Chaos Scatter

[matanov]

In V-Ray 6 you'll find our own scattering tool - Chaos Scatter!

More info on how to use it - https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/a.../4953289514513

There are some ready-to-use presets for the Chaos Scatter in our Cosmos browser as well.

[im.thatoneguy]

The only feature that I'm not seeing that will prevent me from using this in place of ForestPack or other scatter tools is clumping. A good example is something like weeds, if 1% of the surface area is weeds you don't want 1 weed for every 100 blades of grass, you generally want a clump where for every 1000 blades of grass you have like 10 weeds all in a little clump. Or trees tend to grow together by species.

[gandhics]

Well...

1) Is it really need to be in "Chaos" section. I nkow it is CHaosScatter. But, it could live in "VRay"?

2) It is asking me lic for Chaos Czech...

3) and I was surprised...IT KNOWS MY NAME!!! CS!!! Then realized that it is ChaosScatter.

[Dave_Wortley]

Any plans to make this an applicationPlugin rather than installing to c:\program files\Autodesk\3ds max 2022 ?

[Pixelcon]

Out of curiosity, in a like-for-like comparison, does CScatter render faster or use less memory (etc.) than Forestpack?

[vlado]

Out of curiosity, in a like-for-like comparison, does CScatter render faster or use less memory (etc.) than Forestpack?

In terms of actual rendering with V-Ray, both use the same API so the memory usage is similar. For V-Ray 6, we specifically tried to reduce the memory usage for instances and this affects both Forest Pack and Scatter. Of course, the plugins themselves might need RAM on their own and I'm not sure how that compares between the two - best to do some tests.

Best regards,
Vlado

[michal_wirth]

The only feature that I'm not seeing that will prevent me from using this in place of ForestPack or other scatter tools is clumping.

Yes, we have this one already logged. We will need to do something about that. Still, TY for sharing the idea. At least we see it is important.

Is it really need to be in "Chaos" section. I nkow it is CHaosScatter. But, it could live in "VRay"?

Yeah, it would be the best. But Chaos Scatter is for Corona users too and unfortunately 3ds Max does not allow an object to be categorized in multiple categories at once. So that's why it is under more general 'Chaos'.

Any plans to make this an applicationPlugin rather than installing to c:\program files\Autodesk\3ds max 2022 ?

Not at the moment. Would there be some benefit? (We use this approach for Corona too and it works well. We install there 'loaders', allowing to relatively easily switch between different Corona/Scatter versions. Some users use that. I am not sure how that works with the other approach.)

Out of curiosity, in a like-for-like comparison, does CScatter render faster or use less memory (etc.) than Forestpack?

Corona users usually say so (faster UX, using less memory - last time I checked Scatter really used less memory than FP). But as always, experiences differ based on types of scenes the users work with. Anyway, we want to focus on that in next versions and improve speed even more.

[Vizioen]

Some additional features that would make Forest Pack almost obsolete for me would be (similar to FP's features):

- Edge mode (nice clean cut borders). It might be doable with an opacity map and a distance tex (I didn't try it), but that's a lot of hassle to set up.
- Clustering of different scattered objects

The areas include/exclude works kind of backwards. If for instance I have a spline for inclusion, and I want it to falloff in scale or density, away from the edge (but inside the spline). I need to draw another spline bigger than the previous one (attach it) and set it as an exclusion instead. This workflow is a bit backwards to me.

[michal_wirth]

Some additional features that would make Forest Pack almost obsolete for me would be (similar to FP's features):

- Edge mode (nice clean cut borders). It might be doable with an opacity map and a distance tex (I didn't try it), but that's a lot of hassle to set up.
- Clustering of different scattered objects

The areas include/exclude works kind of backwards. If for instance I have a spline for inclusion, and I want it to falloff in scale or density, away from the edge (but inside the spline). I need to draw another spline bigger than the previous one (attaach it) and set it as an exclusion instead. This workflow is a bit backwards to me.

Noted, thanks. All is valid.

[Vizioen]

Thanks Michael,

I forgot a few imporant FP features to add to the list:

- Other types of exclusion/inclusion area geometries including Chaos Scatter objects and painting.
- I just tested this and either I'm doing something wrong or it's not possible yet, but add the ability to add animated geometries, and the ability to offset the animation (by increments or randomly or...)

[nicklas_byriel]

Some really good points Ashley. Might i add: maybe an option for instanced models to not only follow along a spline, but also deform along the Spline if possible? could be useful for doing hedges/fences etc in curves - might get a bit messy to control properly though

[Dave_Wortley]

Not at the moment. Would there be some benefit? (We use this approach for Corona too and it works well. We install there 'loaders', allowing to relatively easily switch between different Corona/Scatter versions. Some users use that. I am not sure how that works with the other approach.)

Just confusing as you're saying it's packaged with vray but then vray installs to an applicationPlugin package and then the ChaosScatter.dlo goes into the main max installation folder. We put our applicationPlugins in a network location, I can do the same for the ChaosScatter as a separate plugin but the future of plugins really is this new format, make things a lot more portable.

[Dave_Wortley]

One BIG feature request for ChaosScatter that isn't in ForestPack is scattering an object including a hierachy.

This way you could pick a helper object and add a 'include children' checkbox and then it would scatter the entire hierachy of objects. Would be MASSIVELY useful for us! (Groups in max suck and we say never to use them).

[gandhics]

This way you could pick a helper object and add a 'include children' checkbox and then it would scatter the entire hierachy of objects. Would be MASSIVELY useful for us! (Groups in max suck and we say never to use them).

How about picking layer or selection set... hmm...

[GregoryVFX]

Is the Viewport Display really uses GPU instances?
I get 1 FPS performance with 100K instances displayed as Full and about 20 FPS displayed as Dots; where I get 150 FPS using the same setup in TyFlow displayed as Full items, for example.
Here's a video showcasing:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10BM...ew?usp=sharing

Should we expect any performance improvements on this front ?