Avoid Collisions setting in Chaos Scatter object makes scattered Instance objects invisible in viewport - Cinema 4D R21

V-Ray V-Ray for Cinema 4D Issues
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As described in the heading - when Cinema 4D Instance objects are used within a Chaos Scatter object, activating the Avoid Collisions option in the Chaos Scatter Config tab makes the scattered Instance objects invisible in the viewport, though they still appear in the render.

This is unaffected by the Spacing value below the Avoid Collisions check box, or by the Instance Mode of the Instance object.

If the Chaos Scatter object contains a combination of Instance objects and regular objects, only the Instance objects are affected.

Has anyone encountered the same problem in more recent versions of Cinema 4D, or is it specific to R21?

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Hello JeremyLondonMDL,

I’ve confirmed that this behavior is a bug [VC4D-2918]. When an Instance object is used inside a Scatter, the scattered items may not appear in the viewport, even though they render correctly. This issue affects all Cinema 4D versions except 2025 and 2026, where the viewport preview works as expected.

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Thanks @zhanet.georgieva , that’s good to know.

I recently tried using Chaos Scatter to replace Laubwerk’s amazing SurfaceSPREAD plugin, but I discovered one crucial function that it doesn’t replicate, which I’d like to submit as a Chaos Scatter feature request:

SurfaceSPREAD had a Minimum Distance setting, which is similar to the Chaos Scatter Avoid Collisions setting, but it calculates the minimum spacing between the axis of each object, instead of a percentage of bounding box overlap.

The axis-based Minimum Distance scattering is important when visualising plants at a specific spacing, and showing their size and growth over time. This is often required with mass-planting on Landscape Architecture and Urban Design projects, where the plants are planted in a random pattern (not neat rows) but there is a specific spacing between them, and that spacing should not change as the plants are shown to grow and overlap eachother.

The Chaos Scatter Avoid Collisions setting doesn’t seem to offer parametric spacing in the same way, and the distribution is altered as the scattered objects (e.g. plants) increase in size.

I think it would be useful if Chaos Scatter had both options. They could be alternative modes of the same function, or even better as separate functions that can be used in combination.

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Hi JeremyLondonMDL,

Thank you for your suggestion. It will be best if you log it as a feature request in our Ideas Portal → V-Ray Ideas Portal