VRay Scatter 2.5 - Glass Roof Structure.

[duke2]

Here's a couple more examples... note the 'precise' alignment of panel edges allowing for precision placement over a freeform surface. If you model the panels accurately, the resultant mesh can be welded and mesh-smoothed to produce interesting results.

In this example a simple glass and frame geometry has been conformed, using my plugin, to a 30x10 resolution plane which has a bend and wave modifier added to provide curvature.

My aim is to have a plugin that allows you to apply a collection of panels to a surface distributed by mat-ID, map or randomly; to allow highly complex cladding/roofing designs.

/Edit... Final example added that shows a structure with edges welded to allow turbosmooth of entire structure. Highly complex multy-curved panelled cladding systems can be easily developed fairly easily with this

That is really cool! When are you planning on releasing it?

[re:FORM]

Thanks! I don't have a release date yet as it's not production-ready.
If you've got any suggestions or requests, I'll be sure to consider them!

At the moment, the functionality is as follows:-

• Selections : Parent and multiple children (distributor and panels)
• Weld edge verts
• Remove coplanar surfaces between panels.
• Re-orient children
• deform to surface or place on surface
• z-scaling
  • Auto (averages panel sizes to calculate average z-scale)
  • Inherit from child (absolute size)
  • Normalised (z-scale based on parent panel size)
  • Fixed (specify height)
• Material ID's
  • Inherit from child
  • Cycle
  • Randomise
• Distributions
  • On Parent
    • All faces
    • Selected faces
    • by material ID
  • Children
    • Single child
    • Cycle through children
    • by matID - ie match child ref to parent poly ID
    • randomised
• Randomisations
  • Z scale - Max - Min
  • XYZ positions - Max - Min
  • XYZ rotations - Max - Min

My aim is to get all this working for release 1, then work on adding distribution by texturemap for the next release.

[sv]

looking promising Jonah, I looked into Paracloud myself for some personal projects. It's incredibly powerful - there are other nice procedural modelling apps that do this kind of thing, but you've got to be a real maths wizard to work them out if i recall!
How are you finidng Paracloud? I think I should look back into it....

[jonahhawk]

Re:Form,

Sweet! You beat me to it. I still have about two to three years of developing my programming skills before I could attempt it anyway. this exactly what I've been looking for for years. Looks like you have some great features. Paracloud GEM is able to map to triangles. That app has become pretty hot (and expensive) since version one. Our office is transitioning to revit. So we have 2010, but I would rather keep it all in Max.

One cool feature would be to mix panel types in the same distribution. Either in a selected order or a relative orientation so you could build patterns of pannels and then distribute them.

How does it perform with hundreds or thousands of panels?

[re:FORM]

Thanks for your encouragement!

Well I already have that feature working Distribution of multiple "children" on the mesh, either by mapping the material ID to child ID, random, or cycling through the children. I aim to add some kind of material mapping mode so you can use a greyscale map to define the panel distribution.

The code is not the fastest I'm afraid. I've done my best to optimise it, but for 100,000s of panels, I have a feeling I'll encounter memory problems.

My aim is to release version 1 and if there's enough interest I'll look into developing a faster version in c++.

[Crayox13]

Hm, I once asked if vray will be making a scatter function, and no one seamed to know about it, and now I read it's already out?! How come it's not on their site for the purchase or download demo?

[jonahhawk]

Ok. Who told Crayox13 the big secret?

VRay Scatter is not made by Chaos Group.

Try this link

[pskdude]

lmoa

lmao!!!! the secret is out runnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!

[Crayox13]

That's nice

[jonahhawk]

Sorry man. Sometimes I can't help being a smartarse. Google is your friend. And use the search feature in the forums too; invaluable.