and lines. Random Flow lets you quickly apply surface details by creating face-based panels and extruding them.

Once installed, you bring up Random Flow's master panel using Shift+F1 (see above).

• Usually, Random Flow details consist primarily of Random Panels, which break up surfaces without significantly changing the form of the target object.
  
  
• The details created depend on the size of the target faces; larger faces produce larger panels, while smaller areas naturally yield smaller panels. 
  
  
• Randomisation is applied to generated/floating elements that are cut out of the target object, ensuring all changes are non-destructive. Randomisation can be applied in Object or in Edit modes.

Random Panels Page 1

Random Panels Page 2

There are a dizzying number of parameters. As Blender Guppy says, he could make the tool simpler, but such an effort would rob you of incredible fine control. 

The operator presets are a great addition; I should get familiar with the effects of each one.

Stressy

 

What a strange creature is man, that he would choose to cage himself so willingly.
- Masamune Shirow (Appleseed)        

In a Dr Frankenstein move, I took my generative-AI head and placed it on some other generative AI-bodies. Cool, eh? <lightning strike>

Due to strike action, I am doing my work in the morning, so I can be back to see what damage the builders have caused. I am getting the skin-crawl feeling I experienced with dealing with conmen in the past. I will be watching them like a hawk. 

City build

 Scene 002

I'm taking a break from the terrain materials. Yesterday I took Gabe's previs depot model and shrank it down into something I could place into the scene. It definitely works better than my rushed lash-up. I may need better materials.

Next, I started to build out the city on the island/coastline. Creating a low-poly city that has enough detail to be sold as a real place requires quite a lot of mesh noodling. While slowly setting up a base mesh, I was aware of how well Blender Guppy's Random Flow would handle mid-level details. 

I haven't used Random Flow for a while, and I've forgotten the finer details of its procedural system. I should watch the recent beginner's video about it.

True Terrain Material Testing

Looking at the pre-built material, which I intend to do a breakdown for:

True Terrain 5.2 (there's more)

 I found another bug! Something stops rendering, resulting in an error message that warns that a blog directory was not cleaned up. Fortunately, manually deleting that directory allows rendering to continue.

The True-VFX guys are on the fix. Hopefully, TT5.2 will get a corrective bugfix-focused release quite soon.

To celebrate its release, I should create a quick terrain scene render. Ha ha ha ha ha...<that's so peak ADHD leaping onto another project>

True Terrain 5.2

 

I spent a lot of time on the terrain in scene 002. Not much to show for it because render times are fairly long. I hope to add a couple more layers to the materials without causing the blackout problem, which is reportedly being fixed in Blender 5.2/True Terrain 5.2. 

A snippet of Scene 002

I check that this is true, and discover that True Terrain 5.2 is OUT! What the heck!?!

<a few minutes later>

True-Terrain 5.2 installed okay. I did a render test. Okay. I created a new scene and got carried away with the polygon count, probably 200 million polygons. Hard crash with a system reset. <glum>

It seems stable when I don't get carried away, although new scenes appear to present a bug when using masks. 

The mask should match the displacement, but by default, it is offset. I raised a bug on True-VFX's GitHub.

Scene 002

Maximal effort today and the weekend to push the scene forward. I will see if I can add a coastline and maybe some mountain tips, with darker rock and snow.

Is it scatter time, yet?

Blender School: A look at rock scatters 

I still feel like I need either a system, an approach, or a workflow for handling pebble scatters. Geo-Scatter is an amazing tool for managing instanced terrain scatters; it has so many features and functions that I don't really understand, so I never use it. Deep-in-the-weeds GeoScatter practice should have been on the cards a long time ago.

Better...but not looking as natural as I'd like.

Clump Distribution

Changing to Clump Distribution often caused Blender to crash. This was probably because CD is expensive. A CD scatter places a mother object, then some child objects around the mother. It's great for dense formations, but you need to start with modest scatter densities, or you will exhaust your system and likely crash.

Temp rocks in the scatter. They do the job when scatter tweaking

The official docs are honest about CDs' cost:

JUUUUUUUUUNE

 Shout-out to the BBC sitcom from my childhood, Terry & June. Many, if not most, episodes would end with hapless middle-aged husband, Terry, in some comedic high-speed crisis calling out for his wife, "JUUUUUUUUUNE".



So it goes that hapless middle-aged Blender user, me, calls out that we have already arrived at the Middlemonth (t.m). Where does the time go? I can never find it, except in my failing memory.

I'm going to make Monday mornings my Start of the Week report, where I plan what I'll commit to and deliver on the upcoming week. Just like work! Maybe I should do a Start of Month too, but let's learn to crawl before we run a Marathon.

Scene 002

Progress is being made slowly. But it is progress! I'm still not satisfied with the materials, as they're being applied. Let's do a proper evaluation, comparing what we've got with what we want. They think about what needs to be done to bridge the gap. The effort has felt too much about vibes and feelings. "Do I like this?" doesn't get you onto the next step.

We potentially have a new Environment Design lead. I should compile a list of questions to see if I can extract wisdom from the possible new team leader.

Aim: The material must be completed this week; in fact, dressing should be progressing, if not complete.

Side note: Gabe has been busy finishing an interior environment, so he hasn't produced his "challenge" terrain using Gaea. I eagerly await his challenge!

Superhivemarket Trades

I need to start making money on the Superhivemarket Store. The website I set up is going to cost me another lump sum shortly. It will cost much more than I earned from the product I created. I need to make way more products!

Things I can make:

Terrains: This time, I'd create actual baked scenes rather than just displacement maps. 

Space vehicles: I can make some cool ones. I think that one loosely based on Project Hail Mary would sell quite well. 

Planet: I can create giant planet maps. I could create a pack of 5-6 for £10

The aim this week is to develop a plan, not to rush into production. The aim should be to deliver something by the end of June.

Blender School

I think I need to start revising and push to complete more training on new things. I've forgotten most of what I learned about HardOps, although I think it would come back quickly.

I've not used Fluent or Random Flow in over a year. They're a mystery to me now. This is why writing down new procedures is so important to me; it serves as a quick memory aid, as opposed to redoing the work, which takes longer and often goes wrong. A case in point, though. The use of Render layers, which I thought I'd effectively recorded in a post, got me very stuck. I missed some critical element that seemed to reset asset visibility when shifting between layers.

Photography

I've had a small dip in productivity because I have been making use of the great weather, getting out and taking lots of photographs. So much so that I am glancing sideways at new cameras. <Slaps own wrist>

Loxley Valley from High Riggs

Blender School: Titbits

Blender 5.2 is coming with a really important new feature: Texture Caching.

 Christopher3D provides a concise explanation clarifying that using the texture cache feature incurs a small performance cost due to additional calculations, but it's worth it for the massive efficiency gains.

How to Use the Texture Cache

1. Navigate to the Render Properties tab.
2. Scroll down to the Performance panel.
3. Enable Texture Cache and select Auto-Generate. 

When enabled, Blender automatically generates optimised .tx (tiled and mipmapped) files in a blender_tx/ folder next to your original images. These are regenerated from the source image whenever changes are made. 

Key Features and Options

• On-Demand Loading: Cycles only loads the precise texture tiles and resolutions needed for a given render bucket/tile. 
• Cache Eviction: An optional cache eviction mechanism unloads old, unnecessary textures from memory during rendering, significantly reducing peak RAM and VRAM usage. 
• Simplify Panel: In addition to existing Texture Limits, the Simplify panel includes a Texture Resolution percentage (e.g., 50% or 25%) to further limit the max resolution.

Surface Blend

I looked at blending object materials with ground textures a few weeks ago. This free addon handles the work rather nicely.

https://superhivemarket.com/products/surface-blend

Camera Rigging with CableCam, the cinematic camera rig for Blender.

To add a camera, open the N-tab and Import Cablecam.

A cable camera is installed on a rig that usually hangs on a cable, like a tiny cable car. The camera can then follow a path through the air and can turn and gimble while it travels down the cable.

The rig consists of the following components:

CableCambase:  A spring-loaded base from which the rest of the rig hangs off the cable. The Cablecambase comes with Child of and Clamp to constraints.

Librahead: A three-part carrier that holds the camera and provides an axis for movement: Pan left or right, Tilt up or down and a ring axis that allows limited roll.

Camera: By default, a Red Epic Camera.

Create/Connect cable

Use this tool to reset the camera to the origin with an included path. You can then edit the path in your scene. Once you set a keyframe, you can then move the CableCambase along the path.

Must.Crack.On

 I'm neither enjoying the Scene 002 materials nor making any notable progress on them. I'm finding myself jumping on housework and chores rather than face another iteration. This needs to end today. I need to move into the assets and dressing stage, pronto.

It's shared on Patreon! I'd better finish it then!

Housekeeping

On that score, I note that my Blender directory has reached 656GB (28,000 files in 1384 folders). There must be a ton of duplication and backup files. Today I will permit myself to do a careful and rather late spring-clean.

Edit: Deleting some add-on install files and all the backup Blend1 files reduced the directory to 529GB (25,000 files in 1313 directories).

Blender School: Terrain 5 Materials

 I need to up my game. Seriously, I have been doing rookie-level terrain materials since I started using True Terrain 5. I'd just apply a few materials separated by simple masks. If I used filters, it was just a cheap hack to adjust the material's uniform appearance, such as darkening it.

When True Terrain 5 offered some pre-made materials, it was a revelation. I suddenly realised what all those weird colour adjustment nodes were used for.

Oh wow, Big Sanctus update

You can't use Sanctus material on True Terrain 5 unless you ditch its brilliant material system. I was adding a material to the focus object in my test scene when I remembered there had been a Sanctus update.

Sanctus Library is the work of Blender artist Sanctus, who has become a legend in procedural materials. His library now contains 1000+ assets. Really, it's unlimited because it's so darn procedural, with so many parameters to drive. More on this update, later, when I've run through all the changes.

Some of the masks

Slope Mask set to very tight for contrasty cliffs, etc

Valley Mask for a gradient on slopes rather than a tight band.

This procedural mask is a severe limitation, in that at high contrast settings it produces banding, sometimes creating a moiré effect.

Actual Mask files are memory-expensive, but offer much more power.

Patch Mask, cheap and flexible, is a first step in adding noise patches.

Material Progress

 I am slowly developing some better "big terrain" materials for use on the Halo: Raptor project. It's really slow going.

Tomorrow, I may do a Blender School post exploring how True Terrain 5's premade terrain materials develop their natural patterns—mostly using noise filters.

A True Terrain 5 premade material on a Martian-adjacent terrain 

I bought a bundle of add-ons!

I liked the look of some if its items, especially the camera rig. They are old works, but the blurb says that they all work with Blender 5.1.

Expect to see some experiments documented right here when I find time to install, read the docs and experiment with them. CableCam will be the first, although WeatherFX also looks really useful. 

Half-term project

 I need to complete the terrain task for Halo: Raptor. I really do, but I also need to be able to stretch other Blender skills. So, over this week, I will find the time to do a small project.

"Eden Bomb" is a landscape scene depicting a kind of bomb crater or craters that seed life in an alien desert landscape. It's a simple dry terrain with some crater-shaped plant scatters. Easy! Well, maybe. 

I wasted hours trying to replicate the render layers test I completed a few weeks ago. Some element of my notes must be off as I was getting render layers seemingly not saving visibility states, so I was repeatedly turning elements on and off. I'll come back to it soon. 

Friday

 By all accounts, it's going to be a hot one. A tease for summer? Possibly. 

Alien plants!

I get a warning email about having lots of unused credits on my Hitem3D account, so around the 20th of every month, I start hunting down quick, generic subjects for generative 3D models. Yesterday, it was finally time for some weird 3D plants. Usually, I make people.

Another week in which I was especially unfocused and distracted. It's been a fairly consistent state for a few months. There are reasons. The reason will hopefully pass in time.

Halo: Scene 002

I worked on terrain materials, but I ended up in a situation where each iteration was taking a stupid amount of time to render. The last render took nearly three hours. I need to par back the setup so that I can get faster renders. It's why I built the terrain in the above scene, as a test ground for quick terrain development. 

Fix release

 Blender 5.1.2 drops (out of nowhere?)

Just twelve obscure but serious bugs fixed. The next full release should be on July 14th.


I spent time yesterday on the scene 002 terrain. I'll spend more time today improving the materials before introducing some scatter elements.

Meet up

 An esteemed work colleague/manager/mentor is visiting the UK with his wife. They're visiting Sheffield for a day, so I'm going to catch up with them today or tomorrow, possibly both if it means reconnecting with a few ex-colleagues.

It's going to be nice/a bit weird/possibly emotional to catch up with people after three years. Especially having spent the intervening time in a bit of a self-care bubble. We will see! I will report!

Edit: It was too short notice for other ex-WANdisco people to make the date; it was just the visitors and me.

Splashdown

Subnautica 2 has entered early access. I have purchased. I have played. About four hours, so far. It's quite smashing! So far, it seems to have everything I loved about the first game and its stand-alone expansion, only a bit better. Obviously, I will only be dipping in as a reward for completing work tasks—the Scene 002 terrain is now very late. That should be a priority!

Scene 002

Firstly, I had to do some repair work. The critical lake area disappeared. Looking into the problem, I realised that the lake EXR file wasn't loading in because I'd renamed the directory it was stored in. Once that was identified, the lake was quickly returned, and I could concentrate on adding a final set of hills.

The next step will be to rebuild the scene in Blender using new displacement plates and mask files. Once done, it's "dressing-up" time, with the addition of some foliage scattered in the foreground and a lot of structures, here and there; for starters, the city. 

This week

I haven't fallen too far behind on the project effort, but I need to get more productive so that a small slip doesn't get any worse. I've missed my targets for Blender School - that will be a second item on the list.

Gaea vs World Creator

The challenge I posed to Gabe: create a terrain in Gaea, and I will attempt to match it with World Creator, has not yet started. We'll see if Gabe delivers the challenge. I did have a bit of practice, creating a flow terrain in about forty minutes.

Same terrain with a much gentler elevation. Note the path-based material layer that follows the flow, turning it into a stony path or river-bed.

Positive feedback

<sings> Positive Feedback!

Doesn't it just make the world go round?

I posted shots of the latest iteration of the Scene 002 terrain. The director loves it. I just need to add a few more hills to the last flat-looking area. This area was flat by design because ...variation is important. But directors make the big bucks for a reason. More hills!

There remain big challenges. Getting the materials right and consistent with the other scenes will take a lot of time. It's iterative, but the render times on each test are a few minutes, which is very sub-optimal. I think this is a major problem with my general 3D workflow; I get bogged down in slow renders too soon. It should be really fast. Maybe I should be working without True Sky 3 until it's all finished?

Lead Env Artist Gabe seems unhappy that I'm using World Creator instead of Gaea. He's looking at World Creator, but it isn't working for him. I really need to produce more work with Gaea to better understand where each tool's strengths lie. I've suggested to Gabe that he produce something in Gaea and I will try to replicate it using World Creator. We'll see if this is the nudge that I need to spend substantial time retraining with Gaea. On this, I rechecked my upgrade to Gaea 3.0, which doesn't appear to have worked, so I've messaged Quadspinner to take a look.

Random render of old. A World Creator Terrain completely lost under grass and cliff assets. A lesson about how your terrain is only a part of a scene. Sometimes not as big a part as you imagined.

Technically, this is a breach of the NDA, except the entire terrain's shader broke, leaving only a hint of what's going on.

New Car

I didn't get much Blender time over the weekend because Clara wanted help in getting a new car. This was the first time I had a significant part to play in the process. My first time dealing with car salesmen. Sheesh, their reputation appears to be well earned!! We chose a 3-year-old KIA Sportage, which we are picking up today.

Halo: Infinite terrain labours.

The director asked for an update. I find myself caught in a cycle of progress, only to fall short of the necessary level, forcing a restart. Gabe, the lead environmental artist, has been called in, but he's seemingly never actually used True Terrain, so he hasn't yet provided a winning insight into how to make progress. He likes Gaea. I like Gaea too, but I also recognise that just because Gaea has superior erosion systems doesn't automatically make it the better tool for the task.

Nonetheless, I really should do some more Gaea lessons, or I'm the stick-in-the-mud, here.

This week's tasks

Same as last week!

Get Scene 002 finished, which means:

1. More hills in the flat areas. 

2. Win at terrain materials.

3. Find a way to introduce foliage that doesn't crash my system...<hint> It will probably be done in the shader system rather than as discrete scatters. 

Blender School

Some serious lessons, even if it's refreshing my knowledge. I found myself doing Boolean modelling without touching Hard Ops. Insane, but that's what happens if you don't practice stuff: it gets dusty, then rusty, and then you lose it.

 

Material test at high altitude.

A May week

 

Cthulhu chamber

Playing around with modular concrete rooms that connect together to form endless interiors... A quick and dirty animation! 

Fun, but rough. I'll create rooms with a bit more detail and nuance, should I come back to this again. The most important thing I got out of this exercise is a reminder that every video I create always turns into a stuttering, artefact-laden mess. I need to investigate what steps I should be taking to not make them that way. This is annoying because I'm already rendering to stills and completing the animation in DaVinci Resolve.

Update required

Halo director wants an update on the terrain. It's still dragging because its slow work, but lets see if I can get it finished this weekend. 

Gamma 2 - random photo (National Space Centre)

Time flies

 I've failed to post anything this week. It's a minor failure because I have been getting some work done.

There's the development of the terrain for the Halo project. Slow progress, to be sure, but a few more foothills here and there should help make the service road area look more realistic. Can't show it. NDA!

Personal stuff

I find myself going out with a camera and actually taking photographs, which I then actually process and show off. "Looks like photography is back on the menu, boys!"

PHM

I walked away from this little effort because I wasn't quite getting the engine-root. Then I noticed that the official reference was, in fact, an early concept sketch, which is inconsistent with the production version anyway. All the brilliant models I've referenced go their own way. So, I'm not going to sweat the accuracy, I'll stay true to the design but have some fun with the details.

Too much detail, too soon? You have to start somewhere. Plus, BMS is a bit less important when you already have the design roadmap.

A quick play before bed

Boolean some spaces within a cube. Create some holes and doors. Spend time proving that your concrete material doesn't work here. Fall back on the brilliant Materialiq material set.

This is a test. I wanted to render into a 2-second animation, but I was heading to bed, so I thought I'd hold off until I'm out or at work, later today.

The point is made! I can create a cool modular environment with blocks you place together. to match up doorways. These could be dressed up and textured differently, resulting in an endless, varied 3D environment.

Today's Lesson

Cableator or something. 

Pushing through hard stuff

 I'm making some progress on the terrain work. It's very slow and somewhat painstaking, as there are lots of complex parameters to tweak. Individual changes don't indicate that you're heading in the right direction; you have to spend quite a lot of time before you can reflect on whether the results are meeting your requirements.

Sliding displacement plates

This is the process I used for generating the displacement map. I have created many individual terrain elements that are arranged into a single terrain. Getting them to blend appropriately can be tricky. Although this workflow has some benefits, such as the ability to swap out individual bits, as seen here, where the service road element has been replaced with a more detailed version.

It's a struggle, but this feels like steps forward, at least.

May soon

 Here we are in the final days of April, the first calendrical milestone of 2026, as a most eventful first quarter comes to an end. 

Sleep deprivation, thanks to waking up early, is my number one personal issue. I'm peaking at about 5 hours of sleep per night, which has been eroding my cognitive abilities without me really noticing — given that noticing is itself an act of cognition. I'm also getting back pain when I wake up, although, very thankfully, not so much during the day.

Lack of sleep affects appetite and eating habits, pushing me towards less healthy options, which in turn affects metabolic health and, potentially, sleep quality. Funily enough, all these things were an issue when I was in a career job, I just didn't have the bandwidth to really think about them. Instead, the whole team would report their insatiable need for strong coffee during morning meetings. 

I should:

Consider what changes I can make to improve my condition:

• Deal with the sleep issues?
• Is the bed or my sleeping position causing problems with my back?
• Ensure that the eating gets back under control. Maybe I should stick to a food plan that makes it harder to slip back into eating the odd biscuit or three.

Blender

As this is a Blender-related blog, let's get back on track.

Yesterday

I built a quick favela-style block building in the morning, instead of getting on with the pressing work of scene 02 terrain sculpting. I will get back on with that today.

Modular, for building big stacks

Superhive idea

I raised the idea of creating some planet textures a few months ago. This still seems like a good idea, as there aren't a huge number of available on the platform, and science fiction scenes are very popular. They don't take too long to complete, I can do a pretty good job, and they're easy to maintain if you sell them outside of an actual scene build.

A big moon with moon displacement. Room for customisation!

Radio Silence

 I appear to have had a brief period of blogging inactivity. No particular reason. There's been some very distressing news concerning a friend, work ticks along, and home life is quite middling to good.

I've been a bit less focused on Blender than I should. I still need to update the proposed Halo Scene 002 terrain. I've continued to play with ultra-scale terrains. In my case, this is a terrain setup in True Terrain 5 that consists of four 1 GB tiles. Hefty!

Today will not be super-productive because we're taking my youngest son to the National Space Centre, the UK's space museum. We visited before, and it was great. This time, Leo will have many hours of Kerbal Space Engineering behind him.

Next Week

I need to set weekly goals and hold myself accountable when I fail to meet them!

So what am I going to do next week?

1. Deliver an update to the Scene 002 terrain.

This needs to be presented from a higher point of view and incorporate a more accurate representation of the service road area.

Also, some mountain ridges to fill in the blank areas. 

Sneaky peek at the service road sculpt.

2. At least three training spots. Small lessons for new things or revision of areas. 

Possible areas:

• HardOps revision
• Cableator
• Geo-Scatter
• Geo-nodes training

3. Start a medium-to-long-term personal project

This could be the Project: Hail Mary ship or something else.

4. Do the planning for another Superhive Market product.

Don't rush into action. This is about making a good decision about what to make next.