Hoodie - Visual Scripting Procedural Geometry for Godot Engine 4

Hoodie is a plugin for Godot Engine 4 that offers a visual scripting interface for generating procedural geometry.

Design parametric mesh geometry using a visual scripting language and iterate quickly over changes: create algorithms with nodes and utilize parameters to customize and fine-tune the generated mesh for your own use cases.

Support this project

Hoodie is an open-source project licensed under the MIT License, free to use in your projects. If you find it useful for yourself and the community, you may consider supporting its development through this Gumroad page, which also offers additional perks.

Devlogs

This project also has a series of dedicated video devlogs that you can watch here on YouTube.

Installation

You can start using Hoodie by directly downloading binary files, or you can compile it yourself.

Direct Download

At this time only Windows is supported, but you can compile it yourself to make it work on different platforms.

Download the latest binary from the Releases page on GitHub.
Open the folder of your Godot Engine game project, and create a bin folder if it doesn't exists yet.
Copy the downloaded files in the newly created bin folder. The folder structure should now look something like this:

<your-project-folder-name>/
│
├── .godot/
│
├── bin/
│   ├── hoodie.gdextension
│   ├── hoodie.svg
│   ├── libhoodie.windows.editor.dev.x86_64.dll
│   ├── libhoodie.windows.template_release.x86_64.dll

You're now ready to go! Read Getting Started for a quick tutorial of the plugin.

Compile from Source

In case your platform isn't included in the shipped binaries, you need to compile the project by yourself from source.

Since this is a Godot GDExtension plugin, the compiling procedure is the same as the one for Godot Engine itself, as stated here on the official documentation. On this page you'll find detailed guides about how to build for each platform.

Generally you want these tools to be installed:

A C++ compiler
Python 3.6+
SCons 3.0+

Once you managed to install all the necessary tools, follow these next steps:

Clone this project repository.
Open the terminal and navigate to the repository folder.
Launch command scons target=editor dev_mode=yes dev_build=yes. If you want a more optimized build, use scons target=editor instead, but remember to change the name of the resulting binary adding dev to it like in this example: libhoodie.linux.editor.x86_64.so -> libhoodie.linux.editor.dev.x86_64.so (N.B. SCons will automatically recognize the OS you're working on, but you can specify it as an additional parameters if needed, following the Godot docs mentioned above).
(Optional) Launch command scons target=template_release to generate the release template binaries, in case you intend to build your game project with Hoodie in it.
The resulting binary files will be located in the repository at the hoodie/demo/bin folder.
At this point you can just follow the Direct Download section starting from step 2 (you simply need to put the generated binaries in the correct game project folder).

Getting Started

Before you can use Hoodie's visual scripting interface, you need to set up the right nodes, then you'll be ready to go!

If you haven't already done so, create a new 3D Scene and open it.
'Add Child Node...' with CTRL+A or the '+' button from the Scene panel, and choose MeshInstance3D.
Once you have the new MeshInstance3D selected, head over to the Inspector and create a new HoodieMesh through the 'Mesh' property, selecting 'New HoodieMesh'.
Now that the 'Mesh' property is filled with a new HoodieMesh, click on the HoodieMesh option button to start editing it.
The Hoodie panel will appear in the bottom control panel, and there you will be able to use visual scripting to create your algorithms through nodes.
Start by adding an Output node with the 'Add node...' popup menu at the top left of the Hoodie editor.
Add node... > Mesh > Primitives > Mesh Grid.
Connect the Mesh output slot of the Mesh Grid node to the Geometry input slot of the Output node.
You will now see a 1x1 plane show up in the viewport.
Congratulations! You just created your first Hoodie procedural geometry! 🥳
You can tweak the size of the plane connecting Add node... > Input > Constant > Input Value to the Mesh Grid, and see its changes in real time.

Extrude a line along a path (road-like geometry)

Create a Path3D node in your 3D Scene and proceed to model a curve with the designated tools.
While the Path3D is selected, go to the Inspector and open the Curve3D option button, then click on Copy.
Go back to the Hoodie editor, and create a Input Curve3D node from Add node... > Input > Input Curve3D.
Go to the Inspector, and you'll see a new property group has appeared: Inputs.
Expand the Inputs property group and a Curve3D property will appear, where the label name is the id of the Input Curve3D node you added earlier.
Click on the Curve3D property option button, and then click on Paste in order to paste the copied Curve3D.
Now that the curve has been correctly referenced, we need a couple of other nodes to generate a geometry along the path.
Add node... > Mesh > Primitives > Mesh Line: this will be the extruded geometry along the path.
Add node... > Curve > Operations > Curve to Mesh.
Connect the Curve3D output slot of the Input Curve3D node to the Curve3D input slot of the Curve to Mesh node.
Connect the Mesh output slot of the Mesh Line node to the Profile input slot of the Curve to Mesh node.
Connect the Mesh output slot of the Curve to Mesh node to the Geometry input slot of the Output node.
You will now see a mesh along the path you designed earlier! 🥳
You can now tweak the input values for your needs, for example with a Add node.. > Input > Constant > Input Vector3D node.

Create a custom collider

Creating a custom collider for your HoodieMesh is very easy and straightforward!

After generating your custom HoodieMesh, click on the Mesh menu button in the toolbar (refer to the image above).
Choose Create Trimesh Static Body.
You now have a collider mesh identical to your generated HoodieMesh! Remember, the collider will not update automatically as you modify your HoodieMesh. You'll have to recreate the collider each time you make changes.

Known issues

The release template has not been tested yet.
Capabilities are limited by the small number of nodes, but the list is being updated with each release!

Bugs, Help, Feedback and Suggestions

Feel free to open an issue here on GitHub if you find a bug 😊

To submit feedback, suggestions, or get further help, join the Discord server. You'll find the appropriate Hoodie category where you can join the discussion!

Special thanks

Special thanks to:

Bastiaan Olij for creating gdprocmesh, which served as a reference at the start of this project journey.
Zylann and Naros for their assistance through the Godot Engine official Discord server.

GreenCrowDev / hoodie