Hi, in last Corona daily (corona-6-3dsmax-daily-2020-07-07.exe) we improved Corona Scatter w.r.t. speed and user experience. Please, do you feel some difference? Or maybe, are there some issues with that?
Corona Scatter no longer freezes UI when recomputing in heavy scenes, also when using Corona Distance map in density slot.
UI of the scatter is generally more responsive and performance is greatly improved.
Loading scatter scenes is faster (on average by 28%, in extreme cases by 78%, depending on number and size of textures used in the scenes and number of scattered instances there).
Also fixed the viewport not updating when changing time on the timeline in some cases.
Fixed the viewport not correctly displaying instances in some cases.
Fixed rare cases of different scatter results between master and node in DR environment.
Here is my features list :
Ability to control z offset and scale for each model
Distribution modes different from the standard one (like forest Dense, full, isle, scattered…)
Exclude areas, exclude objects
Clusters mode
Surface direction and slope range
Mappable distribution of each scattered object (within the same Corona scatter), with collision detection between different objects.
Example: I want 4 different grass clump models in a scatter, but want finer control of how each clump is mapped within the scatter. Currently you’d have to create 4 different scatters, and collision detection won’t work between the scatters. I’ve been fudging this using various masks and inverted masks, but it can get complicated quickly.
Better scatter object collision detection.
Example: the generated convex hulls aren’t great for items with complex geometry (trees with long branches e.t.c) when collision detection values are higher.
Example: trying to densely pack the volume of a sphere with objects, whilst avoiding objects clipping the sphere or self intersecting.
The ability to delete/manually add objects to the scatter (after they have been scattered).
Example: You like the general feel of the scattered items, but there’s one pesky tree that’s blocking your view - I want to remove just that one tree without affecting the rest of the scatter. Sure I could keep increasing the random seed value until I find a more suitable scatter distribution for the view, but that can often be quite tedious.
UV mappable colour/reflection control of scattered objects.
Example: Creating patterned rugs easily. I want to tint certain rug fibers in the scatter with a colour in a well defined pattern.
Hi guys, thanks for the tips and especially for the example usages. I logged them all. They make sense.
In fact, we are already working on some features you have mentioned. Unfortunately, I cannot give you estimate when everything gets ready.
Awesome, glad to hear it! I tend to stick with Corona scatter over forest pack for general ease of use/UI intuitiveness. With some more features I’d never have to use another scattering plugin.
As a side note, I’ve been using FStorm a lot recently and it would be great to use Corona scatter with it - would this ever be possible? Or would the FStorm dev need to implement it? Forest pack currently works with it.
Support for Corona Scatter must be added on renderer’s side. BTW besides of Corona the scatter works also in V-Ray and V-Ray GPU, if you need GPU renderer in your workflow.
I think many would appreciate if by default rotation on Z axis would be set to 360 instead of 0. In everyday usage, number of cases, where scattered instances needs to be randomly rotated in Z axis, is vastly greater than number of cases, where it needs to be fixed.
Out of interest, I decided to set up 2 identical scatters using Corona Scatter and Forest Pack. Both scattering exactly 480 000 cubes on a plane
Corona Scatter scene parse time - 1 second
Forest Pack scene parse time - 20 seconds
Sadly we still use Forest Pack due to the limitations Corona Scatter holds against Forest Pack. If I had to suggest which features to add, Its everything
Which versions of Corona and FP are being used? Either way I’d recommend starting a new thread for this issue as it’s not directly related to CScatter speed.
Maybe there are some things we are not seeing, but we generally use the same workflow to parse both forestpack and our scatter, there are no “magic direct” connections from our scatter to forestpack, so there is probably not much we could do.
