WACOSCATTER (part of the MDO Plants product)

The WacoScatter plugin from the MDO Plants product offers advanced options to create object distribution with ease.
WacoScatter is the engine behind WacoSystems and does all the object distribution on a landscape or any surface object. It's possible however to create object distribution from scratch without using a WacoSystems object.

WacoScatter supports regular instances and works with a render engine of choice (it is "not" restricted to a specific render engine). VRay is supported natively to distribute million instances. Native Mental Ray support will be available later on.

KEY FEATURES:

• Support for many type of objects (no matter what render engine used) including groups
• Apply transformation
• Apply altitude and slope
• Manage in areas
• Calculate collisions
• Maps to affect distribution, transformation and normal amount
• Animation support without the need to supply loopable animations
• Support for any render engine to distribute with regular instances
• Native Chaosgroup VRay support to distribute on mass
• Native Autodesk Mental Ray support to distribute on mass (coming soon)
• Fully exposed to MAXScript

PRESENTATION MOVIE: (more tutorials are included with a license)

WacoScatter UI information:

Object
A preview of the scatter object displayed on a button.
Select that scatter object in your scene by clicking the preview button.

WacoScatter Parameters
Control how dense you want to distribute objects in your WacoScatter object.

Surface Object Selects the surface object to distribute objects on. Scatter Object Selects the scatter object to distribute on the surface object. Objects Count Limit Sets the maximum number of distributed objects no matter if the minimum distance criteria is met. Minimum Distance Sets the minimum distance between distributed objects. A low value creates dense object distribution. Random Seed Sets the seed for the randomness.

Position Rotation Scale
Apply position, rotation and scale settings to transform distributed objects in your WacoScatter object.

Position Z Sets the minimum and maximum values for the distributed object position values. Rotation X, Y and Z Sets the minimum and maximum values for the distributed object rotation values. Use Surface Normal Uses the surface normals to align distributed objects with the surface normals. Amount Sets the amount of normal direction that distributed objects will follow. Look at Camera Enables the look at camera option that forces distributed objects to face the current camera at all time. Scale Sets the minimum and maximum values for distributed object scale values. Additional Rotation Z Sets the minimum and maximum values for distributed object rotation values on top of any other rotation transformations. Additional Scale Sets the minimum and maximum values for distributed object scale values on top of any other scale transformations.

Altitude Slope
Apply altitude and slope settings to define where objects are distributed.

Enable Altitude Enables altitude. Altitude Sets the minimum and maximum altitude. Apply Falloff Enables falloff options. Boundary Sets a boundary, a region on the outer limits, for the falloff. Scale To Sets a scale factor where objects of the inner boundary region scales down (up) towards the outer boundary region. Enable Slope Enables slope. Slope Angle Sets the minimum and maximum slope angle. Slope Exposure Sets the minimum and maximum slope exposure. Apply Falloff Enables falloff options. Boundary Sets a boundary, a region on the outer limits, for the falloff. Scale To Sets a scale factor where objects of the inner boundary region scales down (up) towards the outer boundary region.

Areas
Add areas to your WacoScatter object to distribute objects in different regions.

Enable Include Areas Enables include areas. Scatter in Overlapping Areas Only Distributes exclusively in areas which have overlapping regions. Scatter in Touching Area Regions Only Distributes exclusively in areas which have regions that touch the underlying surface object. Add Area Adds the picked area from your scene to the areas list. Remove Removes the selected area from the areas list. Apply Falloff Enables falloff options. Boundary Sets a boundary, a region on the outer limits, for the falloff. Scale To Sets a scale factor where objects of the inner boundary region scales down (up) towards the outer boundary region. Enable Exclude Areas Enables exclude areas. Add Area Adds the picked area from your scene to the areas list. Remove Removes the selected area from the areas list. Apply Falloff Enables falloff options. Boundary Sets a boundary, a region on the outer limits, for the falloff. Scale To Sets a scale factor where objects of the inner boundary region scales down (up) towards the outer boundary region.

Collisions
Enable collision checking on your WacoScatter object to distribute without colliding objects.

Self Collision Enables self collision checking. Collision Radius Sets the sphere radius in which collision checking will happen. Collision Height Sets how high the collision sphere is placed while collision checking happens. A value of 100% means the collision sphere is placed at the maximum height of your object. Propagate Collisions Propagates collision checking throughout all WacoScatter objects that have the "Use All Propagate Collisions" option checked. This way you can control which WacoScatter objects will send collision information out for others to receive. Collision Radius Sets the sphere radius in which collision checking will happen. Collision Height Sets how high the collision sphere is placed while collision checking happens. A value of 100% means the collision sphere is placed at the maximum height of your object. Use All Propagate Collisions Searches for all WacoScatter objects that are sending out collision information and adjusts object distribution if objects collide with each other or not. Apply Falloff Enables falloff options. Boundary Sets a boundary, a region on the outer limits, for the falloff. Scale To Sets a scale factor where objects of the inner boundary region scales down (up) towards the outer boundary region.

Maps
Apply maps to affect different settings in your WacoScatter object including distribution, position, rotation, scale and normal (include and exclude).

Enable Maps Enables maps. Distribution Map Enables the distribution map. Picked map will drive where objects will be distributed. White means 100% distribution where black means no distribution at all. Position Map Enables the position map. Picked map will drive the position of distributed objects based on the position settings on the Position Rotation Scale rollout. White means a maximum position (to value) where black means a minimum position (from value). Rotation Map Enables the rotation map. Picked map will drive the rotation of distributed objects based on the rotation settings on the Position Rotation Scale rollout. White means a maximum rotation (to value) where black means a minimum rotation (from value). Scale Map Enables the scale map. Picked map will drive the scale of distributed objects based on the scale settings on the Position Rotation Scale rollout. White means a maximum scale (to value) where black means a minimum scale (from value). Normal Map Enables the normal map. Picked map will drive the amount of normal direction of distributed objects based on the normal amount settings on the Position Rotation Scale rollout. White means 100% of the normal amount where black means 0% of the normal amount. Exclude Distribution Map Enables the exclude distribution map. Picked map will drive where objects will not be distributed. White means no distribution at all where black means 100% distribution.

Display
Use different display types to visualise object distribution while creating a WacoScatter object.

Display Type Displays all distributed objects in your WacoScatter object in a variety of ways. None, displays the standard WacoScatter box without showing any distributed objects. Line, displays distributed objects as lines (height corresponds to any distributed object). Face, displays distributed objects as faces (width and height corresponds to any distributed object). Bounding box, displays distributed objects as bounding boxes (length, width and height corresponds to any distributed object). Object, displays distributed objects as full geometry objects (pay attention that this type can be "very" slow when many distributed objects need to be created). Wireframe Mode Displays face, bounding box and object display types as wireframes, even in shaded viewports. Display Displays a certain amount of the distributed objects.

Scatter
Choose different duplication methods.
Instance will produce memory efficient situations where copy can be used if you need to adjust distributed objects individually to make them not identical.

Duplicate Method Sets a duplicate method. Automatic Update Updates the WacoScatter object automatically. Run Runs the calculations and distributes the objects. Delete Deletes all calculations which are previously created (if any). Scattered Objects Displays the number of distributed objects.

Animation
Apply animation settings to add variety to the motion of your distributed objects.
Animations do not need to be loopable to work seamlessly since the system uses different animation samples to produce animation variety on any given frame.

Enable Animation Enables object animation. Samples (Number of Different Animations) Sets a number of different animation samples. Each sample represents a different animation state of the object. A value of 5 means you will have 5 different animation loops. A higher value will create more variety in your complete WacoScatter object animation. However, a higher value uses more memory per frame since it needs to store the amount of samples at one time in your memory. Time Offset Sample Sets an offset for each sample in frames. A value of 10 means that every 10 other frames an object animation state is used. A higher value creates more visible motion variety. This doesn't affect memory footprint. Ramdom Seed Seeds the randomness.

Rendering
Rendering related options.

Do Not Scatter at Render Time Enables not to distribute objects at render time and uses the previously calculated solution. This option is valuable when you have a great number of distributed objects and calculation takes quite some time to finish. It reduces preparation time dramatically in heavy scenes. VRay Instancing for VRay Render Engine Enables delivering of distributed objects directly to the VRay render engine without creating any scene nodes. This results in distributing objects on mass and overcomes the 3ds Max maximum scene node limitation. Do Not Scatter outside Viewcone Enables not to distribute objects outside the viewcone. Additional View Angle Sets an additional view angle on top of the viewcone where distribution will take place.

Help
Help system for the WacoScatter plugin.

WacoScatter Help Opens the help system for the WacoScatter plugin.