“Object spreading methods” by Nicolas d’Haussy
Contrary to other classic 3d package, Maya has not dedicated tools to spread objects and it is often asked how to indeed. Placing each objects would be stupid and exhausting. In this article, I demonstrate five methods from my own experience/analysis and some talking boards threads. But their may exist many other methods that I did not list… for instance at rendering or at compositing. Feel free to contact me about this article or just to give your opinion about it. I really hope my article could help you.
Paint objects on surface
Map driven spreading method
Using particle instancer
Animation driven spreading
Melscripting issues
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Paint objects on surface.
geometryPaint is a melscript coded tool bundled with maya (or with the free Bonus Tools pack). Geometry paint enables to use the artisan paint tools to paint objects on a surface. How does this tool work? It places some duplications of an object where you paint on the selected surface. It’s a good spreading tool because that is you who choose where to spread objects.
To activate geometryPaint, go Modify>Script Paint Tool options. On the Setup panel, type “geometryPaint” into the “Tool Setup Cmd” text field. Then the other text fields will be entered, and the Geometry Paint Settings window will appear. Type the name of the gemometry you want to spread in the “Geometry” text field. Then select the surface and paint on. Lets tweak parameters! For instance, check the “Align” box to have the objects to be spreaded according to surface normals. Or to randomly scale the objects size, check all scale axis. To work easier, setup the paint tool before.
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