RockForm is the definitive add-on for quickly designing a variety of procedural rock structures and formations from any shape you can imagine.

       View the full documentation here       

: : Why RockForm? : :

Any time I've wanted a rock formation such an arch, pillar, cliff face, etc. I would manually sculpt it with rock brushes. The results were good but there was often a lot of trial and error to get consistency. My search for an existing streamlined solution came up short as most methods involved shader-based displacement which is too limiting in a few ways but primarily because you can't derive a low-poly mesh from it. Apart from the shader solutions I found, the few geometry displacement methods I discovered simply didn't have the flexibility or appropriate settings required to produce a diverse range of formations.

At that point, I decided design my own procedural tool and along the way decided to invest the time and streamline the functionality into an add-on for others to use. 

: : Key Features : :

RockForm is driven by geonodes rather than shaders so all visual changes are made at the mesh level.

Includes a variety of base meshes to quickly yield dramatically different unique formations.

Provides versatile displacement options including procedural and image presets, image layering, and axis control.

Not limited to Cycles render view for visualizing.

Includes 5 materials for easy visualization: 3 rock types, 1 ice, and 1 crystal.

: : Workflow : :

[1] Designate a mesh or curve to use for defining a general formation shape.

 [2] Choose from a provided list of base-mesh collections (or create your own) to define the 'character' of the formation.

[3] Control how these objects appear including density, rotation, scale, spread, and randomization.

[4] Adjust how these objects are combined to produce realistic or more stylized results.

[5] Assign a provided displacement texture or add your own and tweak accordingly.

[6] When done, click the 'Create Low-Poly Version' to get a head-start on producing a bake-ready version. The sample below demonstrates the results you can get with baking with Blender alone. I'm showing Eevee for the low-poly version because its rendering is similar to a game engine. In cycles they're indistinguishable.

Note: This is NOT a one-click solution. You will need to cut seams yourself and do a manual unwrap for best results.

Note: you can revisit any of these steps at any time since it's a non-destructible workflow.

Limitations:

- More realistic results require very high mesh density. Users may experience severe slowdowns depending on the attempted level of fidelity and your pc hardware.

- The resulting geometry often has minor imperfections that may require some manual cleanup or retopology, however most times this is optional and can be overlooked depending on your specific application.

- Knowledge of baking is required for those looking to capture high-fidelity details in lower poly meshes. No custom tools are provided for this process.

- The included materials are present for easy visualization but no specific shader properties/tools have been added as part of this add-on.

- Vegetation models and instancing is not currently supported.

- There are currently no erosion effects or weathering simulations.

- This is an addon for Blender and has NOT been tested on any version lower than 3.5.