Multiscatter Issues

[tsmithf2]

We have been using Vrayscatter since beta and love it, and now we're trying to migrate to Multiscatter, however we're currently facing a few issues which is preventing us using it as part of our production process.

The main issue is the accurate placement of proxies which differs from Vrayscatter, using regular distribution, mapping the scatter surface to face and setting the number of proxies equal to the number of elements produced the results illustrated in the image below.

Multiscatter Scale set to 1.0

Screen1.jpg (111.99 KiB) Viewed 21393 times

Obviously Vrayscatter is correctly placing a proxy on each face, but Multiscatter seems to double up some proxies, trying to up the scale multiplier to 2.0 produced the result below, which shows the doubling up even more...

Multiscatter Scale set to 2.0

Screen2.jpg (118.46 KiB) Viewed 21393 times

This is a major issue for us when we import place holders for trees on a site, which might run into thousands of trees, Multiscatter can't seem to put a tree on each location?

The second issue we have noticed is missing functionality in Multiscatter, particularly the option to 'Move pivot to Center' in the proxy placement, plus the seed applying to all proxies in the Multiscatter selection, ideally this would be customisable to each proxy by selection to allow tweaking one proxy independant of the others.

Lastly there seems to be a memory leak causing occasional lockups, trying to use Multiscatter and changing some settings, scale multiplier etc the machine will lock and virtual memory will keep increasing until the machine crashes and restarts, even on small scenes, an issue that doesn't affect Vrayscatter in the same scene.

Multiscatter is a great move forward, but until these issues are resolved we can't use it in production, any help would be appreciated.

[admin]

Please attach your test scenes to forum or send it to support@icube3d.com

[Karba]

You have just to increase object count, not scale.
Move pivot to center isn't needed now. You can move local axis of origin object.

[admin]

1. Then you are using regilar distribution Scale Mult have to be 1. We are notice two times in documentation about it.
2. Max. Count. - is maximum possible number of objects. All other settings, masks, splines and etc makes objects count on render less. Feel free to increase object count.
3. You can use MultiPainter for exact placing of objects.
4. Option 'Move pivot to Center' in VrayScatter was good for proxies loaded from disk because it was no other way to change pacing of pivot. MultiScatter not loading proxy from disk. It takes all objects from scene. There is no problem to change placing of pivot for any scene object by standard 3dsmax way.
5. This is new information for us about memory leak. We will try to investigate this problem. Can you explain more detailed (maybe with example scene) situation then you get memory problem?

Thank you.

[tsmithf2]

Thanks for the replies.

We have set the scale multiplier to 1, as illustrated in the screenshots in the original post, I only mentioned setting scale to 2 as an example that Multiscatter is unable to place a proxy on each face, the same issue occurs if you increase the object count, Multiscatter simply doubles up proxies in various positions rather than putting one on each position as Vrayscatter did.

Unless you increase the object count way above the number of proxies required not all of the positions will be occupied, and if the object count is set high enough to cover each placement there will be a significant doubling up of proxies in most positions. This clearly is not going to render correctly, and as mentioned isn't how Vrayscatter worked.

I have attached the scene in the screenshot to illustrate

Vray vs Multi Test.zip

Test Max Scene

(24.54 KiB) Downloaded 370 times

Using Multipainter certainly does work, but is very very slow when dealing with a large site with hudreds or even thousands of trees, how it works with Vrayproxy is easy, import non rendering placeholders from the architectural drawings and use the scatter to place an equal number of proxies to positions.

The move to centre isn't really a killer missing feature to be honest, just a nice to have when quickly importing proxies and adding them to Multiscatter, I'm sure if it's difficult we can live without that one

I will try to dig out an older scene where this was causing a problem and send via email, currently we have resorted back to Vrayscatter.

[Karba]

Just set Scale Mult to 1.0 and increase object count. You will not have double placement.

[ScatterButler]

Just set Scale Mult to 1.0 and increase object count. You will not have double placement.

Hi Karba,

I have just set the scale to 1, but with the Max count set to 16, i get 6 trees.

To get 1 tree on each face the Max count has to be changed to 25. If i change the Max Count to 27 I get 7 trees....... This seems a little odd to me. How are we supposed to know the Max count we need as the amount of trees it places seems to be random depeding on the Max Count value? Also, with a value higher than the actual amount required, is MultiScatter definitely not doubling up meshes on faces?

Surely if we want 16 trees, we should be typing in 16, just like in VrayScatter?

We often place thousands of trees using this method and it was simple using VrayScatter.

Kind regards.

Butler.

[Karba]

This is a fee for Multi Processor supporting.
Set object count to 1000000 and don't think about that.

[ScatterButler]

So are you saying it's not duplicating a proxy more than once per object?

We just need to put the Max count really high and Multiscatter will ONLY put 1 tree per object and we don't need to worry?

Cheers.

Butler.

[Karba]

So are you saying it's not duplicating a proxy more than once per object?
We just need to put the Max count really high and Multiscatter will ONLY put 1 tree per object and we don't need to worry?
Cheers.
Butler.

You are right.