this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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Science Memes

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top 37 comments
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[–] Themosthighstrange@lemmy.world 14 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

i like the star trek borg cube texture instead personally

[–] Themosthighstrange@lemmy.world 21 points 8 hours ago (2 children)
[–] LogicalDrivel@sopuli.xyz 13 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Its the physical manifestation of the old pipes screen saver from windows 95.

memory unlocked

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago

It's like a kind of reverse greeble.

[–] Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

As far as I know it's also considered greeble, the term was just coined later

[–] Infinite@lemmy.zip 5 points 5 hours ago

It was coined by ILM in the 70s, a smidge before the Borg.

[–] Vieric@piefed.social 7 points 8 hours ago

The Great Greeble Assimilation was a very important milestone for the Borg.

[–] CorvidCawder@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 hours ago

There was even a pretty cool plugin for Cinema4D with that same name IIRC.

[–] crank0271@lemmy.world 15 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

So in the future, have they also solved the problem of "dust"? Those poor cleaners...

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 15 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

No dust in space because vacuum.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 33 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Commander_Keen@reddthat.com 12 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

That's @Kolanaki@pawb.social you're taking to there.

[–] Mesophar@pawb.social 3 points 1 hour ago

No, it's MegaMaid. She's gone from suck to blow

[–] SirSamuel@lemmy.world 9 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Is there a special name for electronic doodads in sci-fi? Like the control panels in the Millennium Falcon or Luthen's radio switchboard in Andor. Shoot, Mother's room in Alien is another example. It's like the electronic version of greebles on a starship model. Do they have a special name as well?

[–] GraniteM@lemmy.world 11 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

That whole aesthetic is cassette futurism, as distinct from the glass touchscreens of Star Trek TNG.

[–] SirSamuel@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Oh yeah! I forgot that was a thing. Tx ^^

[–] AnchoriteMagus@sh.itjust.works 102 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (6 children)

Forgiveness for my pedantry, but pretty sure a greeble (or greeblie) is the individual plastic details that they would glue on to create the texture, not the texture itself.

You wouldn't say a texture is "greeble".

Edit - and if you're talking 3d modeling, greebling is done during sculpting, it's not a texturing step.

[–] orvorn@slrpnk.net 20 points 12 hours ago

To be pedantic in return - in 3D modeling you absolutely can add greebling as a bump map or tessellation texture.

[–] snooggums@piefed.world 51 points 15 hours ago

It seems to use a similar naming convention as stucco, where the thing that is applied shares the name with the resulting texfure.

[–] RustyNova@lemmy.world 24 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Blender modeler here. We often do grebble in geometry nodes. Not sculpting

[–] otacon239@lemmy.world 19 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

You could also theoretically do it in the texturing step with a displacement modifier using the new(er) dynamic scaling.

[–] RustyNova@lemmy.world 2 points 12 hours ago

Oh yeah. Forgot it was stabilised

[–] Klear@quokk.au 9 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

It's texture as in surface quality, not the meaning used in computer rendering.

[–] inconel@lemmy.ca 10 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

I get where you're coming from but texture in layman term is (microscopic) characteristic of the surface. You wouldn't appreciate crisp 16bit RGBA pixels in your mouth when you bite an apple.

[–] artifex@piefed.social 4 points 12 hours ago

In the late 1990s I wrote an Alias|Wavefront plugin called greeble that built a bump field + height field from texture so artists could paint greebles on by hand, so whether or not that’s the proper way to do it, it’s been a texture thing for a long time.

[–] HAL_9_TRILLION@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Huh. I thought it was the invisible things that only cats can see that makes them kinda crazy.

[–] TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works 7 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

it is. this is just word theft. ;p

[–] SirSamuel@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

The term "greeblies" was coined by George Lucas in the 1970s to describe details on model ships used in the production of Star Wars

;-P

[–] TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 minute ago* (last edited 1 minute ago)

well George stole it from cats. I don't have proof but it's what cats would want.

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 4 points 9 hours ago

“kinda”

[–] jaaake@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)
[–] FryHyde@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I knew Ron Thornton for awhile. He said nurnies were digital and greebles were physical, but most other people I've known have used them interchangeably.

[–] jaaake@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Both of these statements match my understanding

[–] Smoogs@lemmy.world 16 points 14 hours ago

And here I was calling it the Borg

[–] cosmicrookie@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago

You will be assimilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile.