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Billboards are fully working.... however it is pretty hard to make them match up to the high detail models. There is no way to work around that, you will really need to know what you're doing. So this feature is for the pros.

I'm also working on another very useful feature, I'll post a pic if can get it to work.

For some reason I am now unable to get ANY instances generated for standard area scatters under 1.8 when range is set at 100%.
Only by setting random range do I get any instances

Do you have RANGE MIN set to 0% and RANGE MAX set to 100%? Then it should capture everything.

Phantom107 wrote:Do you have RANGE MIN set to 0% and RANGE MAX set to 100%? Then it should capture everything.

OK, suddenly that makes sense. I had min and max both at 100% - I just assumed like the other % figure parameters that these %range figures bracketed an allowable scalar value for a randomise function


I am guessing now this field actually refers to the dimensional range between nearest and farthest coodinate specified from an origin on one side of scatter?

On the left side you will see the 3D heightmap UI element that determines the perlin noise, controlled by the octaves. This perlin noise goes all over the place... so the RANGE parameters determine what area of the perlin noise to use for the scatter. Change around the range and see how it affects the 3D heightmap UI element.

Does that make sense?

I'd like to announce another powerful feature for the next release of Phantom Scatter: INSET.

INSET applies to AREA-scatter, and it allows you to clear out instances along the edges of a scatter surface. In scenes where you use AREA-scatter to create grass, your grass scatter surface is probably lining up to things like ground tiles and walls... this can cause your grass instances to intersect with those objects, taking away a bit of the realism. So now you will be able to do it without manually having to adjust your geometry to try and take care of the problem. Big timesaver! This feature is exceptionally demanding so please use with caution. It is still wayyy faster than adjusting your geometry manually.

That is the way to go... Great feature.

The best use of Phantom Scatter yet, by user Rikk The Gaijin:

Check out his topic here: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=49188

Phantom Scatter 1.8 b is now available!

I will send an e-mail to all licensees in a few moments!

Visit the website here: http://guusthissen.nl/scatter/

» Fixed problem computing the instance roll when using PER-TRIANGLE mode.
» Small fixes in the manual.
» Wireframe display of OBJ models is back in and much more optimized this time. If it still crashes, disable WIREFRAME before importing an OBJ model.
» Introducing the BILLBOARD property for AREA, BRUSH and IMAGE-BASED scatter. Input the distance from which the instances will turn into billboards, exported as seperate *.CSV data. The distance is measured from the location of Phantom Scatter's camera in the GUI to the instance itself. You scatter properties are taking into account too (perlin noise placement, range min/max, area scale, draw distance, collision radius, scale min/max, normal on face, random xy-flip, random xy-variation, variants and weighted scatter).
» Scrolling in the UI modules is now improved, in addition to the mousewheel, you can now simply hover your mouse over the 'up' and 'down' arrows and it'll scroll for you.
» Fixed CURVE-scatter GUI graphics.
» Optimizations in scatter previews.
» Fixed bug in scatter object duplication.
» Introducing the property INSET for AREA-scatter objects, allowing you to remove instances along the edges of a scatter surface when using AREA-scatter objects (in other words, the edges that are not connected to other edges). Model your geometry correctly (!). If edges do not connect perfectly, Phantom Scatter will recognise them as the edges of the scatter surface and apply the inset. Despite being fairly optimized, this function still requires a lot of computation, so use with caution.
» Added some models that are packed with Phantom Scatter from now on. Should give you a good headstart in your productions! Check the manual for more information.

I will put together a brand new website for Phantom Scatter, which will be more in line with my main site. Apart from the yearly license, I will also start offering a lifetime license (you buy it, you own it).

After the website I will continue development on Phantom Photo Match: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=48403

Hi Phantom.
I'm a new user i don't know if this have been already reported.
I'm using Avast Antivirus on my main workstation.
Avast detect a trojan in the phantom scatter exe.
Of course in guess it's a false positive and i can still run the software when i disable avast.
I have already reported the program to avast as a trustable source.
Anyone have this problem with avast or with another antivirus ?

One more little thing.
Like i say i'm quite new and maybe i can miss understood some point.
If i get it correctly phantom scatter use .mtl to get surface material information from obj.
I'm using Houdini as main application. Houdini do not support .mtl in nativly.
I know it's curious and users reported this a long time ago and community have made some custom operator to deal with this problem.
Is it very a complex task to add an option to get .obj groups exactly like surface material groups in phantom scatter ?
I know it's not a direct phantom scatter problem, and i figured out how to deal with this problem.
But if you could add this option it could be a little bit more straight forward for all houdini users.

Houdini users : you can get your models material surface via .mtl with this otl : http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option= ... 351919a1a4