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I'm thrilled with UltraScatter!
I used it to place the grass and weeds over the ground plane for my diner set, as shown in the renders below. In Blender I used Grass Free to make 1m-circle bunches of grass (Bahia for north of the road, taller wild Rye for around the swamp to the south) and weeds (clover, crabgrass, and dandelions, to be scattered both north and south of the road). Grass Free uses very low-poly models, so they don't use much memory.
I then exported the bunches as obj files, imported them into my DAZ scene, and applied my own textures, made in GIMP after modifying the grass and weed model UVs so each poly fit in one of four vertical quadrants. I've attached some of my textures, along with the position maps I made for UltraScatter.
Yes, my grass is patchy. I wanted it to be. The (fictional) Superfund Diner is in (fictional) East Greensludge, New Jersey, across the street from a swamp that used to be a toxic waste dump. Neither the diner owners nor the high school across the street can afford expensive lawn maintenance....
I can't recommend UltraScatter highly enough!
Crissie
So I bougt this and I guess forgot about it, so never tried it out, is it complicated to use?
Be sure to study the PDF manual that comes with it. It is kind of complicated, but once you get the hang of it, it does amazing things.
Great job! looks very good along the road and water
I still love UltraScatter.
Gallery Link
Very realistic image!
Too bad, that it doesnt work with Octane.
@cris_brown and @barbult Nice images.
Next year Octane will be included in Unity 3D for free and Unity support instances very well, so I hope to test scattering then in it.
Great image, Barbult. You got very nicely covered the ground, which I have a problem with, if I use smaller plants.
@cris_brown: Excellent usage of UltraScatter features.
Rather than using individual plants, try grouping a few together to create a "patch" or "clump" and then scattering that, it makes getting good cover easier.
Thanks for the tip, PhilW. I will try your suggestion.
Thanks for the comments and tips. In this garden shed image I used a distribution map to keep the plants away from the hidden back yard area and the shed door area. I used affinity-repel to keep them away from the gardeners' boots. Affinity is based on the object origin, so I ended up with a pretty big circle around the gardener and I still got some plants close to his toes. I think including the boots in the distribution map would have been more presice. Some of the RDNA/Travelers plants I used were already clumped. Others were individual. I have about 1500 of one and about 1000 of another, I think, and 20 of the large clumped ones. Some ended up behind the camera view.
One trick I use to not 'waste' instances is to go into geo editor, do 'marque select', and click drag part of the surface that's in camera view. I then create a new surface with it, copy the texture onto the new surface (otherwise the part you made is a big white blank).
Then, when doing scatter, I can select ONLY the new, 'on screen' part of the terrain.
Mind you, if there are reflective surfaces, the lack of stuff outside camera view might be visible.
Will, I remembered that you had a good trick to do that, but I forgot the details when it came time to try it. Thanks for the reminder. Now I don't have to go searching for it. I think that would have worked great in my project.
Yeah, I had the problem with, say, an island. I don't NEED vegetation on the OTHER side of the island, and all those instances crushed my render time.
Did you remember to change Instance Optimization from Speed to Memory in Render Settings when you were having trouble with too many instances crashing the render?
I THINK so. I had a lot of trees (like 6000+)
Thank you all for the compliments!
barbult, I love your work! I get hungry every time I look at your ice cream and blueberry treat, earlier in this thread.
timmins.william, I think whether to limit scattering (thus fewer instances) to in-frame surfaces is a project-specific question. If you're scattering grass, trees, etc. for a one-time render, then minimizing instances is probably worthwhile. My project is the ground plane for a set, which users might theoretically render from any position and any angle, so I had to put grass and weeds anywhere they would reasonably be ... even if most will be out-of-frame for any particular render. But the entire ground plane has fewer than 2500 instances each of Bahia and Wild Rye grass clumps, and fewer than 1500 each of Clover, Crabgrass, and Dandelion clumps.
Tip -- If you use position maps, your instances will be offset by the XYZ translations of your original object. My diner is centered above the origin (it's up on a foundation) to simplify the placement of figures for interior scenes. The ground plane is offset south and west, because the diner's windows face south and west. But I didn't want grass and weeds inside the diner. So for my first attempt, I put the originals of my grass and weed clumps in places where they would be visible ... and all of my instances were placed wrong. To fix that, I put the originals of each clump at X=0, Y=-100, Z=0 -- one meter under the origin, concealed by the ground plane -- and then Y-translated their instance groups +100 to bring the instances up to the ground plane. Having the originals at X=0, Z=0 placed the instances as intended with my position maps.
My bounding boxes hovered several meters above the ground plane, even though my clumps' origins were centered at the base of each clump. But when I set Preview Instances to show Object, the instances were placed correctly on the ground. Alas, scene navigation is very clumsy with all instances shown. So I repeated the UltraScatter with Preview Instances set to None. The preview shows only bare ground, which makes it easy to navigate around the scene, but the grass and weeds are there in renders. However ...
Tip -- You must zero any translations of instance groups before you repeat an UltraScatter. E.g.: If you have your originals at X=0, Y=-100, Z=0 (to put the originals under the ground plane so they won't be seen) and Y-translated your instance groups by +100 (to bring the instances up to ground level) ... you'll need to zero that instance group's Y-translation before you repeat the UltraScatter, then replace the Y-translation of the instance group after you repeat the UltraScatter. Otherwise UltraScatter will put your instance group back down where the original is (despite the group's Y-translation) and you'll have to double the group's Y-translation to get the instances up to ground level.
@cris_brown thanks for the nice comments. I'm going to try those tips you described. Right now I can't even open Daz Studio. It is stuck on the Logging in... screen.
Going to look through the thread for tips, but figured out the hardway that it is the item selected that will be scattered. I somehow tried to scatter the enviroment prop verses the actual item I wanted to scatter.
edit Something went wrong, but not sure what.
Read the PDF manual carefully and several times to fully understand the power of this tool.
If I have say a plane on the ground. Load something else such as prop 'A'. I made prop 'A' and use the script to scatter it everywhere. I like what it does and so on. How and what do I save so that other users can use my scatter of prop 'A'. I have tried exporting several different ways but I must be doing something wrong. Or do we create the prop in Daz format with data and all of that. Then load that prop, scatter, and save the scatter as prop instead of export out as obj?
Yes, you have to do a group including the scattered object, the terrain and the UltraScatterd once done and save it as prop or whatever (I use subset). Remember that to distribute both the object and the terrain must be yours or licensed to do so
I found another use for UltraScatter ... filling an icemaker with ice cubes:
I modeled the icemaker for my diner set. The ice is a separate prop, actually two props. The ice base began as a plane in Blender, with a Displacement Modifier to give it piles and troughs. Then I made an IceCube model (again in Blender) ... a simple 2cm cube with beveled edges.
I imported both objs into DAZ, then used UltraScatter to place instances of the IceCube over the surface of the IceBase. All of that took less time than the shaders:
I arrived at those shaders after a couple of hours of tweak-and-render ... but UltraScatter made the ice modeling itself very easy!
Crissie
Edit: Replaced image after I rechecked the machine on which my model was based and realized I'd forgotten the heat vent.
I had to edit the icemaker in Blender, retexture it in Substance Painter, and reimport and rerig in DAZ. But that turned out to be easy.
I'm scattering some trees on the terradome3 b-zone with hills dialed in, but when it comes to min and max slope, slope falloff, elevation, and elevation falloff...I'm just lost. Could someone who's successfully done it post their settings so I can get a better idea of what to use? Elevation in particular escapes me because I don't know how to tell how high the hills are. Thanks.
M.
What I usually do with elevation is use a small number of instances (like 20) and ONLY filter by elevation until it looks right, then try other stuff.
Slope is basically angle of the surface. You can experiment with a sphere... so it starts at 0 (flat), then steeper and steeper until the max value is on the bottom of the sphere. Note that it can't account for the overall shape, so if you have something that populates the top bit of a mountain, it will also cover depressions and pits. It just won't put stuff on the underside of overhangs/cliffs.
Falloff essentially creates a gradiation from full to 0. With no falloff, there are Trees (or whatever) until... bam, no trees. With falloff, the Trees get fewer in number until none. (And then there are advanced stuff so that the trees also get smaller)
Thanks, Will. I was hoping there'd be an easier way of managing this, but...experimentation it is!
Elevation is a range in height meters, you will have instances distributed in the area that goes from the minimum to the maximum. It works with the global coordinates being 0 equal to 0 on the Y axis what we call in normal lfe sea level. That means the position of your terrain will affect the position fo the range. TD3_BZone loads correctly with its base on the zero Y axis and all its surface is in that level before morphing. Now depending of the morphs you dial your mountains and valleys will have a precise height. Over sea level if you do not use negative mo
Slope is a range where you decide if polygons in the terrain are ok or too steep to let a tree grow. The angle specified of those between Min Slope and Max one will determine an instance to be there or not. Being 0.00 = 0º a flat surface apt for any plant and from 45º the terrain is too steep for some plants. 90.00 is a wall. (And I imagine 90 to 180 is inverted steppnes but don't know)
Falloff alters the number of instances you will have in the ranges based on meters for the elevation or degrees for the slope. You will have less trees in those selected areas. I have'n't used it. I visualice it from a 2D pov as a blurr in the margins
I use the Cylinder Primitive to scale the mountains. Always its hotpoint rooted to zero *wink* A 30 meters cylinder that reaches the highest peak is a 30 meters mountain...