During the Coronavirus lockdown I've been trying to improve my understanding of procedural materials in Blender. During one of my experiments I remembered a video I had seen by the excellent Daniel Shiffman on the Coding Train YouTube channel about '10 Print' and I wondered if I could recreate this in Blender.

The idea is pretty simple: for each cell in a grid you generate a random number and based on that number you either display a forward slash or a backwards slash, creating a maze-like image.

Below is my result, along with an animated reveal effect:

I won’t go into the details of how I made it because I made it in a very non-linear way, starting with something more complex than it needed to be, but that I understood pretty well, that I simplified further and further as I went on until the end result is something quite compact but that I understand less.

There’s some screenshots below which should help, along with the blend file with fairly good labels on everything.

A screenshot of a shader node group in Blender 3D, showing how a '10 Print' pattern can be generated.

10 Print Group Node

A screenshot of a shader node group in Blender 3D, showing how a '10 Print' pattern can be animated.

10 Print animation and reveal

You are free to use the contents of the blend file in commercial or non-commercial work as long as you don’t distribute or sell the contents as is. Please also provide attribution if you use it.

Download 10 Print Blend File

Ray.