RELEASED The "Scatter Tool" plugin for Poser

[Janet]

This is the most useful thing ever made for Poser!

I can think of so many uses for it. Swarms of bugs . . .

Ken I see you are doing some animation with it. Would it be possible to do mumurations?

I'll give you a copy of my crow animations if you want to give it a try. They should work perfectly with Ken's starlings.

One of the reasons I learned Blender is because it's supposed to be able to animate mururations but I got side tracked.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

Quickish render of the results of the Scatter tool.

Ground from Aery Soul Big Rock set. Scaled the ground up a bit as it's rather small.
One Rock from the ShaaraMuse3D Moss Woods set.
Two Hostas from Lisa's Botanicals Hostas (one Hosta with flowers, one Hosta without flowers)
Salvias from Lisa's Botanicals (loaded a group of 12 and selected each Salvia in the group to scatter).

Forest Tree from Esha Naturals Forest Trees. Added after Scattering.
Rock formation behind plants from ShaaraMuse3D The High Coast set. Added after Scattering.

After scattering the rocks, I repositioned or resized some, and since they were all positioned on top or above the ground, I moved them down so they sat in the ground. Not sure if they were above the ground because I scaled the the original rock down to 40%.

After rendering the first time, I decided I'd gone way overboard scattering plants and deleted 1/3 to 1/2 of the plants, including those out of camera view. I also repositioned some of the plants. I probably could have got away with scattering a couple different Salvias rather than using a group of 12. But ... I wanted to be sure I had variety

Ken, great job on this tool! It makes filling in a landscape SO easy!

 

[arrow1]

Hi, I have a problem with my rendered inage being to big for the one sided square. Can you assist me with what I am doing wrong? Cheers

 

[Rhia474]

Yep, works beautifully. Quickie underwater render with scattered groups of rocks, corals, sea plants and groups of fish and jellies.

 

[phil147]

Individual scattered figures can be moved and reposed, as can the original.

I was talking about an automated process for a crowd.

In the crowd generator, a script takes the poses in a directory and randomly applies them to the scattered figures.

Of course, individuals can always be tweaked.

 

[Ken1171]

In the scatter tool, since you keep track of the scattered figures, is it possible to add this reposing feature?

Hi Phil. The thing about tracking is for the tool to be able to delete objects per individual scatter surface. In the next update, tracking will no longer be lost between sessions, and I am considering making tracking optional for when we actually want objects to fall on top of existing ones. So tracking does not affect what you want to do with the objects after they are placed into your scene. They can still be repositioned and posed as you wish.

One thing you can do if you want different poses is this:

1. Load a figure, pose it, and scatter it.
2. Change the pose and scatter again.

Every new scatter will have a new pose. This way you can have any number of poses over the crowd. Hope it helps.

Ken I see you are doing some animation with it. Would it be possible to do mumurations?

One way to do that would be to use a warped plane to place the birds over. Wouldn't be good for animation, though, since the tool is meant for placement. We could use the Morphing Tool to warp a plane into the shape you want, and then populate it with birds. Perhaps a more suitable usage for the tool would be to place a flock of flamingos on a pond or lake - something that involves placement.

After rendering the first time, I decided I'd gone way overboard scattering plants and deleted 1/3 to 1/2 of the plants, including those out of camera view. I also repositioned some of the plants.

One thing you can do to optimize the process is to reduce the size of the scatter plane to fit only your rendering area. This way you won't have to worry about objects being spawned off camera.

Hi, I have a problem with my rendered inage being to big for the one sided square. Can you assist me with what I am doing wrong? Cheers

The way to go here is set your rendering configuration to "match preview window". You can access this panel by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+Y. Then frame your tree, and it will render exactly what you see!

 

[Satira Capriccio]

I'd actually done that ... so to speak. In my case, the ground I wanted to use was too small, so I'd scaled it up. But, I hadn't established my final camera view until after scattering. Which isn't necessary all that uncommon for me to do. Once I have everything in place, I tend to tweak the camera which may result in plants or other props no longer being in the camera view. In that case, I generally remove props which aren't essential to the scene.

It was mostly that I vastly overpopulated the scene. Seriously. While a honeybee could have flown between the Salvias, a bumblebee might have been hard pressed to do so

One thing you can do to optimize the process is to reduce the size of the scatter plane to fit only your rendering area. This way you won't have to worry about objects being spawned off camera.

 

[AnimaGemini]

My first test with the scatter tool. Just a little crappy render, but I had no idea what to scatter. Just want to give the tool a first try.
I love it. So fun.

Works so far like a charm .

 

[AnimaGemini]

Another test, which get a bit out of hand LOL.
What a amazing tool

here another simple render with a lot of trees and grass plants. Works really fast.

 

[Ken1171]

Great job, Anima! Love this render! ^^

 

[AnimaGemini]

Great job, Anima! Love this render! ^^

Thank you. It is just something simple, but I want to test out quick the tool how it works with more heavy stuff and with a lot.
I was very positive surprised how quick this tool scatter.

Must have for every Poser user !!! Makes your Poserlive more fun and easy.

 

[an0malaus]

Hi @Ken1171 the store page says the product has not been tested on MacOS. Is that correct? Would you like it to be before I purchase and have to tell you about a bunch of errors (not that I'm expecting that)?

Just being cautious, since I've been bitten before with incompatible scripts. Feel free to msg me if required.

 

[Ken1171]

Must have for every Poser user !!! Makes your Poserlive more fun and easy.

It's a lot of fun indeed! In the dev thread I have showed lots of usage examples, and I am sure people will find many other ways to use it. ^____^

 

[Ken1171]

Hi @Ken1171 the store page says the product has not been tested on MacOS. Is that correct? Would you like it to be before I purchase and have to tell you about a bunch of errors (not that I'm expecting that)?

Just being cautious, since I've been bitten before with incompatible scripts. Feel free to msg me if required.

That is correct. I am on a PC, and can only test it on Windows. It is worth mentioning that the Poser interface was made with the WX interface, so if Poser works on a Mac, my plugin should work as well. But if it doesn't, that's because WX may not be 100% compatible with Macs, and I have no control over that. The first Scatter Tool interface has used TKinter, and it just wasn't working, not even simple things like buttons. The only other choice was WX, which is the modern replacement for old-school Tkinter. Not only it works nicely, but it also looks much better than Tkinter. Does it work on Macs? I don't know. And if it doesn't, there isn't much I can do about it.

Has anyone tried this on a Mac so far?

 

[an0malaus]

I'm willing to give it a go and I know enough about coding wxPython interfaces for mac that if there are any corrections to be made I can probably assist with suggestions. Would you like me to beta test it on macOS?

 

[Alisa]

I think there CAN be differences in Mac and Windows for Python scripts.

Since the CA doesn't use a Mac, and the QAV team does not test on Macs, so if someone bought it with it labeled as fine for Macs and had a problem, we can not resolve it for them. For those reasons, we can not claim it works on a MAC.

HiveWire does have a 30 day money back guarantee, so if you buy it and find it is not working, your money can be refunded.

*edited after checking to be sure I was correct about this*

 

[Alisa]

I've edited my post above after verifying I was correct. If someone does buy it for a Mac and finds it works, it would be wonderful if you post here with your experience. This could help someone else make a decision. Thanks

 

[an0malaus]

Kewl. Thanks for confirming that refund policy. I suspect that using wx will mean it can be made to work for macOS if it doesn't already.

 

[Alisa]

Welcome . Hopefully it will! I edited my post to say 30 "day" money back guarantee, rather than 30 money back guarantee, lol

 

[Ken1171]

The "Scatter Tool" keeps evolving, where version 1.1 is starting to take shape with SEVERAL new functionalities.

* We will be able to scatter over individual GROUPs on a surface, so we will have much finer control over where we scatter. I will record a video tutorial showing how easy it is to create your own groups on any surface using Poser's Grouping Tool. I believe this is better than density maps because Poser allows us to paint areas directly on the surfaces, so we can do it all without leaving Poser, and get immediate results on the spot.

* Introducing positional jitter over a surface, with separate control for Y offset. Positional jitter allows random placement around a target vertex, adding more randomness to the scatter process. The Y positional slider controls how far (or into) the surface the objects will be. You can think of it as a surface distance offset. This was one of the most requested new feature, and it's coming up soon!

* New individual Y scale control for random height variations, with individual minimum and maximum height controls.

* New dynamic object tracking, auto-rebuilt in every launch, so it never looses track of the objects it has created. This means no more confusion over what objects are deleted with left-clicking the "Remove Selected" button, since tracking will no longer be lost when we close the tool.

* There is a new option where if we tick the "Overlap" checkbox at any time, it allows scattered objects to overlap with existing ones, if that's what you want. This makes object tracking independent from object overlapping control.