Wild Geese

 

A honking double-wedge of geese just flew over the house. The cacophony jolted me away from my coffee and reminded me that it's the first day back at school for both boys.

I'm going to miss the peace and quiet.

Things got busy here. Returning to work as the boys return to school. Leo, in fact, is starting secondary school. I made a few more figures; I did some piddling around with terrains. I discovered that Gaea had stopped working. It would refuse to export terrains, complaining about a lack of an appropriate license. As I suspected, installing the early-access version had overwritten my licence file. Quadspinner were very not upfront about the severe limitations on v3. It looks great, but if I can't export terrains, then it's no actual use to me. Roll on November, when I believe we'll see a full (working) release.

I did some test terrains using World Creator. I had tested the Blender Bridge, which lets you push a scene that you're building in World Creator straight into Blender. The tool works better than ever, but not well enough, alas. When I created a large, high-res terrain, I started getting out-of-memory errors in Blender. An issue that doesn't happen when the terrain is exported as an EXR and loaded into Blender via True Terrain 5.

Big terrain exported using the tried-and-tested EXR import method

True Sky version

Interesting results from Gaea testing, once my v2 license file was reapplied. You have to love those complex filters -- the one here that creates broken chunks. The debris is too fine, though. It's a liability unless you were able to render the terrain with 200 million+ polygons.

Gaea 2. working again! 120 million polygon version (in True Terrain 5.2)

Same terrain rendered as above at 1 million polygons (in True Terrain 5.2)

Original Gaea terrain

More figures

Leo photo converted. Leo has also suffered from that weird fleshy eyelash-extrusion problem. I cleaned them up in Blender, mostly.  

babylon.js has replaced the default Windows 3d object viewer. It's really good!

Onwards into Quintilus (or Septimus)

 Harsh week. Back pain. Chronic sleep deprivation. Stresses and strains. We endure!

Diabetes

I'm off the medication, handling my insulin resistance through diet and exercise alone! Yay! Now to stay on the straight and narrow, so that my next HbA1c test continues to show me below the pre-diabetes range.

Halo: Raptor

I chatted with the director about my progress with Gaea. We're looking at using Gaea for my next scene. In the meantime, I will be doing some quick test terrains to see if I can muster the right type and quality.

I also need to finish the city. For this, I need to grab the terrain beneath the city and create a copy of its topology so I can properly map the roads onto it. Currently, much of the city's surface level is sunk below the hills.

Now, let's see if I can break out of my disconbobulation and get some productivity.

Time to get back to work

 

I feel like I have put one foot through the doorway into the Gaea terrain creation. Its node-based system and impressive selection of erosion systems make it a preferred choice for complex terrain. Not in every single case, but in general.

Spot art for a Facebook group I belong to:

True Sky 3 and some old models

Start of Week 

Last week's aims:
Complete Gabe's challenge - tick! I conceded and moved on to the next aim: learn Gaea. That's another tick! Also, refresh my Random Flow skills. Tick!

This week

• Re-engage with the Halo: Raptor scene 002 work. There's a conversation happening with the env team.
• Take another look at Random Flow -- there's a new major release out. I'd better get it installed and take a look.
• I desperately need to complete a small project. A fully-fledged but simple-ish scene.

A Most Fallow Weekend

 I got almost nothing done over the weekend, except for normie stuff like washing, cleaning, cooking, and some exercise. 

Sidetracked while preparing a terrain for Gabe's challenge. A different sidetrack in itself.

Start of the Week (SOW)

Last week felt like grinding to a halt. This week, we'll turn it all around. Honest, we will!

1) Scene 002 Completion. The Director wants to chat about staging. Annoying that staging has been agreed for a long time, but we're still developing the scene's fundamentals. I can move the camera up a bit once the critical elements are done. They are: City and structures, materials, and scatters.

To this end, I need materials and terrain completed so that I can bake the terrain into a proper mesh, not a True Terrain object. I can then cut it into pieces and split it into 3-4 layers to break up the scatter elements.

2) Lots of Gaea tutorials and exercises. We'll be Gaea-proficient in a week. Honest, we will!

An output to Blender in less than ten minutes. V. gratifying!

3) Start a substantial but slow-burning personal project that has a strong possibility of making some money through sales in the Superhivemarket store.

Conceding defeat!

This morning I had another crack at Gabe's Gaea terrain. It was a closer run than I expected, but the assignment really was about which tool gives best-of-class results. Gaea wears that crown! I still think World Creator is a brilliant tool, and it is still capable of amazing output. It could be that the deficiency of my WC terrain was down to a lack of skill on my part, but that's fine.

To be clear, Gabe's output has been given the Full blender treatment. This was a test of terrain quality.

World Creator's interactive capabilities let you "paint" your terrain. I LOVE that.

So I will be investing a lot of time in learning Gaea...from the ground up!

Random Flow test scene

Yesterday, I mentioned using Kitbashing to finish the test scene quickly.

KitBASH!!!

Today I will be pulling some of it back and doing some cleanup. Plus adding pipes. Lots of pipes!

A deep dive into Cableator

Firstly, a progress report on the terrain...

I'm pleased with the topology in general. The snow mask is a bit leaky, so it isn't bright white like I'd hoped. The ridges are less pronounced, Gabe's mountain is less nuanced, but it sells the landscape better -- it just looks authentic. Right now, I'm thinking of conceding and retooling to use Gaea. Maybe I'll give it a second pass, but it will need to wait. In the meantime, Gabe issued an update to his terrain. <I make a face>

I think I will be getting to grips with Gaea very soon. Gaea 3.0 early access is due out next month.

Back to the Random Flow personal project

I decided to throw a lot of design elements into the Random Flow structure -- like I said, you need to balance random greebles with stuff that shows clear intent, tells a story, and/or presents recognisable, realistic elements that set both scale and context -- like ladders, doors, lamps, etc.

To this end, I don't have time to build many custom models. Instead, I gathered some models I've built over the last few years and stripped off some elements for a kitbash. I don't do much kitbashing because modelling and designing are my thing. This is a good example of where having a library of bits is useful for getting something out the door.

I want to add a bunch of realistic pipes and cables to the structure. This part I will build, but I will call upon the aid of some Blender addons - firstly, Cableator.

Let's do a deep dive:

Blender-School: Cableator

Documentation: https://cablerator.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Do you need an addon in order to create a curve, edit its start and end points, then make it into a solid? No, but if you want it to be really quick and easy, then Cableator is way ahead of the curve!

For openers: two ways to make a cable

1) Create a cable by choosing endpoints. This is the most straightforward method.
2) Draw Cable by drawing a path. This gives you more path control, but it tends to be erratic, adding lots of control points that make your cable twist in ugly, broken ways. 

Create a cable (Docs)

1. Click on polygons to define start and end points of the cable. Hold Ctrl/Cmd to snap to polygon centre;

2. Adjust cable width with S, cable tension (length) with D;

3. Hold Shift while changing values to make values more precise;

4. Hold Ctrl/Cmd while changing values to snap to 0.05 steps;

5. Change other options like twist mode, resolution and subdivisions;

6. Left Click to confirm the cable;

• If there’s a cable selected before creating a new one, the same cable width or profile will be used by default;

• If there’s a curve without width selected before creating a new one, the same curve will be used as a profile;

• If there are one or two endpoints of a different curve selected, these points will be used as starting points;

• If another bezier curve point was used as a starting point, there will be an option to join the curves with J key;

• Press Q while in modal to quickly add another cable;

Draw a cable

1. By default the cable will snap to visible geometry. Press D to switch between Surface and Cursor pen depth;

2. Draw with Left Click-Drag;

3. Undo with Ctrl+Z;

4. Confirm with Right Mouse Button or Esc;

• If there’s a cable selected before creating a new one, the same cable width or profile will be used by default;

• If there’s a curve without width is selected before creating a new one, the same curve will be used as a profile;

Editing Cables

• Width (S): width of the cable.

• Tension Delta (D): changes the cable tension (length).

• Resolution (F): cable length resolution.

• Tilt Cable (I): tilts the cable and automatically recalculates tilt values for all points.

• Bevel Resolution (V): cable profile resolution (if no curve profile is used).

• Scale Profile (T): curve profile scale (if a curve profile is added).

• Offset the Closest Point (Shift+W): offsets the point closest to the mouse cursor.

• Grab Profile (B): grabs a profile from the active doc or from the ext doc (switch with Shift+B).

• Twist Method (H): controls how the curve twists in 3D space; changing this can help remove curve artifacts.

• Show Wire (X): toggles Wire mode on/off for the curve. Wire mode is turned off on finish.

• Fill Caps (C): adds caps to the ends of cables.

• Set Bevel Object (A): assigns a profile to the cable.

• Move a Point (M): reattaches the point closest to the mouse cursor to a different face of any object.

Create a complex-form cable (ribbed cable)

1. Create a cable where you want the complex cable. Scale it down so it's not visible. You only need the path.

2. Create the rib section out of a cylinder. Remove the end cap faces after creating an inset.

3. Scale the cylinder, bevel the edges.
4. Select the cable, bring up the Cableator menu and select Add or Edit Segment.

5. Use Array (C) to bridge the path.

You have a ribbed cable! So dang easy!

Simulate

Select the meshes before selecting an existing Cableator cable to add them as collision solvers. Then, when the simulation runs, Blender does its level best to account for realistic object collision. It doesn't always work, but there are tools to improve results. Even so, a tweak here and there is much easier than manually staging realistic cables.

1. Create a cable and complete it.

2. Select meshes with which you want the cable to detect/collide. 

3. Run Simulate.

4. Probably fix. There are some post-simulation options that can help improve outputs. 

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).

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. 

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)

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.

Weekend deadline

 I need to catch up with the director. My progress has stopped, my enthusiasm sapped by not breaking through a crop of creative and technical challenges. I've suggested Monday, which gives me today and tomorrow to actually have something to show.

Let's break it down:

What do we need?

A large terrain, roughly 30km x 30km, showing the dry canyon/broken ground where the next scene of the episode takes place. Surrounding the broken ground are mountains, and in the distance, there is an island on a lake. There's a city on the island from which we can see smoke rising.

And why is that hard?

It's a huge terrain viewed from high altitude, so you see it more than a terrain viewed from on or near the ground.  Getting enough detail that looks right is really hard. I've used World Creator to sculpt elements and patch them together. That works great so long as the different elements are scaled consistently. I've found that some elements don't align with erosion and flow patterns. 

Once a terrain is created, getting ground patterns through a scatter system is not really feasible. Scattering systems use instancing, so they can apply thousands of grass clumps using only one 3D model, which is super memory-efficient. However, the number of instances you can apply to a terrain is not unlimited. At some point, your viewport will buckle and probably crash Blender. Even if it scatters off in the viewport and view them selectively, eventually, Blender will fall over trying to create the shopping list of elements to feed to the rendering engine. You can scatter distant forests in a big scene from the ground where trees that are more than 5 miles away are occluded by hills, but when you are at 20,000 feet, there's not much blocking your view of hundreds of square miles of trees. You need to fake it!

Things I could do:

1) Use Render Layers to break the scene up. The output needs to be reassembled in the compositor, but this approach lets you render the scene in pieces, using fewer resources each time and allowing you to fix things selectively. This may require the terrain to be broken into sections.

2) Use shader tricks instead of scatters. When you have millions of trees and bushes to apply to a vast landscape, it may be better to use trickery. 

Test terrain

Co-pilot output on efficient substitutes for scatters:

Below is practical, performance‑focused guidance for using Blender Geometry Nodes to create plants and vegetation that scale to very large terrains, while avoiding classic scatter‑system bottlenecks. I’ll clearly separate what is explicitly supported by documented behaviour from expert recommendations, as required.

---

1. Think “Hierarchical Instancing”, Not “Scatter Everything Flat”

What the docs explicitly confirm

Blender Geometry Nodes support nested instancing, where instances can themselves contain other instances, and only unique meshes are actually stored in memory. This dramatically improves performance for large scenes. [docs.blender.org]

However:

• Blender currently supports only 8 levels of nested instancing for viewport and rendering; deeper trees must be realized. [docs.blender.org]

Recommended plant structure (expert guidance)

Build vegetation as multi-level instance trees:

Terrain

 └── Biome instance (forest / grassland)

      └── Species instance (pine, fern, grass type)

           └── Variation instance (size/shape seed)

                └── Mesh (leaf, blade, branch)

This ensures:

• One mesh processed once, reused millions of times

• GPU memory stays stable even at continental scale

• Wind animation and transforms stay cheap

Avoid directly instancing final meshes at terrain level.

---

2. Never Realize Instances Unless You Absolutely Must

What the docs explicitly confirm

• Realize Instances converts instanced geometry into unique geometry.

• Once realized, every node downstream processes all geometry individually, increasing memory and CPU cost significantly. [docs.blender.org]

Best practice

• Keep instances unrealized all the way to the final output

• Only realize:

• Meshes needing deformation (cloth, sculpting)

• Export pipelines that cannot handle instances

Leaves, grass, small debris should never be realized.

---

3. Use Camera‑Relative Density (Not Global Density)

What community sources explicitly note

Large Geometry Nodes setups slow down mainly due to:

• Huge point counts

• Viewport evaluating everything at once

• Memory spikes proportional to terrain size [blenderartists.org]

Recommended solution

Use distance-based falloff driven by camera position:

• High density near camera

• Medium density in mid‑range

• Very low or zero density beyond

This keeps:

• Viewport responsive

• Render performance stable

This approach mirrors built‑in LOD systems used by procedural terrain tools that emphasize automatic level-of-detail control. [blenderkit.com]

---

4. Avoid Alpha Planes for Vegetation in Cycles

What’s explicitly stated

Community reports confirm that alpha‑textured planes (grass cards) can:

• Hurt Cycles performance

• Require higher ray depth

• Cause rendering artifacts [blenderartists.org]

Recommended approach

• Prefer low‑poly meshes over alpha cards

• Use instances to compensate for higher vertex counts

• Use opacity only where unavoidable (e.g., distant impostors)

---

5. Partition Terrains into Tiles, Not One Mega‑Mesh

What performance discussions show

Large single meshes combined with Geometry Nodes cause:

• Long evaluation pauses

• RAM saturation during viewport edits [blenderartists.org]

Proven scalable approach

• Split terrain into tiles / chunks

• Each tile has its own Geometry Nodes modifier

• Use world coordinates to keep continuity

This allows:

• Partial evaluation

• Streaming‑like behavior

• Easier debugging

---

6. Limit Geometry Node Evaluation in the Viewport

Explicitly documented workaround

Blender provides an Is Viewport field input that allows different values for viewport vs render evaluation, useful for density reduction. [blenderartists.org]

Practical setup

• Viewport density: low

• Render density: full

• Switch node controlled by Is Viewport

This alone can turn an unusable scene into an interactive one.

---

7. Prefer Data‑Driven Variation Over Unique Meshes

What Geometry Nodes excels at

• Randomized transforms

• Attribute‑driven material variation

• Curve‑based procedural growth [youtube.com], [entagma.com]

Recommendation

Instead of 20 different plant meshes:

• 1 mesh

• 1 geometry node graph

• Variation via:

• Scale randomness

• Rotation noise

• Color attributes

• Curve‑driven deformation

This keeps instance counts high but memory low.

---

8. Know When Geometry Nodes Beat Scatter — and When They Don’t

Explicitly documented limitation

Developer discussions show Geometry Nodes instancing still has higher viewport overhead than legacy particle instancing in some cases. [developer....lender.org]

Practical takeaway

Use Geometry Nodes when you need:

• Procedural logic

• Biomes

• Growth systems

• Terrain awareness

If you only need:

• Simple grass scattering

• No rules, no variation Legacy systems or specialized tools may still be lighter.

---

Final Mental Model for Huge Worlds

Think of Geometry Nodes vegetation as:

“Procedural data graphs generating instance trees, not geometry.”

If:

• You see millions of vertices → something is wrong

• You see only a handful of meshes instanced millions of times → you’re doing it right

---

If you want, I can next:

• Sketch a reference node graph layout for biome‑based vegetation

• Show how to implement camera‑based density falloff

• Compare Geometry Nodes vs Geo‑Scatter vs legacy particles for large worlds

Just tell me what you want to go deeper into.