MegaShapes Scatter


This layer allows you to scatter objects onto a layer with options to vary scaling and rotation and to limit the area the objects will appear, this layer doesnt just duplicate objects and position them it will combine all the meshes into one mesh layer do reduce draw calls. The source objects can have multiple materials, and the scatter layer can be told to orientate the objects with respect to the chosen surface, and if you want to you can have the objects automatically animate along the surface. Coming soon will be more advanced scattering systems and layers to allows a selection of objects one layer and also the scatter of objects inside shapes.

Scatter Params


The params that control the scattering of the selected object on the surface, such as how many objects to scatter, where to scatter and any random values to add in.

Name

Name of the layer.

Enabled

Un checking this will remove this layer from the loft object and hide most of the inspector for it.

Col

Color to tint the inspector for this layer, makes finding the layer you want easier on complex loft objects.

Lock

Sometimes you will want to have the loft object update in realtime but maybe not all the layers actually change, if you check the Lock option then during a rebuild the layer will not recalculate its contribution to the mesh but will just use the last lot of vertices it built so greatly speeding up the mesh creation for entire object. So useful if you have a complex race track loft object and just want to deform a crash barrier layer from it, so you would lock all the layers except for the one to change, update that then lock it again.

Scatter Mesh

The object that is to be scattered on this layer.

Surface

The Mega Loft Object this layer will build onto.

Layer

When you select a Loft object as the surface this drop down will be filled with the layers from that object that you can use as the surface for the clone layer to build on.

Start

The start position along the path shape to start building the layer, 0 is the start 1 is the end, values outside this range will either loop for closed shapes or extrapolate past the ends on open shapes.

Length

The length of the loft along the path, 1 is a full length of the path loft, the length value is added to the start value to find the actual end value, so if this is outside the rang 0 to 1 then the layer will either loop or extrapolate past the ends of the path.

Cross Start

The start of the scatter region across the surface.

Cross Len

The width of the scatter region across the surface.

Calc Up

Check to have the layer automatically orientate the objects perpendicular to the surface layer.

UpRight

How upright the objects should be, 1 is fully upright.

Count

How many of the object to scatter in the layer.

Seed

Random seed value, change this to later the distribution of the objects.

Offset

Changing this will move the objects relative to the surface.

Rotate

Apply a rotation to the scatter object before it is applied.

Scale

Scale the scatter object before it is used in the layer.

Rnd Rot

Set the range of any random rotation to be added to the object before it is added into the layer, the system will use the range of +- the values in here.

Rnd Scale Min

Set the low range of any random scaling to be applied to each object in the scatter.

Rnd Scale Max

Set the high range of any random scaling to be applied to each object in the scatter.

Tangent

The amount to look ahead when calculating slopes and directions.

Axis

Changes the axis to use as the major axis. Currently has no effect in the scatter layers.

Scale

A global scaling value, this makes changing the size of everything on the layer very simple.

Alpha

Alpha is the current offset from the start position for the layer, this is used by the animation system to easily move the entire contents along the surface.

Cross Alpha

This will move the entire layer across the surface.

Speed

When in play mode this is the amount added per second to the alpha value above to animate the layer.

Use Density

You can select to have the distribution density of the objects controlled by a curve, check this to enable.

Density

The curve to use to define where the objects are scattered, areas where the curve value is near zero will have less objects in than areas on the curve where the value is near 1.

Scatter Layer Video

A little video guide to the scatter layer and what some of the params do.

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