How can I replicate an object over the surface of another? I am a beginner and I want to add nails to a cactus I've modeled. How would I go about doing this? I'm after actual geometry not just a flat plane with a texture.
One way to go about this would be to use DupliFaces.


  Duplication Faces or DupliFaces is the capability to replicate an
  object on each face of a parent object.


You would model your nail then parent it to the cactus object with Ctrl + P. You then select the cactus object and in the Object panel under Duplication and choose Faces.

This is not perfect and the outcome of this depends a lot on the topology of your parent object (the cactus) and how your child object (the nail) is scaled and or rotated etc. It can work with some tweaking however&hellip;



Another way would be to use a particle system, set the type to Hair and under Render, select the nail object. This is a bit harder to tweak if you don't have much experience with it etc. but can give you alot more control and variation as to how things can be placed.