Creating Mesh-Based Procedural Ice In Blender
Check out Deepak Kushwaha's system.
3D Artist Deepak Kushwaha has showcased a procedural ice system made with Blender's Geometry Nodes that creates ice entirely from actual geometry instead of relying on bump or displacement textures. According to him, it's lighter to render and looks good in both Cycles and Eevee.
The outside uses a simple glass material, while the interior is filled with randomly scattered bubbles and small, spiky ice shards. By adjusting the amount of internal detail, the artist can create different types of ice, from crystal-clear to dirty. Here's Deepak's detailed explanation of this approach:
"This ice system is a procedural system made using multiple nodes, as you can see.
The thing is, most of the ice systems I see made by other artists are mostly texture-based. They use bump and displacement textures to create the ice details, and they look pretty good. But the problem is that they can also make the system heavy. They also look good in Cycles, but not so much in Eevee.
So, here is where this system comes into play. The basic body or outer surface of the ice is just a simple glass material, which works normally in Eevee with refraction.
Now, there are multiple types of ice, like clear, dirty, salty, etc. These types define how much internal structure or detail is visible inside the ice.
For that, some particles are distributed inside the cube or any other geometry. Then, icospheres are assigned to those particles. On those icospheres, multiple cones or triangle-like shapes with different sizes and widths are placed randomly. This gives the ice some random, sharp, and pointy structures inside, creating that crack-like effect.
Then, using another set of particles with some displacement, bubbles are placed inside the ice. These bubbles also get some random transformations and noise to make them look more natural."
Deepak Kushwaha makes all kinds of cool projects using Blender, including a text effect system, a functional portal, and a cyberpunk lab rendered in a painterly style:
If you're interested in exploring more ways to create ice in Blender, check out FrogmanDev's geometry-based ice cracks and Ethan Du Toit's glowing ice material:
Ryan King has also put together a tutorial on creating ice in Blender:
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