Introduction to Blender's Geometry Nodes: Understanding Proceduralism

Blender's Geometry Nodes is an extremely powerful tool that can create such fantastic procedural projects that it's hard to believe they are made with free software. But it can be quite daunting to start the journey with all these nodes.

If you've always wanted to dip your toes into this topic, our third 80 Level course is here to help. Led by the renowned 3D artist, CGMatter, it will show you the world of nodes in a bit over 5 hours.

Why Take This Course?

Geometry Nodes are one of the most important parts of Blender, they can streamline your workflows so much that you won't believe it. They can quite possibly change the way you look at 3D and make you tweak your pipelines.

Course Content

The course invites you to jump into making mini-projects – the best way to learn something. You'll be guided through the basics, including attributes, topology, simulation, gizmos, data types, vector math, and more, with CGMatter's constant support.

"That is what this course is about. Getting you up and running in the general sense. Not listing every node (which is impractical), but how to think with nodes."

Course Outline

Introduction - Meet The Instructor (2 min)

Chapter 1 - Building Up To A Fractal (46 min)

• Part 1: Setting up (5 min)
• Accessing geometry nodes and some quality of life adjustments before diving in.
• Part 2: What are geometry nodes (7 min)
• Thinking of geometry nodes as a nodegroup in the modifier stack. Creating custom modifiers with nodes.
• Part 3: Right to the fractal (34 min)
• Creating a Menger Sponge (2D analog) with a cube primitive, transform geometry, and join nodes. Complexity arising from chaining instanced node groups.

Chapter 2 - Ditching Keyframes For Proceduralism (1 hour 40 min)

• Part 1: Introducing time & math (2 min)
• Becoming familiar with the scene time and math nodes.
• Part 2: Basic animations (26 min)
• Animating by using scene time as a vector component. No keyframes required.
• Part 3: Assembling gear systems (20 min)
• Adding complexity to basic animations. Using interpolation functions and custom parameters for accurate gear-to-gear contact.
• Part 4: Clocks with real-world time (52 min)
• Creating a fully usable clock with custom models and stylized motion. The ultimate test of what we learned in this chapter.

Chapter 3 - Making Snow & Terrains With Fields (1 hour 16 min)

• Part 1: Terrains via height maps (33 min)
• Treating geometry as a means to store and update field information. Modifying the position field via set position to create procedural terrains.
• Part 2: Snow via point clouds (43 min)
• Thinking of point clouds as basic position + radius visualizers. Using ‘Pac-Man portals’ for a blazingly efficient, never-ending snowfall.

Chapter 4 - Points For Fur & FX (1 hour 32 min)

• Part 1: Fur and the point-instance workflow (51 min)
• Using distribute points on faces as a means to capture surface information. Instancing objects on points with normal orientations and random attributes.
• Part 2: Object morphing FX (41 min)
• Sampling a field from one object to apply to another. Sampling corresponding positions from pairs of points to create a seamless morphing effect. Bonus sneak peek into volumes and remeshing.

Outro - Where To Go From Here (6 min)

Recommended Software

All you need is Blender, 4.4 or a newer version, and, ideally, an understanding of high school-level math. You don't have to have experience in Geometry Nodes whatsoever.

About the Instructor: CGMatter/Default Cube

CGMatter, also known as Default Cube, is a talented artist with 6 years of experience with Blender, most of which he spent mastering Geometry Nodes. 

He believes that understanding proceduralism isn’t just the most important emerging 3D skill, but also the most interesting and expansive one.

"Every project I’ve ever worked on got me hired because of this focus. Some examples are Disney’s An Almost Christmas Story (the procedural snow and ‘stop-motion’ effect), Rabbit Trap (procedural growth simulations), Y2K (procedural animations for the eye monster), a whole bunch of freelance work, of course, and I taught a Blender digital architecture course at MADI. This, and 1,000 or so Blender tutorials on YouTube, which have been my main focus throughout."

Join now, you won't regret it! And check out our previous 80 Level courses: Procedural Assets and Environments with Houdini, Substance 3D & Unreal Engine and 3D Creature Production: Rigging, Animation & CFX.