Chaos Scatter Questions

[hunter_williams]

I'm finally doing another video project and happy to see that Chaos Scatter is now available!

Two questions I have:

1. Does Chaos Scatter replace the need to make (trees for example) into a proxy for optimization?

2. Let's say I want to also add grass, if I want the grass to have different Random Distribution for example, do I have to create a second Chaos Scatter node or is there a way to achieve this in just one Chaos Scatter node?

[Morbid Angel]

Hello there, no you still have to make proxies as the way Chaos Scatter works is by scattering a single transform. I believe you can also scatter geometry directly but it means the tree will have to be combined into a single mesh. I recommend handling 2 scenes for the trees, one original geo which you have textures and shaders setup for. Then output those into vray proxy and use that scene in chaos scatter.
For the grass, it does have random distribution built into it, if you have different levels of scatter for example trees, bushes, branches, rocks, grass etc, I would recommend setting up a separate scatter for each of them, since if a scatter item takes up a single point in space then another scatter item may never go over top of it, so you will not be able to get a feeling that a rock is near or inside grass, but you can get a more finite control with separate scatters.

[hunter_williams]

Hi Dmitry,

So if I'm understanding you correctly, I don't have to bother with proxy is the plants are a only a single mesh?

I'm using pretty low poly, single mesh vegetation as well for the trees. The grass however is where performance slows down but that maybe a texture issue.

[Morbid Angel]

The only issue with not using proxies is that if you hit the ram limit, it will not be able to be dynamically load, so the scene will not render if you have too many dense geometries. Depending on your complexity and ram limitation this may or may not be a problem.

[hunter_williams]

Yeah. I did some tests (proxy vs. mesh) and the results were in favor of proxy. Thanks for letting me know about the need for proxy objects using scatter.