Hello,
I am wondering if there is a difference between the Foliage Tool and placing foliage manually.
I like to have more control over foliage placement so manual placement would be better for me, but does the tool have extra functions like performance improvement or something, or is it meant just for easier foliage placement on bigger areas?
Foliage tool use instanced static meshes instead of simple static meshes. Essentially it “batches” all static meshes in single draw call and improve performance in significant ways. Instanced mesh is extremely cheap and allows to have a hell of a lot objects without pressure to performance
In that case is there any way to place foliage more precisely? I can’t just let the tool decide where my palms lean.
Just decrease brush size to minimal size
That’s what I’m currently doing but I need to rotate them manually. If I can’t do that, that’s kinda of a deal breaker for me.
Well, you can manually setup rotation in InstancedStaticMesh so it kinda weird there is no such option in Foliage tool,
Currently devs are making new foliage tool(Ecosystem or something like that), I recommend to post in feedback request about manual rotation before it’s too late 
For now you can use foliage tool for majority of meshes and simple static mesh for special palms
you can select placed instances and move/scale/rotate them manually afterwards
Oh, wow, I somehow missed selection tool, sweet
Oh, I missed it too! Sweet indeed! Thanks Chosker! Got kinda sad there for a second.