Lighthouse Generator

Lighthouse Generator builds complete lighthouses inside Blender, from Cape Hatteras with its black and white spiral to a wave-swept rock tower, a screw-pile cottage on iron legs, a cast-iron sparkplug light, a red lightship or a modern pier-head beacon. Pick one of 32 designs modeled on real lighthouses, then change anything: every part is a number, a choice or a switch, and the lighthouse rebuilds live as you drag.

Eight tower types cover the real world of lighthouses: conical brick and stone towers, straight cylinders, the curved "oak tree" profile of offshore rock lights, octagonal and square towers, open skeletal iron frames, slim masts and lanterns sitting straight on a house roof. They stand on the ground, a stepped plinth, a rock in the sea, a caisson, screw piles, the end of a pier or the deck of a lightship.

The top is built like the real thing: corbels or brackets under the gallery, railings, a watch room, a glazed lantern room with vertical or helical astragals, a dome, cone or low cap with ventilator, vane and lightning rod. Inside the lantern sits a Fresnel lens from 1st to 6th order with prism rings and bull's-eye panels, or an LED beacon or aerobeacon, and it turns: the beams sweep around on a looping animation with real spot lights.

Features
- 32 real-world designs in 6 groups, each fully editable
- US coast towers, rock lights, skeletal, caisson and screw-pile lights, the lightship, keeper's houses, French, Spanish, Italian, Irish, Japanese and Nordic lights, pier beacons, concrete and fiberglass towers
- 8 tower types with real dimensions in meters
- Daymarks: solid, bands, spirals, diamonds, vertical stripes and top bands in any two colors
- 7 bases: ground, plinth, sea rock, caisson, screw piles, pier and lightship hull
- Keeper's houses: detached house, Cape Cod, schoolhouse, Mediterranean and hexagonal cottage
- Fresnel lenses from 1st to 6th order, flashing panels, LED beacon and aerobeacon
- Rotating beams as glow cones or volumes, real lights, color and period controls
- Doors, windows, spiral stairs with landings and a cutaway to show the inside
- 9 wall surfaces (painted brick, stone, granite, concrete, cast iron, shingle, fiberglass, steel) with weathering
- UV-mapped geometry, origin at the ground, three detail levels and Convert to Mesh for game engines
- Surprise, Vary and Random Colors buttons for endless new lighthouses
- Picture-driven sidebar with eight tabs and a Shift+A menu
- Works in Cycles and EEVEE

Requires Blender 4.2 or newer. Tested on Blender 4.2, 4.5 and 5.2 LTS.

Installation

In Blender open Edit, Preferences, Get Extensions, then use Install from Disk and pick the lighthouse_generator zip.

Usage

• Open the Lighthouse tab in the 3D viewport sidebar (N). With no lighthouse selected, click the big picture to browse the designs, or pick a group and a design, then press Add to place it at the 3D cursor. You can also use Shift+A, Mesh, Lighthouse.
• The card at the top shows the design, its height, focal plane and face count. Light On switches the lamp, glow and beams; Rotate turns the lens on a looping animation (press Play). Surprise makes a new random lighthouse, Vary changes the current one a little and Colors paints a new daymark.
• The icon tabs hold every setting: Tower (type, height, diameters, sides), Daymark (pattern and colors), Top & Lantern (gallery, railing, watch room, lantern room, roof), Light (lens, lamp, beams, rotation), Base & House (plinth, rock, caisson, piles, pier, ship and the keeper's house), Openings & Inside (door, windows, spiral stairs, cutaway), Finish (surfaces, paint, weathering) and Parts & Export (part visibility, detail level, Convert to Mesh).
• Convert to Mesh keeps the lighthouse as plain meshes; Delete removes it with all its parts and lights.

All sizes are in meters. The root empty sits on the ground (or the water line) on the tower axis. Use Rendered view to see the glow and the beams; volumetric beams look best in Cycles with fog.

Which Blender versions are supported?

Blender 4.2 and newer. It is tested on Blender 4.2, 4.5 and 5.2 LTS.

Can I use the lighthouses in a game engine?

Yes. Every part is UV-mapped with its origin at the ground and uses Principled BSDF materials. Pick the Low detail level, turn off the beams if you do not need them and use Convert to Mesh, then export as usual (FBX, glTF).

Does the light really turn?

Yes. The lens and its beams are keyframed to turn once per period, looping forever, with real spot lights following each beam. Press Play in the timeline to see it.