Any news on VRay Scatter for Maya?

[stezza]

Could really do with this feature on a job for Autodesk. Any news as to when it may become available?
S

[yolov]

Hey, we're working on it. I can't say when we'll have something ready, but we'll definitely share the news when we have something.

[ivo_bakker]

I hope so!
We could really use a good scatter for Maya. Everything out there is not good or Russian.

[k_18]

Same here, would definitely be a great addition that would come in handy in lots of situations...

[yolov]

We're making progress and the first crucial pieces have fallen into place. Here's an early demo:

[ivo_bakker]

Great! You make me happy with this Looks good so far.
Keep up the good work.

[SonyBoy]

If you're working in Maya (and if you're on this page I assume you are), everything that's shown in this demo can already be done with MASH. And a lot more. I'm not saying I won't welcome this from Chaos -- another tool in the box is always good. But it's not showing any groundbreaking functionality.

[ivo_bakker]

Have you ever tried to make big scenes with a lot of grass and plants etc with Mash? It is almost impossible because it becomes terrible sloooooooow.

[SonyBoy]

MASH can get very slow yes, and is pretty unstable as well. So perhaps that's where a dedicated scatter tool will shine. Was just pointing out though that at least as far as this demo goes, MASH can already do everything it shows. That said, there are "smart" ways to work with MASH to get a LOT of complexity. Usually this involves using it as a modeling tool to create a base layer of detail, baking that out, then again running that through a network. Repeat if necessary. I've had good success working this way on a number of projects. I wouldn't expect it to be able to deal with millions of blades of grass right out of the box, for example (and in fact might not even think it's a good choice for something like that when you have fur or XGen). But, once you develop a few tricks with it, it can be quite robust.