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.
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.
V-Ray for SketchUp
V-Ray for Rhino
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.
That would be great indeed!
Just in case you havnt seen it.
Super helpful for posting that video! Just a personal opinion on the usability of bifrostā¦even the first thing he does is super mystifying to a new user. The part where he gets the camera into the graphā¦nobody would ever be able to work that out without following a videoā¦should software work that way? He says he cant just drag the camera in, it doesnt workā¦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 cameraā¦nobody would ever think to do that!
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.
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 
Thatās 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.
@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
Yeah Iām loving the new features coming out soon, thatās why chaos is so much better than the rest.
Sounds wonderful! Thanks Chukie for the link! Hope that v6 beta for Maya is right around the corner!
V-Ray 6 Beta, Chaos Scatter | InDepth Tutorials
All we need for most of our scenes! Great! I hope that Chaos Scatter will be part of the Maya edition. Anyone knows? And any schedule for Maya?
I guess Vray 6ās scattering tool will make things right. much more intuitive and easy to work with. Obviously I havenāt tried it yet, but there seems to be a BIG performance increase as well.
@leehenshall you may want to chime in on the vray6 beta forum and plead your case for inclusion of chaos scatter node
Been away from vRay for a little whileā¦Apologies. Missed all of thisā¦
vRay 6 looks amazingā¦the clouds are a real killer featureā¦but I was completely shocked when I saw the Maya beta didnāt include scatter. That just doesnāt make senseā¦
Surely once something is developed and working for Max and vRay Standalone then it can be easily exposed to all Dcc plugins?
Saying weāve made this nice turn key feature for Max (which already has killer scattering tools which work with vRay) but you guys have Mash and Bi-Frost so you wonāt be interested is kinda dumbā¦
Absolutely right Leehenshall
Surly Max has a distribution system or 3rd party plugin for this as well, It doesnāt make sense to leave it out of Maya.
I for one would use it and would prefer to use the new VRay scatter feature. Been waiting 20 years for this!
No scatter?ā¦. No upgrade.
Yeah same feeling here. While I like the improvements in sky system. It seems quite soft and not up to the render size I need to output. Great for arch viz and animation perhaps but not 12 to 16k stills renders that are closely scrutinized Energy conservation seems interesting albeit Iām not sure why this has been missed the last 10 years," so the physically based renderer was not quite physically based afterall;)"
Seems quite a lot of wedge to upgrade for not very much. Iāll stick to my perpetual license for now. Hopefully chaos will have a change of tune.
Could you give some examples and close ups of this softness in the clouds? And how do you solve this issue at the moment?