Simulation nodes! I always do no-thinking doodle like this, & today was able to render a similar look without modelling anything! (except the plane to hold geonodes). Still don't know about UV & random/multi textures. Based on a tutorial by @johnnygizmo
Days 9-10
"Extraterrestrial Relic"
Took a long while to figure things out, its a bit janky in places and im sure there are better ways to do things but I got the nodes to do what I wanted.
Finally in the clean-up and bug fixing phase of my first custom particle system in geometry nodes. Been a long road, but dang proud of this thing, even if it does have some.... uh... let's go with, quirks, from being my first attempt at figuring most of this particle/vector math stuff out :P
Blender 4.0/4.1