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Scattering Assets

botaniq comes with a scattering system that can be used to spawn a predefined preset, draw vine or create a custom preset with few clicks of a button. You can find all of the scatter functionality in the Scatter panel. Scatter panel is further split to subpanels where the individual settings can be found.

demonstration of scatter assets

pps - polygoniq particle systems

botaniq scatter introduces polygoniq particle systems. Those are Blender particle systems that are managed through the scatter subpanel. Using scatter functions to create and manipulate particle systems ensures correct naming and enables all of the additional functions to work. Those particle systems have names prefixed with pps_ to differentiate them from other. Name of the particle system matches name of the instance collection and of the modifier in modifier stack.

Why is the panel empty?

scatter assets invalid active object

Scatter panel operators will not show up if the target object is not suitable for particle systems. For example you cannot create a particle system on a instanced collection object, volume, curve, etc.

Scatter panel

Main section of scatter panel consists of target object, buttons to add (or draw), remove or rename active particle system and a list that displays all presets on the target object.

scatter asset subpanel

  • Target is a container object for the particle systems. This object's visibility can be toggled by the buttons next to its name. Target object is the same as active object.
  • Buttons above the list can be used to manipulate presets. The vine button is used to draw vines. + is used to create new presets, - removes active particle system and pencil button is used to rename active particle system.
  • Presets List displays all the polygoniq particle systems on the target object. Visibility of each layer can be toggled for render and viewport individually.

Tip

Some botaniq presets come with multi-layer particle systems. You can create these by yourself too. Create multiple empty particle systems and customize each layer separately. For example one layer can contain grass, second one trees, third rocks, etc.

Spawning preset

Either botaniq premade particle system or a empty particle system can be spawned. Click the + button in the scatter panel to spawn a preset.

scatter asset popup

  • Create empty PPS creates an empty polygoniq particle system. You can add objects from botaniq or from your scene using buttons in the objects section.
  • Add botaniq preset spawns ready-made preset from several categories. Click the preset preview to choose presets from selected category.
  • Seasons, Search, Category filters can be used to filter the presets. This is simillar to asset filtering. For more information check out the filters section of spawning assets.
  • Preserve density checkbox. Each preset has a set number of models that is based on the area of the target object. If this option is on, your target object will get covered evenly regardless on its size on spawn.
  • Include base material checkbox. If set to true, a base material is loaded with the particle system and added to the target object as active.
  • Link instance collection to scene checkbox. If this option is active, individual models that are scattered in the presets will be spawned into the scene 10 meters below the world origin coordinates (0, 0, 0). This is useful for editing the objects directly.

Draw Vine

Draw vine is a special case of a polygoniq particle system. Vines are not spawned into the scene directly like particle systems, they are drawn using a Blender's Grease Pencil instead.

Drawing vines summary

  1. Click the draw vine button draw vine button higlighted located above the presets list to enter draw mode
  2. Draw the vine using your mouse
  3. Select which vine asset should be spawned
  4. Click convert button

Draw Mode Panel

This panel gets exposed when the draw vine button is clicked.

draw vine draw mode panel description

  • Return button cancels current drawing session and returns you back into object mode.
  • Preset preview displays preview image of the vine. Click the image to choose different vine preset.
  • Preset name describes the type of the vine and the bracket is its variant (A, B, C, ...).
  • Grow from bottom checkbox. If this option is active vines will be narrower towards the ground, otherwise, they grow narrower towards the sky.
  • Follow normals checkbox. If this option is active leaves will grow perpendicular to the Follow normals object field value. This is useful when you want to have vines from multiple directions like around a tree or in a corner of a building.
  • Follow normals object defines object of which normals should the leaves follow. Only works when Follow normals is active.
  • Convert button converts the grease pencil into a vine particle system.

Vine Settings

When the target object contains vine particle system, then additional settings will be exposed.

draw vine settings panel

  • Stem size property can be used to tweak the size of the vine stem.
  • Target Normals field can be used with Follow Normals to change the object which normals are being followed by the leaves.
  • Global Z sets the normals to follow the Z axis.
Vine settings are not showing

Drawing vines creates a new object that contains the particle system. This object is selected for you after using the convert button. If you want to show settings again you have to click the newly created object again.

Particle Settings

Subpanel containing convenient and useful settings from particle systems at hand.

particle settings panel

  • Number is a count of particles generated on the object.

  • Seed property randomizes the distribution.

  • Scale resizes all objects in the system.

  • Scale Randomness introduces random factor into the scale.

  • Orientation axis defines how the objects should be rotated. Generally you will need two options. Ground Z where objects rotate around vertical axis. And a Normal option which rotates the particles rotate around the normals of the object.

  • Randomize is an random offset from the orientation axis.
  • Phase is a rotation around the chosen axis.

  • Random phase introduces some random offset into the rotation around chosen axis.

  • Particles per m^2 can be used to set the number of particles that will appear on 1x1m area.

  • Max particles limits the number of particles for the Recalculate density button.
  • Recalculate density automatically recalculates the density based on the area of the underlying mesh depending on the Particles per m^2 value. Useful after scaling emitter.

Visibility Settings

Subpanel that can be used to tweak viewport visibility settings of polygoniq particle systems across the scene or for the active particle system.

scatter

  • Display lets you choose how much particles to display in percents.
  • Display as allows selecting how the instanced objects are displayed in scenes.
  • Displayed particles is the count of currently displayed particles.

To manage viewport visibility across the scene you can use the Manage Viewport Visibility operator.

scatter viewport visibility

Tip

Visibility settings are useful to optimize viewport performance. To maximize performance set the display to the minimal feasible number and the display as to wireframe. This will not affect the render at all.

Weight Painting

botaniq comes with simplified weight painting to enable even more precise customization of the particle system location.

weight paint demo

weight paint panel There are two weight painting options. You can either paint density or length. Clicking the brush button to corresponding option enables weight paint mode.

More information about weight painting (brushes, vertex groups, ...) is available in the official blender documentation

Warning

In order for weight paint to work properly you must have the target object subdivided enough as each vertex carries information about how many objects should spawn near it. (Red=Density 1, Blue=Density 0) weight paint subdivision requirement

Objects (Instance collection)

Subpanel that contains information about all of the objects in the instance collection from where objects are being scatter.

scatter objects panel

  • Refresh/Add/Remove can be used to add and remove botaniq assets into the active pps using the + and - buttons. Use refresh if you edited the collection contents yourselves.
  • Asset count represents the chance of the object in collection being generated. For example, if you set object A’s count to 10 and object B’s count to 1, there is a 10:1 chance that object A will appear. In praxis, this means you will have 10 models of grass for every 1 model of a flower.
  • Preview is displayed for the selected asset as well as description of the seasons so you can judge which assets fit into the particle system easier.
  • Scale can be used to manipulate the scale of the individual objects.
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