Maya: Guide to Randomizing Position for Vertices, Edges and Faces on Geometry

Learn how to randomize vertices, edges or faces in Maya for some procedural and more natural look. Great for terrains, floor tiles, city buildings or anything else you need to be random and not hand manipulated.

Video Tutorial

Using Transform

Select components you want to randomize. This can be vertices, edges or faces.

Edit Mesh > Transform Options:

Set Random: 1

Drag the new gizmo on different axis:

You can go back to Channel Box and adjust Random value to below 1 or higher than 1.

Using Extrude

Extrude also has a way to add Randomization. It is hidden in the floating Extrude menu if you click on small icon to the top right and enable Random to show up in the menu:

You can also access it in the Channel Box after you've applied Extrude.

The Random does not work with Thickness but it does work with Local Translate Z. Only downside is it angles the faces, makes them slanted.

It works great with Offset:

But the best way to use Extrude Random input is to combine it with Transform.

Step 1 - Select Faces and apply Extrude with Offset and with Keep Faces Together Off with Random set to 1..

Step 2 - Extrude faces again but don’t do anything to them.

Step 3 - With extruded faces still selected, apply Edit Mesh > Transform and Random set to 1:

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