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As we now have volumetrics in cycles, it's possible to render procedural textures in 3D.

For example, you can render a cube:

enter image description here

Like this:

enter image description here

However, is it possible to generate an actual mesh based on the intensity of a procedural texture?

I tried to do something like this:

  1. Simulate particle system being affected by procedural texture
  2. Convert particle system to vertices
  3. Mesh using the convex hull modifier

But I failed because:

  • I couldn't get the particles to group convincingly based on the intensity of a texture
  • The result was concave, so the convex hull operator was not useful.

How can I generate a mesh in this way?

gandalf3
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1 Answers1

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Particle is a nice idea to do this, and it is possible to control the volumetric density by procedual texture:

enter image description here

Demo file

Edit:

As MarcClinton mentioned in comment, a nice addon called MSMesher can be a relatively nice solution:

enter image description here

The result looks similar to metaballs, which means, to generate a sharper shape, further remeshing would be considered.

Leon Cheung
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  • Now I just need some way to mesh them.. metaballs? – gandalf3 Jan 22 '14 at 07:28
  • Metaball is fine, just sort of overkill. – Leon Cheung Jan 22 '14 at 07:47
  • The MSMesher Addon might do this for you. Here is a thread on BA.org http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?284678-MSMesher The authors username is MohamedSakr and there is a video link for Vimeo titled MSMesher Introduction – MarcClintDion Feb 04 '14 at 23:29
  • @MarcClintDion Ah, I think this is what the OP want. MSMesher seems nice here, although it seems hard to make a sharp-enough result. But we can try using Remesh after that. I think it's less overkill than metaball. – Leon Cheung Feb 05 '14 at 04:36
  • Well, since you bring it up. I do remember seeing all quads and they appeared evenly spaced and are well oriented along all three axis. It looks ideal for Loop Cuts(Ctrl-R). The one big thing I noticed is that all traffic on this thread stopped several months ago. Maybe someone else will have to take up the maintenance. – MarcClintDion Feb 05 '14 at 06:01
  • Looks promising! :) I always did want a way to mesh particles for SPH fluid sims.. – gandalf3 Feb 05 '14 at 06:56