Octane scatter Tweet

[dweyel]

Hey, got some issues with octane scatter. I want an even distribution and need to delete some areas via vertex maps. I only get an even distribution via poisson mode but that ignores vertex maps. How can i make the normal mode ignore curvature? instances clump on steep areas and barely cover even terrain - did this change at some point or don't i just remebre the workflow correctly? Thanks!

[frankmci]

Can you upload a simple example file? Surface Scatter with a vertex map seems to be working as expected for me. Which version of C4D and Octane are you using?

Next day: It occurred to me that you might have very uneven UV space. Scatter is using the UV space to calculate density, so if the mesh has been significantly distorted since UV generation, then areas of equal UV space will still receive about the same number of Scatter instances, not equal areas of geometric space. With a heavy displacement, for example, the "side" faces of a slope may get stretched to cover, lets say five times as much geometric surface area as the non-displaced or more uniformly displaced faces. This would result in the "side"surface receiving only 1/5 as many instances as it would if the UV space better matched geometric space.

Depending on the model, you might be able to simply select some strategic UVs and "relax" them a few times to even out the distribution. Alternatively, you can generate a whole new UV map for the final geometry, making sure that UV surface area and geometric surface area are similar. After that, the standard Surface scatter should work fine with your vertex maps.

[dweyel]

Sorry for not replying. And thanks for all the info. Yeah the subdivision of the mesh is not evenly generated. I used a regular cloner in multi-instance mode in the meantime. But will def keep this in mind for the next time. Thanks again!

[frankmci]

Sorry for not replying. And thanks for all the info. Yeah the subdivision of the mesh is not evenly generated. I used a regular cloner in multi-instance mode in the meantime. But will def keep this in mind for the next time. Thanks again!

Keep in mind that it's not uneven subdivision of the mesh itself that causes the issue, but the miss-match between the mesh surface area and the corresponding UV surface area. Good luck!