How to scatter vray proxy trees onto a terrain

[Rob Burns]

I was wondering if anyone had some tips for populating a scene with trees. I often need to place hundreds of plants or trees onto a site or terrain mesh. There is a max tool for this called scatter, which works really well for populating the trees, but it alters the proxies so they don't render properly - it renders only the faces that are visible in the proxy instead of the original mesh the proxy represents. has anyone found a good way to make this work?

[Pixelcon]

The most well-known scattering plugins that allow scattering of proxies are those made by iCube. Find them here: http://rendering.ru/ru_en/multiscatter.html

[Rob Burns]

cool, thanks.

[piotrus3333]

check advanced painter - fast, simple and free (but not as powerful as multiscatter)

[m_hinks]

Anyone recommend Forest Pack Pro, or Carbon Scatter with use with Vray? About to buy a copy of lic's of one of them so would be good to know user feedback.

Thanks,

Mark

[plastic_]

please use the search, this gets discussed about every week.

[super gnu]

you can use the max scatter tool.... you just have to scatter boxes, instead of proxies, then convert to editable mesh, select all elements and hit the explode button with an angle of 180 degrees. this will make a seperate object for each box you scattered, instead of one object for the whole lot. then you just have to select them all, affect pivot only and centre to object.

now use soulburn scripts "object replacer" to replace your boxes with instances of your proxy trees. (you can have a few diff. trees in a selection set and itll replace randomly from the selection set.


sounds a lot more complex than it is.. 5 min process really.

main disadvantage with using scatter, is that it doesnt check intersections, so you end up with trees overlapping all over the place. this can lead to rendertime issues.


you can also use the scatter tool built into the max crowd simulator. this -does- consider object spacing, so you get a much better tree distribution.

advanced painter is also a good idea, although it can get slow if you need to place a lot of trees.


however.. since i got forestpack ive not needed any of the above techniques.

[Rob Burns]

that's great info, will definitely give it a try - many thanks!

[Pixelcon]

Well you can use pflow to scatter boxer (make sure you use separation to keep them from intersecting), use mesher, convert to editable mesh, use material by element to add your variation, explode the boxes and use clone and align on each set of boxes too but it's slow, and you can't really edit the placement too easily afterwards...

you can use the max scatter tool.... you just have to scatter boxes, instead of proxies, then convert to editable mesh, select all elements and hit the explode button with an angle of 180 degrees. this will make a seperate object for each box you scattered, instead of one object for the whole lot. then you just have to select them all, affect pivot only and centre to object.

now use soulburn scripts "object replacer" to replace your boxes with instances of your proxy trees. (you can have a few diff. trees in a selection set and itll replace randomly from the selection set.


sounds a lot more complex than it is.. 5 min process really.

main disadvantage with using scatter, is that it doesnt check intersections, so you end up with trees overlapping all over the place. this can lead to rendertime issues.


you can also use the scatter tool built into the max crowd simulator. this -does- consider object spacing, so you get a much better tree distribution.

advanced painter is also a good idea, although it can get slow if you need to place a lot of trees.


however.. since i got forestpack ive not needed any of the above techniques.