Simple mode

The effects gallery

Twenty-seven effects, each one click. Every one of them is a complete recipe — it prepares the surface, generates the field that drives the variation, attaches the engine, and wires them together. Then it hands you the controls.

How an effect works

Pressing Apply recipe does four things, all of them non-destructive and all of them reversible:

Sets density. Adds a simple subdivision modifier to reach the face count the effect was tuned for. This is a target, not an amount to add — a mesh that is already dense gets no subdivision, because cells smaller than a pixel read as a solid blob.
Generates a field. Most effects compute curvature, noise, cavity or a reaction-diffusion pattern and write it to an attribute named rhea_density.
Attaches an engine. One of four: cells, lattice, displace, or tessellate.
Exposes the controls. They appear directly beneath the button, and they are live.

Effects are a starting point, not an answer

The values shipped with each effect are chosen to look good on a mid-sized organic form. On a flat grid or a very dense mesh they will need adjusting. That is expected — the whole point of leaving them live is that you can.

The four engines underneath

Cells: Builds the dual mesh and thickens its edges into struts, producing the honeycomb look. Growth pushes the cells outward into sacs. This is the engine behind most of the organic effects.
Lattice: Struts along the mesh's own edges rather than the dual. Rectangular where cells are hexagonal. Diagonals adds cross-bracing, which is what makes a diagrid a diagrid.
Displace: Pushes the surface along its normals by a field. No new topology, so the result stays watertight and light. Ridged and Eroded are pure displacement.
Tessellate: Places a component on every face and bends it to fit. This is the engine behind the nine component effects, and it has by far the most controls. See Live tessellation.

Cellular and organic

These build a strut network from the dual mesh. They want a reasonably dense, reasonably even base — a Blob, a Dome or a Supershape rather than a raw cube.

Driven by

Organic shellcurvature: Open honeycomb whose struts thicken where the surface curves. The classic computational-design shell, and the one most people picture when they hear the phrase.
Alveolicurvature: Rounded sacs pushing outward from the surface, like lung tissue or a cluster of bubbles. Cells with high growth, so they bulge rather than sit flat.
Protruding growthnoise: Cells erupting outward at different lengths, reading as coral polyps or budding growth. Noise-driven, so the variation is irregular rather than following the form.
Coralreaction: Branching reaction-diffusion pattern grown across the surface. The most organic result Rhea makes, and the slowest to build because the pattern is genuinely simulated.
Sea spongenoise: Irregular porous mass with cells of wildly varying size. Soft and grown rather than manufactured. Wants a dense base — six thousand faces or so.
Bone latticecavity: Trabecular strut network that thickens where the form is compressed, like the inside of a bone. Cavity-driven, so it responds to concavity rather than curvature.
Veined membranecurvature: Thin webbing braced by thicker veins, like a leaf skeleton or a dragonfly wing. The highest contrast between thin and thick of any cellular effect.
Uniform honeycombno field: Even hexagonal network with no variation at all. For clean panelised shells and print-ready lattices where you want repeatability, not character.
Capillaryreaction: Dense branching threads of wildly varying gauge, like a vascular network. Wants twelve thousand faces; this is the heaviest effect in the gallery.

Structural

Members rather than cells. These read as architecture, and they are the ones worth taking through to form finding and fabrication.

Driven by

Heavy framecurvature: Chunky structural members reading as architecture rather than ornament. Low target density on purpose — big cells, thick struts.
Diagridno field: Triangulated structural grid, the diagonal lattice used on gridshell roofs and tower facades. Pairs naturally with a Saddle or Vault base.
Wireframeno field: Members along the mesh's own edges, giving a clean rectangular grid rather than a hexagonal one. The most predictable structural effect.
Tensile webcurvature: Fine cable net that thickens where the surface curves, like a tension structure. Follow it with form finding to get cable lengths that would actually resolve.

Surface treatments

These change the surface without opening it up. Because they add no holes they are the safest to stack underneath something else.

Driven by

Erodedno field: Weathered surface pitted by noise, with no cells at all. Excellent as a base layer underneath another effect rather than as a finished result.
Ridgedno field: Broad rolling ridges pushed out of the surface, like wind-formed dunes or muscle fibre. Pure displacement, so it stays watertight.
Barnaclesnoise: Clustered lumps erupting at random, encrusting the surface like barnacles on a hull. Noise-driven with a hard threshold, so coverage is patchy.
Quillscurvature: Long tapering spines standing off the surface, urchin-like. Curvature-driven, so quills lengthen on the convex parts.
Brain coralreaction: Winding labyrinth ridges — the maze reaction pattern raised into relief. Unmistakable, and closer to a real gyriform surface than a noise texture gets.

Component-based

These place a real shape on every face. Rhea creates the component object for you, hides it, and removes it again on revert, so the gallery stays one click. The component it uses is named in the right column, and you can swap it for anything you like once the effect is applied.

Component

Shinglesscale: Overlapping scales laid across the surface, reading as roof tiles, fish scales or armour. Uses the Scale component.
Spike fieldspike: Sharp spines standing off every face, dense and defensive like a sea urchin. Curvature drives the length.
Wovenweave: Interlacing strands running over and under each other, a basket weave wrapped onto the form. Wants a clean quad grid to read properly.
Gearworksgear: Toothed discs across the surface, mechanical and industrial rather than grown. Low face count on purpose — gears need room.
Hex panelshex tile: Flat hexagonal plates tiling the surface, the panelised cladding of a facade or a lantern. Pairs with Panelize when you intend to build it.
Brickworkbrick: Solid blocks laid across the form, heavy and masonry-like with visible mortar gaps between courses.
Louvresfin: Upright fins raked across the surface, the shading blades of a facade or the vanes of a heat sink. Tilt is the control that matters here.
Portholesring: Raised rings punched across the surface, a perforated screen of open eyelets.
Starburststar: Five-pointed stars scattered at varying size and angle, decorative rather than structural. Noise drives the scatter.

Why component effects want a low face count

A component effect places a whole object on every face. Two hundred and sixty faces with a fifty-vertex scale is thirteen thousand vertices; six thousand faces with the same scale is three hundred thousand. The target densities look low compared to the cellular effects because they are multiplied, not added.

After applying

Change the seed before you change anything else. Every randomised effect gives a different but equally valid result per seed, and it costs nothing to try five.
Adjust density if the scale is wrong. Denser means smaller cells, not more detail per cell.
Stack a second effect rather than fighting the first one into doing two jobs. See Stacking effects.
Regenerate the field from the Fields section if you want the variation driven by something the recipe did not choose — ambient occlusion, geodesic distance, or your own formula.