Object Scattering - A need for a vRay/Chaos instancer?

[oglu]

You need only a few of the dedicated scatter nodes to get a forrest populated. And you have to create the graph only once. I recommend take a look into Bifrost.

[TheScope]

I agree i see no reason for a instancer if i have Bifrost.
It can do creazy things.

While Bifrost is great, it really sucks that you can not scatter groups e.g. a tree with separate trunk, twigs and leaves.

[oglu]

Just export the group as a USD.

[seq]

Thanks Oglu for the encouragement - we will definitely start using BF more in the next months. It seems that with the ongoing USD support in V-Ray it’s getting more and more interesting.

The guys from iCube 3D said that either Multiscatter for Maya will replace VRayScatter or both products will be continued.

[leehenshall]

Bi-Frost is great. I don't think anyone here would deny that. I am planning on getting more deeply involved with it. Especially when vRay can support it as much as Arnold can.

I did have a quick play with the scatter points node. It is very fast and the technology/performance is clearly very advanced. I got stuck trying to find a way to use a bitmap to mask my points scatter. Does anyone know whether this is possible in bi-frost scatter?

In this Autodesk video Jonah Friedman is giving a presentation and seems to be using a distribution map saved out of Gaea to drive the density and scale of the instances. This is exactly what I need.



How do you make Bi-Frost do this?

[doppelgaengerdigital]

Unfortunaelty bitmaps are not supportet yet. You have to bake images to vertex colors, which you can sample in bifrost.
I hope we get vray support soon outside of USD, which is already working. But the SDK is still not ready.

[leehenshall]

Thanks you very much for confirming this.

Bifrost is definitely the future for this kind of thing. Esspeically for complex VFX work. I do still find it very overwhelming though for more simple work when all I want to do is scatter objects with some randomisation with a bitmap image mask.

Looking at the Chaos instancer already in Rhino & Sketch-up. Chaos would only need to add a bitmap/masking option and include the tool with vRay for Maya and it would do much of what vRayScatter plugin does.

https://docs.chaos.com/display/VSKETCHUP/Scatter
https://docs.chaos.com/display/VRHINO/Scatter

Obviously the supremecy and long term potential of Bifrost is not in question here. But I do think including the Chaos version of vRay scatter in Maya would be welcome for many users (hopefully with some image based masking capabilities)

Here is a link to a video showing Octane Scatter built into Octane render for C4D:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSIATNwRuqg

It is powerful, fast & easy to use. I would love for vRay to have this. Considering the ground work is already laid with Sketchup & Rhino. I think it would be fantastic to have this option for quick and easy object scattering.

Also a way to improve VRscene export times for animated 3D scenes with many scattered objects and motionblur.

[seq]

That would be great indeed!

[oglu]

Just in case you havnt seen it.
https://youtu.be/J3-5rQqeviE

[seandunderdale]

Super helpful for posting that video! Just a personal opinion on the usability of bifrost...even the first thing he does is super mystifying to a new user. The part where he gets the camera into the graph....nobody would ever be able to work that out without following a video...should software work that way? He says he cant just drag the camera in, it doesnt work...well why not make it work that way? He then makes a value, makes it a matrix 4x4, connects it to the camera node, then deletes the value node to leave an output still on the camera...nobody would ever think to do that!

[oglu]

Its on the the todo list to drag in cameras. The list is 500meters long.
TDs do such stuff all day.
I fully agree Bifrost is complex. But you dont have todo that complex stuff to scatter some grass onto a plane.

[seq]

But for scattering some grass, trees, flowers in a bit more complex scene, things get easily as complex as in the video. So an artist friendly scatter tool is still in need for Maya. Do you hear me Chaosgroup

[hsz]

That's one way to bring a camera into BF, you can easily script that using Python or use for example BF Editor+ Which allows you to do that in one single click plus way more than that.
And that will eventually be drag and drop functionality as well. You gotta remember that BF Graph is relatively new. But that isnt super complicated at all really, you do it once and you learn/memorize that. About using Maps or noises to mask stuff or scatter you can def do that in the graph. Also by the same guy who did the editor+ he also did an image sampler, which works great.
I do not agree that BF is complex. There are a few things here and there that required more knowledge from the user, but the scatter tools in BF are none of those.

[chuckie7413]

leehenshall looks like you might see something sooner rather than later on the vray scatter front. Vray 6 Max Beta features a Scatter tool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDFVesb3pQU

[damaggio]

Yeah I’m loving the new features coming out soon, that’s why chaos is so much better than the rest.