ABC's of blender

Do you understand what is a vertex? what is a UV map and how to create simple UV's? How to add/remove modifiers? What is the normal direction of a face and its implications on shading? Why you can't paint a vertex group correctly on an N-gon? Great! Let's get started then!

Apply Scales

Let's say you created a plane in your scene, resized it, and would like to start a scatter on this plane. If so, do not forget to apply the scale of your object with the CTRL+A shortcut.
This is a step that all blender users know, and that few beginners might miss. Please, if you are a beginner, do not forget about applying scales!

Properties Descriptions

Did you know that you can hover on almost any blender sliders, toggles, or drop down items to read their description? We pack a lot of information in our properties description. Taking time to hover in order to gather information is always a good reflex. If you feel that some items need more or better descriptions, don't hesitate to contact us.

Compatibility Issues

Blender does not support forward compatibility! Let's say that your collaborator gave you a blend file saved in blender 3.2, then please avoid reading, and never save, this blend file in blender 3.1 or lower. Please follow this simple rule, otherwise you will run into issues. Some data structures (such as shader/geometry nodes or modifiers) are relying on newly added features, and will not be recognized.

Basics of Shading

Do you wish to change the color of a scattered item? Great! This can be done natively in blender shader editor! To do so you will simply need to select the scattered item in your scene (this can be easily done by going in your instance list, and clicking on the select icon) and open a new blender shader editor.

Pro Tip:
There are handy nodes available in blender shaders for your instances, such as the "Object info/Random" for randomization effects, the "Geometry/Position" or "Object info/Location" for textures, or the "Object info/Color" if you'd like to link the scatter-systems display color within the shaders.

What are Instances

Scattering is based on the technology of instancing! What is instancing? well, it is the idea of re-using the data of your object in order to vastly save on memory and performance.

It is important to understand the implication of re-using the same mesh data, while it is giving us massive benefits in terms of performance, we will not be able to run a physic collision or wind simulation on instanced objects meshes that way unless we make each object unique.

Instances are like any other objects, they have a position, rotation, or scale. In order to define an instance rotation in Scatter5, we are aligning the default Z & Y axis of the instance toward a chosen axis. We call the upward direction of an instance (+Z) the instance "normal", and the forward direction (+Y) the instance "tangent". For example, if you'd like your instance's upward direction to follow your emitting surface inclination, you will need to align your instance's normals toward the surface faces normals.

What to Expect from Blender & Your Computer

3D Beginners might have unrealistic expectations of what is possible to be displayed in real-time in blender viewport because of their experience with video games, please make sure to read the page about optimization. Geo-Scatter has a lot of optimization features, however, it is still important to have a good understanding of what your computer or blender is capable of.

Please keep in mind that software such as Blender, Max, or Maya aren't games! Games engines are specifically designed to stream polygons at a smooth framerate thanks to many tricks happening in the background, most of these tricks do not make sense in any 3D creation software where the rendering is occurring on a dedicated step of the process, with the power of the path tracing algorithm.

Large Landscape Expectations

Working on large-scale landscapes can be tricky in blender, or any other 3D creation suite! There are a few habits experienced environmental artists acquired in their careers that perhaps beginner 3D artists do not have from the get-go.

For example, the scattered tiny elements (such as grass) should only be present in the foreground of your landscape shot, far-away vistas do not need such detail that a good texture could provide, they will only slow you down.

If you need tips on how to manage performance, please make sure to read the page on optimization.

Batch Operation

In Blender, properties of an active object can be batch applied to the properties of the selection by pressing the ALT key while tweaking the value. This native behavior has been smartly implemented in our plugin. You can batch-change the selected scatter-system properties by holding ALT when adjusting your settings, assigning masks or items, or enabling features!

Important:
Be aware that the 3-button mouse emulation option of blender will be in your way when batch-changing properties as this option will make the ALT key unavailable.

Vector Slide

In blender, you can drag your mouse on the bottom to change multiple vector elements at the same time, this is a very well-known feature that few beginners might miss.

Collection Linking & Collection Instances

There are two things you should know about collections before getting started:

1. Objects can be linked in multiple collections simultaneously, this can be done by pressing CTRL while drag-and-dropping in the outliner.

2. You can create new "collection-instance" objects from these collections, the origin of the collection-instance object is the origin of the scene. These objects can be scattered.

Pro Tip:
When you add/remove an object in Scatter5 "instancing" panel, in the background, Scatter5 will interact with a scatter-system instancing collection, these collections are by default stored in the main "Scatter5" collection, that should remain closed & untouched.

Be Careful:
If you want to move objects in the outliner that are already linked in other collections, be careful! Because blender will automatically unlink the object from the other collections if you do not hold CTRL. This is a native behavior you need to watch for when managing your collections.

Bounding Boxes

Blender beginners are often confused with this native blender feature. In blender, it is possible to display your object as a bounding box only in the rasterized viewport, not in the render ( this is a per-object property located in Properties Editor > Object > viewport display > Display As ).

This is useful for trees for example, where we do not want to see the full resolution object within the rasterized viewport, as they often come with way too many polygons and it might slow us down while working, as you may know, rasterized viewport performances slowdowns when dealing with a lot of triangles!

Reminder:

• If you scattered an item with a bounding box, you can easily select the scattered item in the instance subpanel, by clicking on the select icon. It will select the item stored in the scatter-system instancing collection.

• Don't forget about the ALT feature, it works everywhere in blender.

• This is also explained here.

Flowmaps

Flowmaps are directional informations (vectors) contained in an image texture or in a vertex-color layer. The Red/Green channels are representing directions in the tangent XY space. The vectors ranging from -1 to 1 are remapped between 0 & 1 in order to fit into a color information.

Flowmaps cannot be painted natively in blender, the flowmap painter addon by Clemens Beute is needed. When you use this plugin with Scatter5, make sure to use the UV space color theme.
As the blue channel is unused, there are options in scatter to use the blue channel as a strength factor.