Stairs that have been walked on for a hundred years — one modifier, four plans, three materials.

Tidebone Altbau Stairs builds the staircase for your old house, ruin, loft, cellar or period interior and ages it for you. Add the modifier to any object, pick a Plan (straight, L-shape, U-shape or spiral), a Style (timber, stone, steel) and a Rail Style (turned, square, iron, glass, cables, none), enter the floor-to-floor height and move the Wear slider. The treads get a worn walking line, rounded and chipped nosings, every step settles a little differently, and some balusters have simply gone missing.

What makes it different

• Built for old buildings: Wear, Settling and Missing Balusters turn a clean stair into a lived-in one. The wear is real geometry (tread dip, nosing rounding, chips), the materials read the same masks.
• Modelling helpers that do the maths: the step count and riser are fitted to your floor height so the top step meets the floor exactly; outputs give Riser Height, Tread Depth, the 2R+G comfort value (with an OK flag) and the baluster count.
• Balusters fitted to the length: no gap wider than your Max Gap (12 cm default), even on landings and around the spiral – balusters stand on the treads.
• Four plans in one modifier: straight, L and U with a landing, spiral around a column. Mirror flips the turn.
• Three construction styles: timber with stringers and risers, solid stone blocks, open steel treads on a spine. Six railing styles with newel posts.
• Procedural materials included (timber, stone, steel, glass) – no image textures. Everything stays editable and nothing is baked.
• No add-ons, no Python. Tested headless on Blender 4.2 LTS, 4.5 LTS and 5.2 LTS: 35 parameter cases, identical vertex and face counts in all three versions.

What it is not (so you know before you buy)

Not a free-form path tool – there are four fixed plans, no winders in the L/U corners and no notched saw-tooth stringers; the handrail is straight per flight; not game-ready (timber stairs are 80–120k triangles at the default detail, lighter with Detail Level 1 or the Square rail style); the comfort and gap values are modelling helpers, not a building-code check; checked in Cycles only (EEVEE and the GUI were not tested). The renders are product visualisations, not photographs.

Included

tidebone_altbau_stairs.blend (asset + helper groups + 4 materials), asset catalog, demo scene, README, license (1 seat).

More Tidebone generators

• Roof & PV – procedural roofs with solar panel layout
• Rope & Chain – ropes and chains along any curve
• Worn Walls – procedural ageing for old buildings
• Utility Kit – pipes, scaffolding, cable trays, railings