Date: 22.11.2025

Source: CrossMind Studio

Time spent: 1.5 hours

I followed a tutorial on creating electric signal trails using the Shortest Path node in Blender. The effect creates glowing circuits resembling energy pulses flowing across surfaces – perfect for sci-fi visuals.

I applied this to Suzanne (Blender’s monkey mascot). The procedural setup creates random paths that reveal the skull structure underneath with an emissive material, giving it an electrical/neural signal vibe.

The Shortest Path node is surprisingly straightforward, it calculates the shortest route between points on a mesh, which you can then use to drive all sorts of effects. In this case, I used it to create glowing trails that look like energy coursing through Suzanne’s skull. I also added circles to the ends of the splines for an enhanced glow effect.

The setup is fully procedural, so you can adjust the density of the paths, the glow intensity, and reseed the randomness to get different patterns each time. I can see this technique being useful for circuit boards, sci-fi UI elements, maybe insect wings or architectural layouts.

The tutorial covered creating the path network, adding the emissive glow, and controlling the randomness. I titled this “Shock the Monkey” as a nod to the 1980s Peter Gabriel track, which seemed fitting for an electrified primate skull!

Video:

Geometry nodes (overall view of all nodes):

Base mesh nodes (easy to swap out for different shapes):

Multiple path ending position nodes (easy to update the values for a completely different look):

Spline nodes:

Circular end point nodes:

Multiple path starting position nodes (unplugged on this occasion, but gives a different effect again):