In my previous post on “Geometry Nodes” with Blender 3.3 I showed how instances of an object should be created. However, “Geometry Nodes” can be used to create instances from Blender Collections containing a number of different objects,so a number of different trees, rocks, houses all in one collection, and this is easier than using multiple particle systems.
Image 1 shows a simple setup of “Geometry Nodes” to create a little village made from 4 slightly different houses in a collection called “buildings”.
A : I use the “Collection Info” node with the collection I am using “buildings” that is connected to the "instances on points’"node. But unlike the previous simple Object node example it this node does not have the “as instance” check box. And without a solution is deposits the whole collection on each point.
B : The solution is to check the box marked B (“pick instance”) in the image below.
C : This randomizes which instance index is then picked, so with a long string of points the objects in a collection are picked randomly not in order that they appear in the collection - so there are no blocks of the collection. The “Max” value is one less than the total number of objects in the collection.
D : This line of nodes adds a random rotation to each instances.
E : This adds/subtracts a small amount of rotation to each value which can be used if the paths are duplicated (see F in image). Again to reduce repetition. (I have used a path duplicate that I moved towards the camera for my second half of the village, and tweaked the E rotation value a bit. F in image below.)
Then with your mouse pointer in the 3D view CTRL + A → Make Instances Real. Then move the paths to a hidden collection and export instances with a camera and light using @JCPalmer’s exporter (V3.3).
Here is the YouTube video I used . It is way more complicated as it creates a bunch of trees as well as houses etc. (I used the first 23 minutes of the video to understand the process.) It uses Blender 3.1, but it works fine with Blender 3.3.
And here is my finished result : A Village with simple textured Plane added as a very, very simple flat terrain.
Cheers, gryff
Image 1 The Geometry Nodes: