The Plating Generator creates customised, reconfigurable panel lines and greeble details on top of your 3D Model.
This add-on is for 3D Modellers and concept artists who find it time consuming to create interlocking panels and details on 3D Models such as spaceship hulls, but still want a unique look and feel. It uses specially designed algorithms to generate different patterns.
For instance, a manual method is to extrude edge loops over and over, which can be very time consuming. The more detailed you want the mesh to be, the longer it will take:
Plating Generator combined with the Shape Generator addon can quickly create detailed models which can then be further refined. It can also be used to create libraries of curated objects.
Select the Add-ons tab on the left if it is not already.
Select the Install… button along the top.
This will open a file dialog where you should navigate to where you have downloaded the plating_generator_greebles.zip file. This file should not be unzipped.
Then, click the Install add-on from file button.
Search for the add-on by typing Plating Generator in the search box if it does not already appear.
Make sure the checkbox next to the Add-on (Mesh: Generate Plates with Greebles) is ticked:
The tool can be used in either Object or Edit Face Mode, with faces selected.
Plating Generator in the right-click context menu.
Select some faces on your object.
Right-click in the viewport and a menu should appear.
In the menu there should be a section called Plating Generator, which is also available from the Mesh menu at the top of the viewport.
If you want to create a new plating object and leave the original object intact in a non-destructive way you have the following options as a starting point:
Add Plates: Add a panel line pattern as a new object using the faces you have selected.
Add Greebles: Add greeble objects as a new object using the faces you have selected.
If you don’t want to damage your original object, these options will create a new separate object, called <original name> plating, and add a base Level of either Plates or Greebles:
When you have either added Plating or Greebles you can then change the object’s properties using the built-in side panel available on the right hand side when the new object is selected. If this is not visible, press the n key in the viewport to display Blender’s properties panel, and select the Plating Generator side tab:
This will edit the existing object, which can be advantageous if you wish to create deeper plates or embedded greebles. However it is more difficult to undo the operation.
Tip
Disappearing Panel?
During this mode, which is a one-time operation, Blender’s panel can disappears if you accidentally click outside. You can bring it back as long as you have not performed another action by pressing F9.
When using a Non Destructive Workflow, if you select a plating object the Plating Generator Panel will show the parameters for the object. This panel is on the right hand side of the viewport. If this is not visible, press the n key in the viewport to display Blender’s properties panel, and select the Plating Generator side tab:
These control the overall randomisation for the Plating Generator and whether to automatically update the object when parameters are changed:
The Master Seed Controls the randomisation of all the Generator code and will change what the Plating object looks like within the parameters of the add-on.
This button will change the master seed parameter at random so you can quickly try out different variations.
This button will update the object with the parameters specified in the panel.
When turned on, any parameter changed in the Plating Generator panel will automatically update the object. If switched off, you will need to manually press the Update button to update the selected object.
Auto Update on while randomly changing the main seed.
When you have created a Plating/Greeble Object using a Non Destructive Workflow, you can add extra levels of plates or greebles. For each level, you can then choose to either build on top of the original object or previous levels. They are similar in concept to layers in Photoshop or Gimp.
Levels Control Panel, with some example levels. Here, the ‘Upper Tier’ level is selected.
Add: Add a new Level.
Copy: Make a copy of the selected level.
Up/Down Arrows: Move the selected level up and down the stack.
Expanding the Levels sub section will give you the ability to add new Levels to the plating object. When you first add a new Plating Object, a single level called “Base Level” is added:
Selector: By clicking on a level, the row will be highlighted and you will be able to access the properties below the panel.
Type: Icon showing the type of level (Plates or Greebles)
Color: A random color is assigned to a level for organisation purposes which you can change if you wish. It has no effect on the object.
Name: Name for the level.
Seed: The seed associated with the level.
Visible: Whether we can actually see the level of not: It will still be processed if it is enabled. This helps with adding invisible framing elements for greebles or plating.
Enabled: Whether the level is enabled for processing or not. If other levels are dependant on this level, they will no longer be displayed or processed.
To add a new Level, with the plating object selected:
Expand the Levels sub-section of the panel:
Click the “Add” button to create a new Level:
By default the Level will be disabled allowing you to set up some properties before you add a new Level.
In the Properties panel, try changing the type of Level to “Greeble”:
Now, enable the Level by clicking the checkbox either in the Properties panel or in the Levels panel. You should see the object update with the new Level, unless it is hidden by the objects in the other Level:
The Build On option allows you to choose whether the level builds on the Original Object or Previous Levels:
If you select a previous level, and that level was a “Plating” type, you can choose whether to add this level to the Tops or the Sides of the Plates (or both by pressing the shift key):
The Properties section allows you to further configure a selection:
You have the following selection options when you are either building on the original object, or on top of a level:
Face Amount: The percentage of faces from the selection to build on. On the original object, this will randomly select faces. Clicking the circular refresh button allows you to randomize the selection.
Plate Amount: The percentage of plates or greebles to build on. On the original object, this will randomly select existing plates. Clicking the circular refresh button allows you to randomize the selection.
Only Select Remaining Faces: Only pick from the faces that haven’t already been used by the levels below. Useful for keeping the effects from overlapping.
You can control the minimum size of the faces that will have the Level applied by using the Minimum Face Area property, which is useful for stopping plates or greebles being added to very small faces.
Here, one plating level is being built onto another, with the green level being applied to the tops and sides of the base purple level. The Minimum Face Area property is used to stop the effect being applied to smaller faces (such as some of the smaller sides).
Create sets of rectangles of varying sizes on the object. This is a more experimental version where some lines may not intersect, but changing the seed may remove these results.
Rectangle Random Seed: Change where rectangles are added independent to the main random seed.
Rectangle Amount: Number of rectangles to cut out.
Rectangle Width Min: Minimum number of width edges for rectangles.
Rectangle Width Max: Maximum number of width edges for rectangles.
Rectangle Height Min: Minimum number of height edges for rectangles.
Rectangle Height Max: Maximum number of height edges for rectangles.
Subdivisions: this will subdivide the selected faces before applying the pattern.
Inspired by Sam Morse-Brown, this is a combination of the criss-cross pattern combined with rectangle shapes and triangles. This is a more experimental version where some lines may not intersect, but changing the seed may remove these results.
Rectangle Random Seed: Change where rectangles are added independent to the main random seed.
Rectangle Amount: Number of rectangles to cut out.
Rectangle Width Min: Minimum number of width edges for rectangles.
Rectangle Width Max: Maximum number of width edges for rectangles.
Rectangle Height Min: Minimum number of height edges for rectangles.
Rectangle Height Max: Maximum number of height edges for rectangles.
Slices Random Seed: The number of edge loops to create on the pattern. If they intersect with a rectangle, they will be terminated.
Slices Amount: Number of slices to make in the pattern.
Triangles Random Seed: Change where triangular parts of the slices are added independent to the main random seed.
Amount of triangles in slice: As a percentage, how many triangles are added to the sliced pattern.
Subdivisions: this will subdivide the selected faces before applying the pattern.
Amount: This will shrink the tops of the plates. By increasing the amount, the plates should become smaller. You can also use negative amounts to make the plate tops larger.
By default, the plates will be created with the same materials as the selected faces. The following parameters let you override that behavior with materials you have defined:
Plating effect with different materials applied to each set of plates.
This section allows you to specify different materials to randomly applied to each plate. A plate is a group of faces between the grooves.
It has the following parameters:
No. of Plating Materials: The number of different materials to be randomly applied to the plates. Increasing this number will create new material drop-down boxes for you to populate*:
* There is a known bug in Blender where by pressing the ‘X’ the menu will disappear in the Destructive Workflow. Use the number of plating materials parameter to control the number of materials instead.
Add Vertex Colors: Add a vertex color group called plating_color to the plates. A random color value is assigned per plate.
Vertex Color Random Seed: You can change these random colors by altering thia value. You can then use this in a material shader to control the color of a material:
Different seed values being applied to the vertex color layer.
Simple example of a vertex color layer controlling a material.
Select Groove Geometry: select the created groove faces.
Select Plate Geometry: select the created faces for the plates.
Mark UV Seams: mark UV Seams around the plates for texture mapping purposes.
Edge Split: this will split the groove edges to make sure the outer plates remain smooth.
Remove Grooves: completely remove the grooves and just leave the plates. Useful with Solidify modifier.
Remove Inner Grooves: This allows you to remove just the inner groove faces. Useful in the Non Destructive Workflow when you just want the plates and sides.
Edge Selection Only: only select the edges, without the mesh being edited. Useful if you want to perform custom operations on the selection.
Shade Smooth: All faces will have their shading set to smooth.
The Plates will automatically have Blender’s UV Smart Projection algorithm applied to generate UVs for texturing.
UV Projection Limit: This controls how faces are grouped: a higher limit will lead to many small groups but less distortion, while a lower limit will create fewer groups at the expense of more distortion.
The Greeble objects are aligned randomly onto quad faces. The overall shape of each greeble is deformed to follow the face it is being placed on unless the Maintain Aspect Ratio property is checked.
Greeble Random Seed: by changing this value, you will create different random patterns.
Overall Coverage %: The percentage covering the object.
Greeble Division Levels: Each face will be allocated spaces for the greebles. Higher levels means more objects will be fit onto each face. The user interface is restricted but you can enter higher values.
Greeble Deviation: This is how much each greeble’s size varies on a face. A value of 0 will create a uniform set of sizes, where a value of 1.0 will create irregular sizes.
There are several basic objects supplied as a default greeble library to create Greeble effects from. You can choose to add squares in different patterns, L shapes, T shapes, or cylinders.
There are settings for each object and by hovering the mouse you should see a description for each one. They are:
A thumbnail of the greeble:. Clicking on this thumbnail shows you which other objects you can choose from within that greeble library.
A drop down menu showing which greeble library the object comes from. If you have other greeble libraries installed, you can select them here.
Maintain Aspect Ratio: This will keep the proportions of the object’s width and height in case you do not want the object stretched.
Material Index: Override the material on the greeble with a material index slot. By default, these objects will inherit the material of the object. Values of -1 will not override the material.
Height Override: This will automatically override the height of each greeble so that you can stop shapes stretching unnecessarily.
Coverage: This controls the amount this Greeble will cover the surface relative to the total number of greebles set under the ‘Greeble Pattern’ section. This allows you to adjust the relative amount of each object on the total number of greeble objects. For instance, if you have 50% L shapes and 100% T shapes, the effect will roughly have half as many L shapes as T shapes.
The add-on allows you to add your own greebles from scene objects.
By clicking “Add” you will be able to select the scene object. Once selected, the objects will be added as Greebles. You can adjust the coverage and other parameters of these objects just like the library greebles.
The objects will be added to a face relative to the same direction as the z-axis of the original object.
This section allows you to point the greebles in a customized direction and to control the random rotation of the greebles.
Use Custom Direction: By default, the greebles point out from the Mesh along the normal of the faces they are on. This option allows you to point the greebles in a custom direction along the vector defined under Outwards Direction. A value of (0,0,1), for instance, will point all Greebles in the Z direction:
Custom Direction: All greebles point in the same customisable direction.
Rotation: The greebles are randomly rotated in 90 degree turns when they are placed on the mesh. You can control or disable this function:
Greeble Random Rotation Seed: this will change the random pattern of greeble rotations without affecting their overall positions.
Do not randomly rotate: This disables random rotation, and allows you to specify the number of 90 degree turns by changing Number of 90 degree rotations.
This will update the plating object to change to a different set of faces on a mesh.
On the main object you are creating plate objects from, select a new set of faces you wish to change to in Face Edit Mode. This can also be existing faces you have changed.
Right-click and select Plating Generator -> Update Plating Selection For:.
In the menu that appears, select the plating object you wish to update.
The plating object you have selected should automatically update to use the new face selection.
With the plating object selected, in the top right of the Plating Generator panel is the presets sub-menu. Select “Save Preset”:
In the File Menu window that appears, type the name of the .json file you wish to save as a preset. You may wish to save in a pre-configured directory for easy access later:
Click “Save”.
Your settings will be then saved as a .json file you can load later or access via a sub menu if you have saved it in a presets directory.
Placing your json preset files in a pre-configured directory gives you quick access via the drop down menus. You can have many presets directories, each containing their own group of presets.
These directories can be set in the Presets Path setting under the Edit - Preferences - Addons menu under the Plating Generator add-on entry:
Go to Edit -> Preferences and select the Add-Ons tab if it is not selected already:
Then, find the Plating Generator add-on by starting to type ‘Plates…’ in the search box. Expanding the ‘Mesh: Generate Plates with Greebles’ entry should give you a small preferences screen:
There is a ‘Preferences’ section:
The Defaults are listed in their own directory. If you delete all entries, clicking ‘Refresh Libraries’ will reset the directory list.
To add a new library, unzip the zip file to a separate folder somewhere on your computer. You should see a set of files with .blend and .png file pairs:
Now go to the preference screen and click the ‘Add Folder Containing Greebles’ button. A new folder entry will appear:
Finally, click ‘Refresh Greeble Libraries’ to load the greebles in:
You should now be able to use the new greebles library when using the add-on by selecting the library from the drop down list:
You can create your own greeble library by doing the following:
Create a folder for your greeble library. The name of the folder will be the name of the library.
Create a .blend file with the Greeble object in it.
Greeble objects need to be a single blender object mesh, that is:
It does not have child objects and is all joined into one object.
All modifiers are applied.
It is a normal blender ‘Mesh’, not a curve, a light, or other object types.
It can optionally have Materials and UV Mapping.
Make sure the object is called ‘Greeble’. This is so the add-on can find the object when it looks in the file.
Create a thumbnail for the file by rendering a square picture of it in Blender and saving it as a .png in the same directory as the .blend file. It should also have the same name as the .blend file. For instance, if my greeble object is called my_greeble I would have a my_greeble.blend file and a square my_greeble.png file of, for instance, 500x500px in the one directory.
You can create as many .blend-.png pairs of files in the folder, and this will make up your greeble library.
A good way of seeing what a greeble folder should look like is by looking at the contents of the custom_greebles.zip example file. There are example scenes that that you could copy:
There is also the option to use the add-on as a node in the powerful Animation Nodes Blender extension. This is useful if you want to either create animated effects or control the effect dynamically.
There are two available nodes: One for generating plates and one for generating greebles separately.
The Properties are similar to those of the main add-on.
To assess many possible combinations, the Iterator feature can use the camera in your scene to automatically render a range of Plating Generator master seed combinations to a directory of your choosing.
The iterator will produce a set of images, each image is a preview of the Plating Object when it is in that seed configuration.
The name of the filename will display the master seed value used.
Seed Range: set the master seed range used to render out different combinations.
File Path: The output directory for the file images.
Render Engine: Optionally choose a render engine different to the main scene. The Iterator will then use the settings of the alternative renderer.
Start: start an iterator process. Whilst the images are rendering, Blender may appear to freeze. You can check whether the images are being output by navigating to the output directory to see if the images are being created.
Whilst running, there is a file called running.ack that you can use to stop the iterator and unfreeze Blender. Remove running.ack, and after rendering an image Blender will check for the presence of this file. If this file no longer exists, it will cancel the operation.
This is similar to the iterator function in KIT OPS SYNTH.
The Plating Generator comes with a set of modifiers that add panelling effects and greebles on top of the base mesh, also in a non-destructive way.
These are completely separate to the other Plating Generator workflows.
They require a grid shaped UV Map to work.
The modifiers use, but do not require knowledge of, Geometry Nodes. However by learning a little Geometry Nodes you will get the most out of them.
Tip
Advantages
Fast: As the modifiers use Blender’s core processes, they are a lot faster than the standard Python add-on functions. They will also work on meshes with larger numbers of faces.
Captured in realtime, the modifier can out perform standard python.
Flexible: As they are modifiers that use Geometry Nodes, you can use them with Blender’s other modifiers or use them as a node with other Geometry Nodes.
Non-destructive: The modifiers do not alter the base mesh and will update automatically when the base mesh changes.
Animatable: The parameters of the modifiers can be animated using keyframes.
Disadvantages
UV Map Required: The panel modifiers specifically require a grid shaped UV Map for them to work, otherwise nothing will be displayed. You can use the UV Squares add-on to achieve this or by using the Follow Active Quads method. Remember, you can add more than one UV Map to an object in Blender’s Object Data Properties tab if you already have a UV Map you wish to keep.
The ideal UV Map is made up of a square grid for the pattern to work well. Here, the UV Squares add-on is used to make the UV faces square.
Remember you can create more than one UV map under the Object Data Properties tab.
Quad topology ideal: Ideally the geometry should be arranged in quad topology.
Limited features: As Geometry nodes is still evolving, the modifier parameters are comparatively limited compared to the other Plating Generator workflows.
Selecting the object you wish to add one of the modifiers to. The object requires a square shaped UV map and a set of faces to extrude.
Tip
You could use a Subdivision Surface modifier (optionally set to Simple) to increase geometry for the modifier.
You can use selections of faces with the modifier, but it is recommended to separate geometry for different effects.
Right-click in the viewport and go to the Plating Generator section of the context menu. There should be a Modifiers section that lists all current Plating Generator modifiers:
Select the modifier you wish to add from the Modifiers section of the menu.
The modifier will be added to the object, along with any additional modifiers (e.g. a bevel modifier) that complements the effect. You may wish to adjust parameters like the heights of the panels to make sure the effect is working.
Warning
If the effect is blank, check you have a UV Map for the object.
Tip
A Bevel modifier might be added to highlight the Panelling effect. You can adjust this separately to the main modifier.
A more customizable version of the panelling modifier, allowing you to set materials and heights for different size panels. Optional notches are added to the sides for greater detail.
A modifier that adds random objects to the surface. A default collection of objects is imported, which can be changed to a different collection on the modifier settings.
A modifier that creates a simple random piping pattern.
Tip
Combining modifiers
You can combine different modifiers together and use Attributes set by the modifiers to change where they are applied. Here a Plating Modifier has been added first, and then a Greeble Modifier has then been added. The Selection parameter has then been changed so the greebles only appear on the Small Panels.
This is by using the Small Panels attribute that has been set by the Plating modifier:
Hidden behind each modifier is a set of node groups that can be used inside a Geometry Nodes set up. These node groups can be loaded into a Blender scene and then used in combination with any other nodes.
To add the nodes for use:
Go to the Geometry Nodes editing tab.
Add a Geometry Nodes modifier to the object if there is not one already.
Click “New” to add a new Geometry Nodes tree to the modifier.
In the nodes editor view, right-click and select “Import Plating Generator Geometry Node Groups”. This will import all node groups if they have not been added already.
In the nodes editor view, press shift-A and search for one of the following modifier nodes:
Panels Modifier Nodes
Plating Modifier Nodes
Greebles Modifier Nodes
…Any other nodes groups with similar names may be sub-node groups and are less useful.
You can then use the node in the same way as the modifier:
Tip
Remember to add a UV Map (e.g. from a Named Attribute node - see screenshot) to the Vector input to supply a UV Map to the node. Otherwise, nothing will be displayed.
Also make sure the mesh has enough face subdivisions to see a result (as seen in the screenshot)
Adjust parameters (e.g. height) on the node to check it is working.
When you are finished with the Plating Object and no longer want it to be changed by the panel, you can click the ‘Collapse Plating Object’ to remove Plating Generator specific properties.
