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Those are my settings for the little palms on that terrain
Thanks, Jerife. I figured out the same thing only with a plane. My issue now is floating trees. Sigh.
I had the issue with floating trees too, even though the original tree was firmly in the ground. I found that you can use the Y trans for the instance to bring the floating trees back to ground. Most seem to float about the same distance above the ground
Thanks, Twitch. Yes, I know lowering the instances will fix the issue, except in this case I've scattered a group of trees, and some in the group ended up higher than the others. When I lowered it, some trees ended up embedded in the ground, which doesn't look that bad, I suppose.
Yeah, they end up looking like bushes. I think I had gone through something similar and went '... yeah, works, whatever, moving on!'
The trees replicated must have the 'hotpoint' = origin in the neck of the tree, between trunk and root and that point be at zero in Y in order to work perfectly
Howie gave us a script in this same pages that can fix that and not only for trees, and Will owes us a class of how to move that point inside a tool tab
I've done it a few times, Jerife, but every time I have forgotten from the last time and flail around like an angry chimp.
I should make a class just so I can read it again next time.
Thanks, Jerife, you're right, the widget isn't located at the bottom on these trees. I've used Joint Editor to move the center point in the past, but I'm not sure it will help in this case since not *all* of the trees are wigging out. I'll have to look for Howie's script, though, since it sounds invaluable.
EDIT: Found the script, but there was an error downloading it. Howie did say (in the same post where he attached the script) that the next update to Ultrascatter would include it, and that was in August, so I assume it happened. I'm not sure if the script is supposed to work automagically or if there's something I need to activate.
EDIT x2: Now I'm wondering if maybe the script isn't working because my scattered trees are in a group...?
Can someone kindly explain to me the buttons? I mean I've read the PDF and I just can't understand it.
Groups do not work properly, neither do nulls. One way to work is parenting everything to one thing, if you know what I mean. All the cloth to a figure, all the trees to a tree. I have not tested. Other way is converting your group of trees, flowers, grass in an object, a .obj and replicating it (I import them, reshade them and save as subset)
On the other hand, groups are awesome if you want to scatter a bunch of things rather randomly; every item in the group is scattered to some random set of positions.
Here is my first project with adjustments for floating trees. I found the script mentioned earlier, but I do not have any experience with origin adjustments or how to run it. I have 9 Instances where I adjusted the tress via Y Trans, any where from -75 to -150 to remove the floating. I don't see many "bushes" or floaters.
For measuring the heights for setting min and max elevations, I create a Null and a Measure Metric - Tape Measure. By pointing the Tape measure to the Null, if you move the Null and Tape to the same X and Z trans and lock the Y trans on the null, you can easliy measure the various heights by moving the Y trans on the Tape.
I have not tried creating a group of trees for scattering.
Scatter object is the thing you want to replicate. You must select this in your Scene tab an play the script with it selected
Target object is the "terrain" where the replication is going to be
Number of instances is clear. Low number till you tweak all right, then the number needed. The more the slower
Min spacing the distance in centimeters between one replicated obj and another
You can always open one instanced group and tweak again. To do that play the script with the UltraScattered Group, that was created, parented to the terrain, slected in the Scene tab and change the settings
Elevation and Slope and their falloffs I talked above
Each time you Shuffle on every tab makes a new instancing with the same settings but a different random position.
Scale is clear, isn't it?
Rotation on Y 180 means the tree instances will rotate completely, On Z and X no more than 3 degrees if the trunks are really straight but wind tends to blow and blend all plants in the same direction so most of the times rotation ther should be cero
Allign object to normal, unchecked for terrains as the trees grow up to the sun independent of the direction which the soil points.
Let me see if I have this right...the Ultrascatter script doesn't differentiate the bottom point of individual items in a group, which causes each item in the group to inherit the group's bottom point - a problem when scattering over an uneven surface. I've been grouping items for scatter because I assumed it was the best way to avoid having scattered objects intersect with previously scattered objects...
It works if instead of creating a group, or a null with all your items in it
you parent all but one of your items to that one
Hi all. Some awesome images and ideas here, thanks. I've used UltraScatter on a few projects to good effect and agree that this brings Studio much closer to Vue capabilities (I abandoned Vue in2010 because it was a dog. A gorgeous dog but a dog!).
Right now, I'd like to use U/S to populate an orchard of trees in nice neat rows (in both directions) but I'm struggling to see how to get the script to do that. Any suggestions or thoughts? The "work around"s I can think of are to either manually instance one row then duplicate, or to use U/S on a narrow strip of geometry for one row and then duplicate that - but if there is a way to do it directly with U/S I'd love to know.
While I'm here, I wonder if anyone else has had this problem ...
The first image is a text geometry populated with 100,800 of a little poppy model using U/S. But to achieve this density of the population I had to use three scatter instances; one of 47000 and two of 26900 manually offset from the first after the scatter because if I used more than 47000 instances, it did not appear to give any denser coverage of the geometry. You can see the difference in the second image in the density on the word "known". I could not find a way to get better coverage than this other than the manual offset work-around. [just to avoid any confusion, the second image is a composite of 3 scatter images, one at 47000 overall, but using only the word "known" for this image; and using the word "unto" from a 27000 scatter and the word "God" from a 17000 scatter.].
The last few days I've been trying to scatter people along a very long sidewalk. Even with an unchecked box for "Inherit object scale", the instances are terribly distorted to the point they just look like horizontal streaks. If you break the instance group, highlight all the instances, and unparent them from the geometry you scattered them on, you can change their scale back to 100% for all 4 scale parameters and they return to normal size. A pain but manageable. So if you try to distribute your trees on a long narrow geometry, you might experience the same.
As an alternative (something I'll be testing today), you could make a plane with multiple segments, use the Geometry Editor tool to select just one strip of polygons and assign that to a new surface. Then choose that surface in "Limit Scatter to" under the Advanced tab in U/S. I'm hoping that gives the long-narrow distribution without the scaling issue.
Edit: It works and is much easier. The orange is the highlighted polygons selected and made into a surface. No need to adjust the scale of the figures. Note they are not lined up in an even row as you want for your trees. You'll probably need to use an even narrower strip or use the Align tool in Daz Studio to put them in a row (after you break the instances group) but they won't be evenly spaced. A better bet is to use another scatter script Instances Plus which does put objects in rows.
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Thanks Jerife, but parenting isn't working for me.
Thanks RGcincy. Will experiment. Howie, is ordered "scattering" a possible future enhancement?
Have you looked at Instances Plus? It can make rows of instances.
@stitlown As I mentioned in my post above, Instances Plus can put objects in a row. Since I own it, I took a look and it can also put objects in matrices. Here's a simple image showing trees placed in a 5 by 5 matrix. You can choose to have them drop down/up to a surface and randomize rotation and scale. So the easiest way to accomplish your goal is with this product instead of Ultrascatter. I had first purchased Ultrascatter but then got Instances Plus as I had heard about it's ability to align instances. I use both depending upon what I want to do.
Thanks mate. Good to know. Exactly what I'm trying to do. And thanks Melissa for the pointer.
How can you use this to a human body? Or a human clothing? Is it possible?
Like for example covering a human body with flowers?
Just define the body as the object on which the items are scattered, instead of a terrain. There are many creative uses - while I use Carrara, which has similar tools built-in, I have used it for replicating sequins over a dress for example, or water droplets on a figure.
I've literally done the flower thing. :)
Some pages up in this thread there are ants covering a body... *shiver*
having fun with ultra scatter
Hey, that's nice! It is also very on topic with the latest news.