Circular Array of actors with PCG - A Solar Farm from Electric Dreams

[DerUebermensch (_gion_)]

I’m looking for a way to symmetrically distribute a couple of hundred Solar Panels on a landscape mesh. I managed to combine the surface sampler with the ‘LookAt’ node from Epics Doc on the ‘Electric Dreams’ Demo. But it only gets me a messy circular array of meshes with their orientation towards a three parameter vector. What I’m missing is the classical grid formation that these solar farms usually do, with a clear, almost soldier-esque sequence. The documentation revolving around this topic is sparse to say the least. I’m thankful for any method what so ever, doesn’t have to involve PCG. I added some Screengrabs of what I already have and what ultimately the goal is.
Gion

[Prairie]

You can try to solve this problem using instanced mesh and material rotation separately

Instantiate the grid body to generate solar panels, create transformations layer by layer from inside to outside, and calculate the optimal interval of solar panels according to their perimeter for solar panels within a fixed radius
(I don’t have a relevant case, if you can use PCG tools, this part should not be a problem for you)

Modify the orientation of the solar panel through the material. The following is a case in my project. Use the material to make the model always face a target point:

[DerUebermensch (_gion_)]

Thanks for your detailed reply! I found an elegant solution inside of the PCG Graph by sampling a BP_Region_Spline, then projecting its grid (set to interior) onto the landscape and finally adding the LookAt custom Node from the Electric Dreams Demo.

After that one can change the density of the field by playing with the ‘Interior Sample Spacing’ as well as changing the shared orientation of the actors by moving the vector3 values that go into the LookAt node.

Cheers!