wolgade wrote:Cool! Could you be more verbose about "using modifier stack"?
I can! There is a generative modeling tutorial on CGCookie that I used for the idea but I had to change a ton of stuff and I'm not sure how much it resembles it anymore. If you wanted to check that out there is a 7 day free trial. But here is my work flow based on that 6 min video.
1. Displace modifier
This is by far the most frustrating of the steps. I've done this process multiple times and every time it seems I have to do something different to get the intended results. The key points outside of the modifier are subdividing the mesh, I think I had a bit over 200k verts, and APPLYING THE SCALE. In the above image I showed what I changed value wise but it seems to change every time I try it. Here are my results of the displacement.
2. Smooth modifier
This is pretty self explanatory. I just bumped up the repeat setting a bit.
3. Decimate modifier
Change from Collapse to Planar and then play with the angle limit. The angle limit setting controls how much of the mesh is decimated. You can mess with this now or mess with it later, or both.
4. Wireframe modifier
This is where you start really seeing the shape. This generates mesh around the remaining edges of the mesh. I turned on Relative Thickness and turned off Even Thickness. Then adjusted the thickness setting.
5. Smooth modifier
This is the second smooth modifier. I cranked up the repeat setting to 20. This modifier gives the curve and shape to the leftover wire frame.
I like this process because you can go back through the layer stack and adjust and tweak everything without destroying your work. It is a lot like procedural texturing. So by changing just one value in the layer stack you can get pretty significant changes. In the following image I changed the angle setting in the decimate modifier.
There is another guy doing this same sort of thing but he is using proximity to objects to control the decimation. I am going to try this next just because of how frustrating the Displace modifier is to use. Here is his video link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kL3emU5WO5w&t=223s