Stefan Eisele
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Generative work in Blender

Procedural sculptures, still images and short clips built with Geometry Nodes.

Cubes covered in bristles, carried by a stream of cream-colored tubes
Year
2021–2023
Context
Own work
My role
Concept, node setups, animation, rendering
Tools
Blender, Geometry Nodes, Cycles, Eevee

Approach

I work with generative methods in Blender, mostly Geometry Nodes. I don’t model the shapes by hand. I build a system of nodes and steer it with a few parameters and noise. Everything is driven by scene time, so the same setup gives still images and animation. Rendered with Cycles and Eevee.

Scaffolding Cubes (2023)

One node tree, from four plain cubes to the finished image. Same camera and frame in every step:

Six steps of the node setup, from four cubes to the final render

  1. Four cubes, each rotating at its own speed over time.
  2. Subdivided and pushed along the normals by a noise texture.
  3. My own node group “2D Recursive Subdivision” splits every face again and again into smaller rectangles. Noise decides where.
  4. A second noise picks which tiles get extruded and how far. The tops shrink to half size, so the surfaces turn into bristles.
  5. The convex hull of the cubes seeds a second node group, “2D Curl Noise”. It moves each point 400 times along a curl noise field and draws the path as a curve.
  6. The curves become tubes, then materials and lighting. Final renders at 5000 × 5000 px in Cycles.

The breakdown and the close-ups in the gallery are new renders from the original file.

Other series

These series come from the same way of working:

  • Figures of Discomfort (2022): Organic shapes grow out of a central form, covered in thousands of fine fibers with glowing tips.
  • Fibers in Motion (2022): Ridges of fibers, layered into a landscape of lines, in orange and in dark violet.
  • Billowing Rooms (2022): A wooden room with slats that undulate like waves, cubes scattered across them, some under a honey-like layer.
  • Cells (2022): Copper lamellae folded into closed shapes.
  • Connections (2022): Blue cubes and spheres caught in a rusty wire scaffold.
  • Every Fiber of My Body (2022–2023): A head made of dark fibers that come apart at the back.

The four short clips come from “Blender Encyclopedia”, my own tutorial series. Idea, scenes and animation are mine. They were rendered in real time with Eevee.

The solo exhibitions “Homo Metropolis” (2018), “Endless City” (2021–22) and “Between Control and Coincidence” (2023) go in the same direction: exploring through algorithms, chance and chaos.

Displacement
Gravity (music: Linda Kyei)
Quarantine Blues
Nightlife
  • Close-up of Scaffolding Cubes, tubes running over a glowing core
    Scaffolding Cubes, close-up
  • Cubes in clay material, their faces split into rectangles outlined in rust
    Recursive subdivision, edges shown
  • Dense field of extruded bristles in clay material, close-up with shallow depth of field
    Extruded tiles, wireframe
  • Scaffolding Cubes, bristled cubes in a horizontal stream of tubes
    Scaffolding Cubes (2023)
  • Billowing wooden and marble surfaces forming a room
    Billowing Rooms (2022)
  • Copper lamellae folded into a closed shape on a dark background
    Cells
  • A head made of dark fibers that come apart at the back
    Every Fiber of My Body (2022)
  • A dark blue mass sprouting thousands of fine fibers with glowing tips, on black
    Figures of Discomfort (2022)
  • Orange fiber ridges, close-up
    Fibers in Motion (2022)
  • Close-up of Figures of Discomfort, fibers growing out of a pink, porous surface
    Figures of Discomfort, detail
  • Fibers in Motion in dark violet, a landscape of layered lines
    Fibers in Motion, violet version (2022)
  • Blue cubes and spheres caught in a rusty wire scaffold
    Connections (2022)
  • Billowing Rooms, curved wood and stone layers
    Billowing Rooms (2022)
  • Every Fiber of My Body, print version
    Every Fiber of My Body, print rendering (2023)