I’ve written a simple scattering plugin for UE4 to facilitate IMHO much missed scattering workflow known from mainstream offline DCC plugins such as ForestPack, Multiscatter, etc… While UE4 does have some procedural foliage placement tools, I’ve found them way too limited for general use cases.
Grass tool only works with Landscapes and when scattering multiple different meshes, they overlap a lot causing performance issues.
Procedural Foliage tool generates instances based on biological growth parameters which offer insufficient artistic control.
Foliage paint tool workflow is not efficient when needing to cover large areas with instances based on certain rules.
This plugin allows you to scatter static mesh instances on top of both Landscapes and Static Meshes in the level. It allows you to modify distribution of the instances based on various parameters like height, slope angle, footprint of another mesh, material texture or distance to open splines or area of closed splines. It of course also allows you to randomize transforms of scattered instances to your liking. You can scatter multiple meshes on multiple surfaces within one scatter object. It also supports distance based culling and distance fade with PerInstanceFadeAmount material node.
This plugin is initially developed primarily for editor-time visualization and cinematics purposes. While it should technically work with packaged builds, it is not guaranteed to function correctly for packaged, standalone project.
I am currently in the process of making a flashy demo video for the marketplace, but it’s not done yet. In the meanwhile, you can check out complete capabilities of the plugin in the quickstart tutorial playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis…8xttLf8B3hwsDj
I am currently looking for the small amount of beta testers to test the plugin out before I put it on the marketplace. The betatesters should be experienced UE4 users, not beginners, should send me some showcase of their work in UE4 and should have UE 4.23.1 or 4.24.1 at their disposal, as those are only supported versions at the moment. If you meet following criteria and are interested in testing the plugin, please send me a private message here on the forum.
The demonstration looks pretty convenient for decorating large scale terrains, great job!
I’m curious to know since in your last post you mention the plug-in can work on both Landscape and Static Mesh in level - could this also work on (Hierarchical) Instanced Static Mesh as well?
The reason I ask this question is that the UE4 foliage tool doesn’t seems to support HISM, so I’m hoping there’s an alternative way to do the same work.
