Chapter 5 — Surface Effects

Surface Effects are a post-pass that runs AFTER textures. Where textures push and pull individual vertices, effects can carve through walls, raise rib networks, low-poly-facet the entire shape, or apply crystalline-lattice tessellations. The Effects tab is where you control them.

Effect types

Effect	What it does
None	(default) skip the effect pass.
Strip	Recessed ring stripes around the body. Width / gap / depth tunable.
Voronoi	Carves Voronoi cells into the surface. With Cut Through on, punches actual holes — the lacy / cutwork pottery look.
Low Poly	Rebuilds the mesh as flat-shaded facets. Stylised geometric look.
Hex Lattice	Regular hex tessellation.
Diagonal Lattice	Crossing diagonal rods → diamond holes.
Truchet	Quarter-circle arcs on a square grid, random rotation per cell.
Triangulated	Alternating up/down equilateral triangles.
Pinwheel	Four curved petals per square cell.
Star (Hexagram)	6-point hexagrams on a hex grid (Islamic geometric).
Curl Cushion	Chiral 4-arm twist cells.
Gyroid Slice	2D slice through the 3D gyroid SDF — swirling lattice.
Penrose	5-fold quasicrystal approximation.

The Tessellation group (Hex Lattice → Penrose) shares the same controls as Voronoi — they're all cell-based, just with different cell shapes.

The Voronoi controls (also used by tessellation effects)

Effects tab — Voronoi cut-through

The Voronoi panel has more knobs than any other tab. Don't be intimidated — the defaults are sensible; you'll usually only touch 3–4 of them.

Layout

Density — number of seeds (Voronoi) or cells (tessellation). 120 is a sane starting point; 200+ produces a fine lacy look.
Width (mm) — rib-edge width threshold. Larger = thicker ribs.
Depth (mm) — how far the cell interior carves into the wall.
Cell Shape — Smooth (rounded) or Polygon (hard-edged faceted).
Pattern — Voronoi seed layout: Random, Grid, or Hex-packed.
Carve Curve — falloff curve from rib to cell centre: Linear, Smooth, Sharp (d²), Plateau (flat-bottomed).

Cut-through

Cut Through — punches the cell centres all the way through the wall. The mesh is built parametrically with proper through-hole topology (not a post-process Boolean), so the result is watertight and slicer-friendly.
Cut Amount (0..1) — how much of each cell's interior gets removed. 0.5 = inner half cut (clean rim); 1.0 = entire cell cut (rib-only skeleton).

Solid bands (the "cuff" + "foot")

You almost never want cut-through covering the entire vase — the rim and foot need to be solid for the print to actually stand up.

Solid Area — None / Both / Top / Bottom. Default Both leaves the top and bottom bands solid.
Solid Range (0..0.5) — fraction of model height kept solid at each end. 0.07 = 7 % is the reference look.

Variation

Jitter — 0 = perfectly aligned to grid, 1 = full random scatter.
Random Depth — 0 = uniform depth across all cells, 1 = full per- cell variation.
Depth Gradient Top / Bottom — multipliers at the top and bottom. Useful for "deep at the belly, shallow at the rim" looks.
Border Noise — wobbles the cell edges along their length.

Style modifiers

Anisotropy — 1 = round cells, <1 = vertical stretch, >1 = horizontal.
Twist — degrees of swirl up the model — the cells spiral as they rise.
Edge Softness — 0 = hard edge, 1 = very soft falloff.
Raise Edges — when on, ribs are bumped outward instead of just flat. The Raise Height below sets how much.
Invert — carve the edges instead of the interior (negative-space Voronoi).

Hex Lattice and friends

Effects tab — Hex Lattice

The tessellation effects (Hex Lattice, Diagonal Lattice, Truchet, Triangulated, Pinwheel, Star, Curl Cushion, Gyroid, Penrose) all share the Voronoi control panel — Density, Width, Depth, EdgeSoftness, Cut Through, etc. all behave the same way. The cell shape is what changes.

Pick the one whose cell pattern matches your aesthetic and adjust Density / Depth / Cut Through to taste.

Strip controls

When Strip is selected, a different parameter group appears:

Strip Width (mm) — the strip's thickness.
Strip Gap (mm) — distance between strips.
Strip Depth (mm) — how deep into the wall each strip is recessed.
Diagonal — when off, strips run horizontal (rings around the body). When on, they spiral up the body.

Strips don't support cut-through.

Low Poly controls

Low Poly rebuilds the mesh using flat-shaded facets (each triangle gets its own normal — no smooth shading across edges). Controls:

Facet Segments Around — facets per revolution (lower = more visible faceting; 16 is the reference).
Facet Rings Tall — facet bands up the body (lower = chunkier).
Facet Flatness (0..1) — 0 = subtle (faceting only on visible edges), 1 = full faceting across every triangle.

Low Poly doesn't combine with cut-through; it's a stylistic alternative.

Combining effects with textures

The pipeline is: shape → texture → effect. So you can build a spike-textured vase AND carve Voronoi holes through it. The effect runs on the displaced (textured) vertex positions, so the cut-through holes follow the spike geometry where they overlap.

Some combinations look better than others. Voronoi cut-through pairs beautifully with Bobble or Hexagonal textures (the texture provides small surface detail, the effect provides the structural cutwork).

Performance note

At Density > 300 + Cut Through on, mesh generation can take 1–3 seconds. The viewport stays responsive but the export-quality bake on File → Export → STL is heavier. The progress modal shows triangle count so you can decide if 300k tris is enough or if you need more / less.