What is Simple Circuits

Simple Circuits is a fast and easy way to add highly detailed circuitry to a model. Realistic circuitry is very difficult to get right and most of what I’ve seen out there from both a procedural and static standpoint is not very good. Simple circuits differentiates itself and produces much better results by using two asset collections. The first collection is hero elements and only a few of them are placed as the largest objects. The second collection is clusters of details that have been loosely type matched to a function. A fine balance has been struck and the resulting boards fall on the spectrum somewhere between a PC motherboard and a network switch line card. General enough that it looks like it belongs just about anywhere without being so specific that people get distracted by it.

How does it Work

There are 4 ways to add circuits to a scene.

The first and easiest way is to use one of the KitOPS All in One inserts. These inserts have the necessary assets bundled in them. All you need to do is place the board normally. This technique is recommended if you only need one or two boards in a scene. Assets are not deduplicated on insert so each board will add ~15MB to the file size.

The second method, for those looking to have a lot of boards in a scene, is to import the “EE-Modern” Collection from the supplied asset file (Don’t import it as an instance) and use one of the KitOPS collection circuit board inserts. Once the circuit board is placed, open its geometry node modifier and add the appended TOP/BOT collections to the appropriate collection fields.

The third method is to use the included Simple Scifi Pro Flex dPack and generator file. Once installed go into edit mode and select the faces you want to add circuitry to and apply the generator to the faces. With the way the circuitry geometry node works the best results are made from square faces. So if there are particularly long faces try adding loop cuts or use the knife tool to split them up. There are issues with the way blender applies the curve to mesh nodes when faces are not pointing upward so I added an option (on by default) to generate cylindrical traces and spherical vias. These aren’t “realistic” but look better than the default 2d option when working with non planar topologies.

Finally the fourth method is to just use the asset browser assets and drag them into the scene as normal.

Requirements and Limitations

These inserts make heavy use of the “Shortest Paths to Curves” node introduced in Blender Geometry Nodes 3.3 so Blender 3.3 or newer is required.

Blender 3.4 is currently preferred as the majority of the nodes were built in 3.4. The only feature not working in 3.3 out of the box is the “delete instance overhang” option. Blender 3.5 is now supported as well.

These assets are very heavy and usually have 20,000+ instances attached to them by default. This can slow down the viewport so once a board has been placed in the scene and tweaked I recommend disabling its geometry node in the viewport.

These assets are not optimized for game engines and when realized contain millions of faces. An option to realize those instances is included for anyone who wants to try, but no guarantees.

Roadmap

These are things I'm interested in adding in no particular order.

Add a Retro/Analogue Asset Pack

Expand upon the Futuristic Asset Pack

Improve procedural cables

Add a dedicated kPack of hero elements for additional detailing

Update April 19, 2023

Added a new collection of fantasy futuristic circuit components, with emphasis on glowing parts.

Added Spock dpacks, optimized for Chipp Walters' new addon. NOTE: The original FLEX/Simple Scifi dpacks will not work with Spock.

Procedural hexagonal standoffs have been added to all circuit boards (off by default).

Materials and Geonodes have been optimized for seamless work between Blender versions 3.3-3.5.

Install

KitOPS Documentation for installing kPacks: http://cw1.me/kitops2docs

Flex Documentation: https://filedn.com/lLMW4jXsJqxXkRYjd1UCoKL/online_docs/simplescifi.html#h.3rht8u737r97

Asset Library Documentation: https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/files/asset_libraries/introduction.html#what-is-an-asset-library

License

Everything can be used royalty free for both commercial and noncommercial projects, just don’t resell any of these inserts or node groups “as-is”. Any questions, just ask.

Check out my other geometry nodes product

Dots

Special thanks

To Chipp Walters for making great addons and a great Discord community. This product wouldn’t have been made without him.

To Erin Woodford for making a legendary collection of geometry nodes. https://www.blendermarket.com/products/erintools