Blender Geometry Nodes - Moss Generation

In this tutorial I'll show you how to generate moss on any mesh using geometry nodes. It will auto generate on the top of surfaces and you also have the ability to vertex paint additional moss.
Patreon: / robbietilton
Twitter: / robbietilton
Instagram: / robbie.tilton
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#blender #geometry #nodes #geonodes #geometrynodes

[@RobbieTilton]

For Blender 3.4 and above...use the SAMPLE NEAREST SURFACE node instead of the TRANSFER ATTRIBUTE node (they deleted transfer attribute node). Set SAMPLE NEAREST SURFACE node to "Vector", plug geometry into 'mesh' socket, the normal node into 'value' socket, and leave 'sample position' socket empty.

[@zhuyka13]

Thank you veeeery much, your tutorial really save me, because I'm doing postapocalyptic metro station and moss is what was missing❤️‍🔥

[@ruxtic6224]

Very useful tutorial, accessible, step by step, easy to follow. Thank you!

[@SilvaStormm]

If anyone stuck not being able to find "Vertex Color" (9:58) in Object Data Properties, use the "Color Attributes" instead.

[@TruthSurge]

I just had a thought.... what if you used the built in ivy generator.... but instead of an ivy leaf as the image, just give it an image of some small clump of moss and maybe make 4 or 5 different shapes of it and maybe it could pick from those 5 randomly as the instance of each leaf and make them small enough and dense enough so it'd look like moss. Probably many ways to get particles scattered onto an object. I like the real time painting tho. That looks like the most intuitive way to put moss where you want it. Maybe painting a gray would give partial moss? thx for the example!!

[@RobbieTilton]

good idea. should work great and be a little more light-weight.

[@itsthewolft-t8739]

welp it worked and this tutorial is amazing. this man needs some more recognition!!

[@noric2]

nice tutorial, thx. I never used vertex color before, but now I have a clue!

[@joshanderegg4157]

if anyone is trying this in 4.0 or later the normal step is different. how I was able to achieve it was to add a Blur attribute node after the normal and bring it into the less than node set the z to 1 and control the falloff using the angle I found that an angle of around 60 seemed to work great.

[@RobbieTilton]

Thank you! I appreciate you sharing the info for others

[@ruxtic6224]

Thank you for this!

[@SubhrajyotiAcharyyaDSB]

how is this with just 3000 views? this was perfect!!!

[@RobbieTilton]

thanks or watching!

[@cstech1924]

Great tutorial bro

[@aladdin9027]

Thanks man! Good stuff!

[@BotLetMeDie]

I am very new to blender so I may have done something wrong but my vertex paint isn't working. and also I skipped the step where you did the drecton setup for the moss to face on z axis and direcly added a math. If you can help that would be great.

[@RobbieTilton]

follow the steps and the vertex paint will work

[@user-qr2ye7jx7w]

THANKS YOU!!!!

[@shitbreak2k]

lol this is a great tutorial tnx !

[@RobbieTilton]

Glad you liked it!

[@GwenaelDano]

Thank you !!!!!

[@kevinsundelin8639]

Welp, it was going mostly fine and then I got entirely stuck when trying to add "Transfer attribute". It seems this doesn't exist in Blender anymore

[@RobbieTilton]

i just added a pinned comment that explains how to use SAMPLE NEAREST SURFACE node instead of Transfer Attribute

[@kevinsundelin8639]

@@RobbieTilton Thank you! :D

[@drumboarder1]

Can you use geometry nodes apply a reason to live on my life?

[@RobbieTilton]

yes. just use the transform node.

[@wackadoodle601]

Nice tutorial, I’m new to blender and only had one problem. When connecting the compare to the distribute, my moss just disappear instead of laying on the top face. Tried to chanfe the z value but still got the same result. Any idea? Thx🥰🥰

[@wackadoodle601]

nvm got it :)

[@RobbieTilton]

@@wackadoodle601 cool! glad to hear it

[@chickpea71]

@@wackadoodle601 what was the solution? im having the same problem

[@chickpea71]

for me, once i got tot the vertex paint step, it showed up on top. so i guess it's fine

[@SunRay47]

Hello! Thanks so much for this awesome tutorial! I used it to make hanging moss and it's looking great. However it's missing something. It needs to be shorter on the sides and longer in the middle to make it more realistic. How do I go about doing this?

[@RobbieTilton]

you could scale based on the vertex paint and/or use blur node to sample that. you could also do 2 geo nodes for the diff vines

[@SunRay47]

@@RobbieTilton Thanks. I will give both a shot! 😀

[@SunRay47]

@@RobbieTilton Thanks! I tried the first option and it worked perfectly. 😀

[@Losjo4093]

Is there a way to make moss spawn in The cracks of a distance to edge voronoi texture?

[@RobbieTilton]

interesting idea... you can def do that. will see if i can get that going and share it.

[@Gaurav-zz9wo]

nice

[@josephcornell3083]

i tried doing this and it did not work for me. With newer versions of blender, you cant follow the tutorial. Learning nods is bad enough without things consistantly changing. 😪

[@RobbieTilton]

fair. i should remake this for the latest version.

[@meimisakii4055]

Hi, i have a problem, my moss will never appear on my cube. I used a simple cube but the moss will never appear, even with the geometry nodes

[@RobbieTilton]

share ur file in the 'help' section of my discord

[@zippsterstudios5153]

Why are we using transfer attribute? can't we just use "Normal" as is?

[@RobbieTilton]

I believe you can do that now. For some reason I think maybe there was a reason I did that in the older blender version or maybe I was being a fool

[@canttankofficial4986]

Why can't I erase the moss when I do the vertex paint? I don't really know when you say toggle between these two, how did you do that, cuz when I try to grab the white paint and move it down, it just like nothing happen

[@RobbieTilton]

you can press 'x' to toggle between white and black vertex paint.

[@canttankofficial4986]

@@RobbieTilton thanks

[@TO-il3vc]

Using Blender 3.3, I followed this to a T and I cant get the moss to behave properly. Im just using a normal cube at the world origin, and the moss only appears on two sides of the cube and then diagonally on one of the other sides, very strange. It seems to be a problem with the selection on the "distribute points on faces" node. Changing around the parameters in the vector comparison node doesn't do much either.

[@RobbieTilton]

Can you confirm you have more geometry besides the default 8 verts? e.g. you subdivided the cube to have more verts and applied that modifier?

[@TO-il3vc]

@@RobbieTilton yep i have hundreds of verts

[@RobbieTilton]

@@TO-il3vc hmm... very strange. happy to debug it if you want to send the file to me in my discord under the 'help' section.

[@wongjoonvoon3117]

When I export as fbx the moss can't export together

[@RobbieTilton]

it should be able to. if you're having trouble - try applying the geo nodes before you export

[@itsthewolft-t8739]

i always crash in the part where i add the noise texture and bump. how can i stop it from happening?

[@RobbieTilton]

that's weird... the shader shouldnt crash it... try reducing the amount of instances... maybe your machine is struggling...

[@itsthewolft-t8739]

@@RobbieTilton i already tried that it still crashes:(

[@zainkashif858]

how can i import into a different project because its the geo node tree is not appearing when using append

[@RobbieTilton]

just test - if you add a 'realize instances' node at the end of your nodegraph you can then apply it and export it as a fbx

[@zainkashif858]

@@RobbieTilton is there a way to import it separately and apply on an object in another project? Like generators that are sold on gumroad

[@RobbieTilton]

@@zainkashif858 kzbin.info/www/bejne/r2i2lp99eL-Gm8k&ab_channel=TheCGEssentials

[@zainkashif858]

@@RobbieTilton thanks a lot 👍

[@punkhippar]

Thanks, but I have a problem. the cube becomes one big moss

[@RobbieTilton]

Can u share the timestamp for which part of the tutorial you’re having the problem.

[@javiertorres7643]

How would you change the size of the moss later

[@javiertorres7643]

Nvm I found it damm blender really makes my head hurt 😤🤕

[@RobbieTilton]

@@javiertorres7643 haha - takes a bit to get the hang of it. glad you figured it out.

[@quinella6683]

Hi I'm new to blender and just tried to do this tutorial, but I had an issue where the moss particles wouldn't stick to the object. They just float around it in the distance. What can I do to fix it?

[@quinella6683]

Oh wait I fixed it! I'll leave this comment here if anyone else had this problem. So the solution was to check if the original moss particle you did had the origin centered on the moss object. You can do this by clicking: object --> set origin --> origin to geometry. Remember to do this on both the moss object and the object that is going to be under the moss.

[@RobbieTilton]

@@quinella6683 awesome - as long as the moss object is centered you should be good. and you could also check 'relative' insstead of 'original' on the object info node if the main object isn't centered

[@aladdin9027]

Thanks man! Same problem! I would have never figured that out. I would have had to just start over.