Model Procedurally in Blender: Geometry Nodes (5.2 LTS)

CG Cookie in Video Tutorials

CORE Fundamentals
Course 11 of 11Created for 5.2 LTS35 lessons, 7h 00m
Geometry Nodes, with Chris Bailey
Build systems that build things.

35 lessons from your first node to a mining laser that melts rock into glowing goop. UI, vector math, mesh operations, scattering, simulations, and a four-part final exercise. Rebuilt for Blender 5.2 LTS.

Boulder melted by a procedural mining laser effect
You can follow a node tree.
You can't build one.

You watch someone wire together six nodes and it makes total sense in the moment. Then you open a blank graph yourself and freeze, because nothing tells you which node comes next or why.

You don't learn Geometry Nodes by memorizing node names. Underneath it is a small set of concepts (points, domains, attributes, fields) that everything else sits on. Skip those and every tutorial you follow is just copying wires without knowing what they carry.

Get the vocabulary first: what a domain is, what moves through a field, how selection differs from a value. After that, node trees stop being a memorization exercise and start being a language you can actually speak.

So the course teaches that language first, and the tricks after.

What you'll build
Vegetation, placed procedurally, never by hand
01 / SCATTERING
Vegetation, placed procedurally, never by hand
A goop system with adjustable probability and seed
02 / SIMULATION-DRIVEN DRIPS
A goop system with adjustable probability and seed
Falloff and color driven by distance, not selection
03 / PROXIMITY FIELDS
Falloff and color driven by distance, not selection
Object Info, Distance, and Map Range, wired together
04 / THE NODE GRAPH BEHIND IT
Object Info, Distance, and Map Range, wired together

Then the final exercise, four parts long: a mining laser that melts a boulder into glowing goop using everything the course covers.

Boolean operations, particle systems, and proximity fields, combined into one working tool.

See it in motion
Domains & the Spreadsheet
Domains & the Spreadsheet
Every vertex, edge, and face has a home. This is what that home looks like.
 Building the Mining Laser
Building the Mining Laser
A Boolean Operation frame doing the actual melting, wired inside the final exercise.
What you'll learn
The Geometry Nodes UI and data types. What kind of information actually flows through the wires, before you touch a single node.
Domains and the Spreadsheet. Where data lives, vertex, edge, face, or face corner, and how to read it directly instead of guessing.
Points, selections, and vector math. Move things through 3D space with intent, built and tested with your own vector visualizer tool.
Procedural mesh operations. Extrude, bevel, select, and delete geometry entirely through nodes.
Curves, volumes, grids, and SDFs. The other kinds of geometry nodes you can build with, beyond meshes.
Instances, proximity, and raycasting. Place, distribute, and query geometry based on where things actually are in space.
Simulation zones: particles, hair, cloth, and XPBD. Add time and physics-like behavior directly inside a node tree.
Building your own tools and gizmos. Package a node setup into something reusable, with interactive handles in the viewport.
Curriculum

35 lessons across 4 chapters.

01
THE LANGUAGE OF NODES
12 lessons
UI, data types, the spreadsheet and domains, points, selections, ID versus index, map range, and vector math, all building toward a vector visualizer you construct yourself.
02
BUILDING WITH NODES
10 lessons
Procedural mesh operations, curves, volumes, grids and SDFs, instances, geometry proximity, raycasting, then a scatter exercise and a full drip-and-splat goop system.
03
SIMULATION
6 lessons
Simulation zones, particle systems, deleting particles, velocity, hair and cloth, and the XPBD solver.
04
TOOLS & THE FINAL EXERCISE
7 lessons
Creating custom tools and gizmos, then a four-part final exercise: the mining laser that melts a boulder into goop.
Watch Spreadsheet & Domains free

Nine and a half minutes on the single vocabulary word that unlocks everything else in Geometry Nodes: domain. Once this clicks, node graphs stop being a memorization exercise. No signup.

Watch the lesson free
Chris Bailey
Your instructor
CHRIS BAILEY

Chris teaches the modeling, sculpting, materials, texturing, animation, and geometry nodes track across CORE. This is the capstone course, and it leans on Materials, Texturing, and Mesh Modeling more than any other course in the series.

New to CORE and starting here anyway? Chris explains things as he goes, but you'll get more out of this course after the others.
What's included
Blender version 5.2 LTS (works in 4.2 LTS)
Lessons 35 videos, 7h 00m
Quality 1080p, stream or download
Captions English and Spanish
Project files Included, every exercise plus the final mining laser scene
Platforms Windows, macOS, Linux
Access Yours to keep, no subscription
Also available in The CORE bundle, all 11 courses

The longest course in CORE, at seven hours. It's the capstone, so it has the most ground to cover.

Questions
Do I need to take the other CORE courses first?
Strongly recommended, especially Materials, Texturing, and Mesh Modeling. Chris calls these out directly in the intro. You can start here, but concepts from those courses come up regularly.
Is this a modeling course or a simulation course?
Both, in sequence. It starts with modeling operations done procedurally, then moves into simulation zones (particles, hair, cloth) in chapter three. The final exercise uses pieces of everything.
Do I need to know math for vector operations?
Basic arithmetic is enough. The course builds a vector visualizer tool specifically so you can see what each operation does rather than compute it by hand.
Will this work in Blender 4.2 LTS?
Mostly, though several GN-based modifiers and workflow improvements landed in 5.0 and aren't present in 4.2. The core concepts, domains, fields, attributes, are unchanged.
Is this the same as the version I already own?
No. Geometry Nodes were not covered in CORE 4.2. This is a brand new course and an addition to the CORE series.
How long is the final exercise?
About 87 minutes across four parts. It's the longest single project in CORE, by design, since it's meant to combine everything.
I want more than one course. Is there a bundle?
Yes. CORE is all 11 courses as a single one-time purchase. Buy up to four courses individually and you come out ahead. Past that, the bundle breaks even or costs less, and all eleven bought one at a time run to more than twice the bundle price. CORE is also included with an annual CG Cookie membership if you'd rather stream than own.
What if I get stuck?
Post in the CG Cookie community. Instructors are active there and questions get answered.
Course 11 of 11
The last stop in CORE.

Geometry Nodes is course eleven of eleven in CORE: modeling, sculpting, lighting, materials, texturing, animation, rigging, physics, compositing, grease pencil, and geometry nodes. Take all eleven and you've got a real fundamentals education in Blender.

Past four courses, the bundle is the cheaper buy. One purchase, and you keep it.

CG Cookie
Teaching Blender since 2008. We're old and stuff.
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Details
Sales 10+
Published 3 months ago
Blender Version 5.2
Render Engine Used Cycles, Eevee
License Royalty Free

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