Project Description
Procedural Island Generator Illustration.
Using Blender’s Geometry Nodes.
A personal project influenced by Nordic, Scottish, and Irish islands.
I wanted to create a randomly generated island by the touch of a button using Blender’s geometry nodes.
Each island is unique in Shape, rotation, size, and asset scattering.
Every model is created and textured by me and all textures are procedual.
(A more detailed process on how this was created can be found further down.)
Rendered using the Eevee render engine.
All of the featured Islands.
The different House variations.
The of the Light Houses Featured.
The Boats Featured.
The Docks Featured. (these were the first objects I textured so they’re not the best).
Some of the debris and other assets. (The textures were rushed on these. but they are so small on the main render that it’s hardly noticeable )
The Trees and plants are all procedurally made except for the trunks.
All of the rocks.
The wireframe
The scene in Blender with the very large messy Node tree and on the right are the variables that control every aspect of the island height, rotation, scale, tree amount, houses, lighthouses, docks etc:
Below is a very simple breakdown of what’s going on in the scene.
-Each island starts life as a subdivided Plane.
-The plane is then rounded off and a texture is overlayed which deletes parts of the mesh. This texture is random and constantly changing.
-The plane is then extruded.
-Some more subdivision surfacing is done and another texture is overlayed which sets the position of the vertices to create mountain-like structures.
– The sea floor is added as a subdivided cube. The height of the cube is influenced by the proximity of the mountain-like object.
– Then the sea and the assets are added and textured.
There was a lot of other problem-solving going on in this scene which was a lot of fun to work out. For instance, the dock always appears at the edge of the island close to the lowest grass point and they appear more often if there is a house or a lighthouse present on the island.
Thanks for checking out my project.
Music by:
Continent – ANBR
These are amazing I would love to explore each and everyone of these island!
Thanks, Brandon! I’d love to turn it into a game, where you generate a random island to survive on.
Can we get the blend files?
The blend file is pretty messy. I’m planning on making a tutorial soon If I can get enough interest.
INTEREST!
Fantastic work. The generation is awesome and the textures are on point ! Do you have some recommendation on how to do this kind of texturing ?
Thanks, Lucas.
Every asset was textured using different techniques, which part are you interested in knowing more about?
I’m curious about the water and also about the shaders, have you done some custom shaders to get this look in EEVEE ?
There’s a lot of layers to it.
But to put it simply.
-It starts off with a really simple toon shader using a: Diffuse BSDF > Shader to RGB > Color ramp. All plugged into the fac of a mix shader plugged into a mix shader.
– Next layer is ambiant occlusion.
– After that various layers of noise textures are added to get some color variation.
– Then you use a gradient texture to create two masks one for the highlights and the other for the shadows (these textures are feathered at the edges with a noise texture.)
The foam around the island is a completely separate bit of geometry and is textured differently.
I hope that Helps.
I do intend to make an in-depth tutorial at some point.
Really remarkable!
Thanks, Jack!
Absolutely amazing work! Any chance you release it to the community? I’m down to buy it tbh
Man, I would love to get my hands on this blend file. I got so many ideas just watching the video. Please, put it on Blender Market or somewhere else so I can throw some money at you. ^^
Just beautiful!! Wonderful design and a great concept.
Like a few here I’d buy that blend file as soon as it was available on Blender Market etc. 🙂
Awesome! Is it at some market for us to buy? I would love to study your node trees.