You just got your hands on your very own copy on Geo-Scatter.
Congratulation, and thank you. Your financial support is directly helping the development process, this couldn't happen without you!

If you never used the blendermarket before, you might wonder where you can download your purchases. If it is the case, please follow this tutorial.

Installing your Plugin

• Please make sure your version of blender matches the version of the plugin you are installing. Read the release notes page to learn about compatibility instructions.

• Go into the blender preferences, either by clicking on Main Header>Edit>Preferences or by changing an editor type to 'preferences'.

• Go to the 'Add-ons' category, and click on 'Install' to install a new addon.

• Choose your addon file, in our case a 'GeoScatter.zip' file, when confirming, Blender will simply extract the files inside your addons folder

  • • this folder is by default located inside  User/username/Appdata/Roaming/Blender Foundation/Blender/X.XX/scripts/addons/  for Windows OS users ( consult the blender manual to find the addon path of your OS)  this is a very important path that you should be able to locate on your computer. There will be a new folder added in this path named after our plugin that should contain an  __init__.py file. 

• Search in your blender plugins and enable Geo-Scatter in your addons preferences. Next to the enable button there is a little arrow for opening the plugin preferences layout.

• Don't forget to save your preferences, if not done automatically. 

• If it is your first time using our products you need to install your first biome and preset scatpacks!
  
  

Do you have a .scatpack file? If you never used our plugin before, you can get  biomes scatpacks right here!

Installing a Scatpack

• Go into our plugin manager interface (by going in the Scatter N panel>Creation>Biome Scatter  or by going into your blender preferences editor), search for our plugin, and open our plugin manager interface.

• In the preferences section, you will have the ability to install a .scatpack file, click on the "Install a Scatter Package" operator, and select your file.

• Once a package has been installed, you will be able to refresh your biomes library to see the new elements available. Depending on your package you may see a new category in your library navigator, located in the left side panel.

Define Environment Paths

• Remember, a biome file combines a scattering preset with a 3d-object coming from a .blend file.
  When you scatter a biome, the plugin will search everywhere in your biome library for the .blend file it needs, if not found, it will search in your blender asset-browser library,  if not found again, it will search in the custom paths you can define! 

  • so in short, if the partner does not include a .blend in his scatpack, you will either need to install your assets in your blender asset browser, or define a new environment path that leads to this library of objects. 

How to add an asset library in blender:

• In blende, Go in Preferences Editor/Filepaths/Asset libraries & Add this path to your asset libraries,  a new library will be available in your asset browser.

  • We strongly to install your assets as an asset-browser library, because our biome system will search there for the assets it might need!

Find your Scatter-Library

When you install a .scatpack file, the plugin will unzip its content ( .biome , .preset , .jpeg , or .blend files ) to your "scatter library" folder located somewhere on your computer. By default, it will be located in Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Blender Foundation\Blender\data\scatter library\ however its location can be customized. In your Geo-Scatter plugin preferences you will be able to directly open the library in your file explorer at the correct location.

What's in your Scatter-Library ?

This library is yours to manage, the Geo-Scatter plugin will not remove files from your library automatically. There are multiple sub-folders in this library, all folders are used by our plugin. Find hereby an explanation each folders: 

• • • _biomes_ folder. This folder will contain all files related to your biomes, being .jpeg , .biome , .preset and potentially .blend if not stored in external locations. You are free to re-arrange the biomes category structure as the biome library interface will dynamically re-build itself depending on your library folder structure, just hit the refresh button afterward.

    • _presets_ folder. This folder will contain all the .preset text files, used by the scatter-preset operator. These files are accompanied by their .jpeg icons.

    •  _bitmaps_ is a library of images accessible from the scatter-patterns interface. Feel free to add your own images that might be useful for creating interesting scattering pattern if you wish to.

    •  _market_ is for the gallery of scatpack previews, fetched from the web. The _possessions_ is used to display a checkmark on the scatpack possessed by the user. 

Starter library & Octane/Luxcore Shaders

• The free default library you received has two alternative shader packs available for Octane and Luxcore.
  To install these shaders, please replace the starter library .blend file located in the _biomes_ folder with the new file. 

MACOS Unzipping Issues:

If you have an installation issue on MACOS that's perhaps because your safari browser automatically unzipped the downloaded .zip file, then you tried to re-zip the content manually. However now the folder structure has changed, therefore blender is not recognizing the plugin ( because a folder structure blender plugin should directly contain an  __init__.py  file).  

We'd suggest to learn how to download a .zip file within your OS or web browser without automatically unzipping the download, otherwise, you won't be able to install most blender addons.

Compatibility Issues:

Perhaps you are using an unsupported version of blender ? Please read about compatibility information in the changelogs.  Almost 70% of our customer support are errors linked with wrong plugin/blender compatibilities.

Because blender changes very quickly, you'll need to expect older plugins to break rather quickly depending on newer blender releases. It is very important to respect the compatibility instruction.

Checking for other plugins interferences:

If you are encountering issues with our plugin, you might want to test it by itself on a clean blender environment, with no other plugins enabled. Because other plugins might be responsible for your problem, your issue might be completely unrelated! You can easily verify this with a portable version of blender. Here's how you can create your own portable virgin installation of blender:

• In the official blender website, download your blender release as a .zip

• Unpack this .zip somewhere on your computer, the desktop for example.

• Navigate inside the unpacked folder,  go to the *version number* folder, and add a new empty folder called 'config'

• Run the file called 'blender.exe' to start your portable version. It will be a clean environment to test your issues.

• Install our plugin via the addon preferences and see if the issue persists.