Make quick sci-fi details using the discombobulator

RohanR3 takes another look at the discombobulator plugin in Blender.

Blender 2.78 has brought back the discombobulator(totally against definition) plugin from it's legacy addition. I'm really pleased to say it is an interesting little plugin. What it does basically is gives you protrusions and dents just like the sci-fi scenes have.(Check out the alien ship from the Independence day movie.). Now the terms that will get tossed around a lot and which you should know are:

• Greeble/Nurnie:-is a fine detailing added to the surface of a larger object that makes it appear more complex, and therefore more visually interesting.(overused in almost every sci-fi scene).
• Doodads:- Are the extra details on these greebles(No need to worry about the definition, basically it adds more levels of detail).

Now the new version has significantly cut down on the plethora of options that were available in the legacy addition. But it's still fairly decent in it's working.

First off you want to get your basic shape or design of the spaceship. Avoid going into sculpting or making extrusions for now and try to stick to simple geometry, you can add the details later on. For those of you who want to get right to it you can use the torus or an ellipsoid to serve the purpose.
Now what you'll need to do is go over to preferences(ctrl+alt+u) and over to the addons section and search for the 'discombobulator' addon. As soon as you enable it you'll see it in the add menu in the mesh section. Now select the geometry you wish to greeble(tip:- You can achieve more detail if you have the mesh divided into different parts.) and add discombobulator(add->mesh->Discombobulator).

Now to the settings:-

For minimum height you can chose a low negative value like -0.2 if you want dents too and set the maximum height positive 0.2 but in the end totally depends on how your model looks and how much extrusion or intrusion you want.

You don't need to worry much about the tapering options because what I would suggest is after the discombobulation go for the displacement& uv sculpting method explained in detail by the talented as hell Oliver Villar:

You can leave other options for now, you can work with repeat protrusions but for the love of God do not go crazy on it since it can tax your machine a lot.(2 seems to work well for repeat protrusions but for complex models use only 1).

Check make doodads option if you want more detail.(Minimum number of doodas-0 and maximum number of doodads-6 seems to work well.)

Now you can go ahead and press the ok option and there you have it, your very own sc-fi detailed spaceship.

You can check out Gleb Alexandrov's (my favorite artist) tutorial on 14 ways to mix textures to make the material for your ship (tip:- Avoid using too much gloss since the textures do it for you.)

Congratulations you've made your very own spaceship. Please comment what you've made!

I would love to see what you've made. BTW the discombobulator is extremely versatile in a way that you can use it to make everything from breaking planets to asteroid fields, or any other sci-fi stuff for that matter. If you guys loved this trick you can also contact me on my twitter handle @R3indian and give me your valuable feedback.

(P.S made the spaceship in the photo in 5 mins. I know it sucks but saved me a lot of work because I didn't have time to work on the material.)
This is R3 signing out.