path scatter questions
Hey I have some beginner question about path scatter. The tut is great but still having some trouble. What slider with what 'mode' do I need to just have my cliffs following the spline? I want to be able to rotate them for variation as they are two sided. They are a bit all over the place.
Is there a reset button for the adjustments?
Some cliffs won't be seen on camera, I'm assuming I can just mask them out for performance?
Dragging with my mouse on a slider seems to change the value rather sluggishly, is there a right way to do it?
For a realistic effect, would placing meshes on top of the base cliff for some kind of falloff be on the same spline? Like, can I give different settings to objects in the same container?
Might be too much for one post but these are the things that come up when you go to follow a tutorial
12 Replies
Hey @Lazy Tiger I will try to address each question in here 😄
1. mode: if you have a curved spline, as here, I think the object mode makes the most sense, in this example I just used a random tree. But using next and then adjusting in Z rotation can work as well. I guess it depends on your assets.
2. and regarding rotation, I think Spin property is best. but rotation jitter and twist rotation can also be helpful depending on what you want
3. yes you can reset individual properties or the full tool 🙂
4. yes you can easily mask out start and end of the spline with the splice property
5. in general, holding ctrl increases the slider speed and holding ctrl increases even more. Holding both ctrl and shift, even even more. But it is not applicable to all properties, but must
6. Here I assume you mean something like this? having foliage on the cliff?
or if you want other stuff scattered with path scatter with different settings, you can use the same spline in several tools yes
6b. or if you want other stuff scattered with path scatter with different settings, you can use the same spline in several tools yes
Thanks a lot that explained a bunch. To expand on what I'm trying to do is add mutable scatters on a single path in a hierarchy, so I can have Cliff, bigger rocks, then ground transition for falloff.
Here is what I have so far. I can drag the curve around and watch as the cliff changes, which is so awesome! This helps with hiding repetition a lot. I don't know how I'm supposed to change new cliff meshes of different sizes when adding them in the container individually (Rotation and separate min max size is the main one), same with adding other rock variants. I thought of adding another path scatter to the curve for each variant but this led to very bad performance and I was overwhelmed by all the menus and which menu was for what. I'm confused on how to control mutable meshes in one path scatter.
I would like to add a top meshes to the cliff and add more meshes for the walls. I guess with sink and right with spacing for the rest of the scatter it would be possible?
So I'm wondering if there is a kind of hierarchy for what I'm doing, or is this the wrong way? This has basically replaced PCG for me, much easier even though I had a few crashes. Most importantly, can the curve and all its associative path scatters be saved into the new Preset feature? Or a blueprint/PLA? And can I create instances of them to change meshes? I want to be able to build tons of these and save them for future projects.
1. I understand having lots of Path Scatter can be overwhelming, what I would to instead is click on the menu in path scatter - click show instances, and there create new instances inside of one paths scatter, that makes it less cluttered. And then you can also link some settings (you decide which is linked and which is not) between these instances, like the spline, making sure you changing a setting in one, it changes in all instances. Here is a little video for you: https://discord.com/channels/826908885024636989/1154397483041042442/1171784245925130322
2. So right now I would do that and for stuff like your rocks on the ground, I would use the width setting to move them outside of the main cliffs. Sadly this creates stuff on the other side as well which is sad for performance. I will actually add a note on this in our to-do list that changing the distance from the spline is important, for use-cases as yours.
3. when you say “like to add a top meshes to the cliff and add more meshes for the walls”, do you mean you have used surface scatter on top of the original cliffs scattered? If so yes, I would create several instances inside the surface scatter as well to scatter different stuff at different sizes, places on the main cliff.
4. when you create lots of instances of scatters and also scatters on top of scatters, the performance in edit mode can get affected ofc, one thing you could do is turn on the periodic mode in the main Dash menu and also freeze the tools/instances you are not making changes to in the tool or instance menu.
5. I think for now this would be the way to do it, but I will link our convo to the devs so they can think about this more advanced use case of path scatter to see where how we can improve it
6. Happy to hear this has replaced PCG for you! Right now we have no linkage towards BPs/PLAs, but as we expand our preset system in future releases I think you should be able to get exactly what you want. Right now you can save the path scatter preset but it seems to be only for the current instance you have open, it does not save all of them, so not useful if you use several instances inside on tool yet. Will mention this to the devs.
Hope this helps a bit, but in general, thank you for your questions it has been great feedback and ideas!