Scatter Control and meshes with Boolean Operations?

[Daniel_Ward]

Hi Paul,

I've been playing around with using some grass clump proxy objects and the 'generate scatter' option to create grass on ArchicAD Meshes and I'm pretty happy with the look of the results so far.

Good Grass, but not a very 'architectural' distribution...

What would make it even better would be to have more control over how the scatter gets distributed over the mesh and if it worked on meshes with Boolean operations. I can work around the Boolean operations issue, but when I'm working with the grass object on a mesh, it would be great if I had control over the 'randomness' of the distribution and if I could set a mesh edge offset value. In an architectural illustration more often than not, I need a reasonably straight edge to the lawn, but to achieve this with the 'generate scatter' tool, I would need to be able to set the distribution randomness to 'zero' (or close to it) and also set a mesh offset distribution value of half the width of the grass clump.

I've obviously got no idea what is involved in doing this, but it would make the tool a lot more useful with this sort of additional control.

Best Regards, Dan.

[face_off]

Looks great Dan.

May I suggest using PhantomScatter to generate your scatter files, which will do all the things you are asking for.

Paul

[Daniel_Ward]

Hi Paul,

Phantom Scatter isn't available for purchase anymore, it's been discontinued.

As I said I've got no idea how your scatter files get generated within the AC plug in, but I'm assuming you must have some level of control over how the 'random' distribution is calculated. If you gave us nothing more than an option between 'random' and 'uniform' distribution, then at least I could create a nice 'square' patch of lawn on a 'square' mesh when I require it.

Cheers, Dan.

[face_off]

but I'm assuming you must have some level of control over how the 'random' distribution is calculated.

It is just a random number - there is no control over it.

If you gave us nothing more than an option between 'random' and 'uniform' distribution, then at least I could create a nice 'square' patch of lawn on a 'square' mesh when I require it.

If you just want squares, I would suggest using multiple proxy hosts eventually spaced, instead of using a scatter csv file.

Paul