V-Ray Enmesh

Enmesh is a tool that uses geometry as a texture to “coat” objects. It can tile and repeat geometry infinitely, bend it over a desired surface or cut it according to the surface’s limits. It can randomize rotation and offset. This helps producing non repeating geometric patterns.

It works similarly to a texture, so UVs and their scale and tiling should be used accordingly to achieve the desired effect.

Enmesh can be used to create patterned fabrics, woven, knitted materials and chain mail. It can also be used to scatter grass, pebble patches, stone tiles and many more.

At the moment Enmesh can be assigned to only one mesh which is used as a base for the tiling (let's call it a source mesh). Its UV tiles should be done properly as they are used as basis for the tiling of the reference geometry.

V-Ray enmesh is currently available only for CPU rendering.

Select the meshes you want to turn into reference geometry. Then, select the source geometry.

Create V-Ray Enmesh from the shelf button or from V-Ray menu > V-Ray Enmesh.

The reference geometry is connected to a set called VRayEnmeshRefs, so it is visible in the Connection Editor or by using the arrow next to the Objects parameter in the Enmesh node’s Attributes.

The source geometry is connected to another set called VRayEnmeshSources which you can view and edit from the Connection Editor or by using the arrow next to the Source Mesh. Note that only one mesh can be used as a source. If you try to connect more than one, the effect is applied only on the originally selected one. The source geometry is initially hidden in the render. That can be adjusted later.

A gizmo is created in the center of the scene. Move it to the reference mesh and scale it accordingly using either the crop box parameters or by manually scaling it. The tiling and randomization parameters can be adjusted further for various effects.