A greeble ( ), or "nurnies", is a part harvested from plastic modeling kits to be applied to an original model as a detail element. The practice of using parts in this manner is called "

kitbashing Kitbashing or model bashing is a practice whereby a new scale model is created by taking pieces out of kits. These pieces may be added to a custom project or to another kit. For professional modelmakers, kitbashing is popular to create concept ...

Etymology

The term "greeblies" was first used by effects artists at

Industrial Light & Magic Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is an American motion picture visual effects company that was founded on May 26, 1975 by George Lucas. It is a division of the film production company Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded, and was created when he began pro ...

in the 1970s to refer to small details added to models. According to model designer and fabricator

Adam Savage Adam Whitney Savage (born July 15, 1967) is an American special effects designer and fabricator, actor, educator, and television personality and producer, best known as the former co-host (with Jamie Hyneman) of the Discovery Channel televisi ...

George Lucas George Walton Lucas Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker. Lucas is best known for creating the ''Star Wars'' and ''Indiana Jones'' franchises and founding Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He served as chairm ...

, Industrial Light & Magic's founder, coined the term "Greeble". Ron Thornton is widely believed to have coined the term "nurnies" referring to CGI technical detail that his company Foundation Imaging produced for the ''

Babylon 5 ''Babylon 5'' is an American space opera television series created by writer and producer J. Michael Straczynski, under the Babylonian Productions label, in association with Straczynski's Synthetic Worlds Ltd. and Warner Bros. Domestic Tel ...

'' series, while the model-making team of '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' referred to them as "wiggets".

Other uses

Greebles are also used to enhance interior sets. In ''Star Trek'', corridor walls were decorated with objects such as pieces of pipe, which extended out from walls, usually with several fittings and a label implying it was an important part of the ship's infrastructure. In the movie ''

Alien Alien primarily refers to: * Alien (law), a person in a country who is not a national of that country ** Enemy alien, the above in times of war * Extraterrestrial life, life which does not originate from Earth ** Specifically, intelligent extrater ...

'', the interior of the ship ''Nostromo'' was thoroughly greebled. Art director Roger Christian said, "Let's have a go at it. So we recruited some dressing prop people, got a hold of several tons of scrap, and went to work on the Nostromo's bridge... encrusting the set with pipes and wires and switches and tubing... then we painted it military green and began stenciling labels on everything."{{cite book, title=The Book of Alien, author=Paul Scanlon, author2=Michael Gross, publisher=Heavy Metal Books, year=1979, page=not numbered; heading on page "It's just a monster of coordination.", no-pp=yes

References

External links

Staffan Norling's comments about greebling

Starship Modeler: a resource for science fiction modeling

buzzGreeble
for modo
Greeble plugin
for 3D Studio Max
Greeble plugin
for

Realsoft 3D Realsoft 3D is a modeling and raytracing application created by Realsoft Graphics Oy. Originally called Real 3D, it was developed for the Amiga computer and later also for Linux, Irix, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. It was initially written ...

Greeble plugin
for

trueSpace TrueSpace (styled as trueSpace) was a commercial 3D computer graphics and animation software developed by Caligari Corporation, bought-out by Microsoft. As of May 2009, it was officially discontinued, but with some 'unofficial support' up to Feb ...

Greeble plugin
for

LightWave LightWave 3D is a 3D computer graphics program developed by NewTek. It has been used in films, television, motion graphics, digital matte painting, visual effects, video game development, product design, architectural visualizations, virtu ...

Greeble script
for

Blender A blender (sometimes called a mixer or liquidiser in British English) is a kitchen appliance, kitchen and laboratory appliance used to mix, crush, purée or emulsion, emulsify food and other substances. A stationary blender consists of a blender ...

Greeble script
for

Autodesk Maya Autodesk Maya, commonly shortened to just Maya ( ), is a 3D computer graphics application that runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, originally developed by Alias and currently owned and developed by Autodesk. It is used to create assets for interact ...

Greeble script
for

Cinema 4D Cinema 4D is a 3D software suite developed by the German company Maxon. Overview As of R21, only one version of Cinema 4D is available. It replaces all previous variants, including BodyPaint 3D, and includes all features of the past 'Studio' ...

Computer graphic techniques Film and video technology Special effects Vision Scale modeling

Etymology

Other uses

See also

References

External links