Scatter

Scatters points evenly over the surface of meshes. This can be particularly useful in conjunction with the Instancer, which can then apply instances to each point.

user

Container for user-defined plugs. Nodes should never make their own plugs here, so users are free to do as they wish.

out

The processed output scene.

enabled

The on/off state of the node. When it is off, the node outputs the input scene unchanged.

in

The input scene

filter

The filter used to control which parts of the scene are processed. A Filter node should be connected here.

parent

The location of the mesh to scatter the points over. The generated points will be parented under this location. This is ignored when a filter is connected, in which case the filter may specify multiple locations containing meshes to scatter points over.

destination

The location where the points primitives will be placed in the output scene. When the destination is evaluated, the ${scene:path} variable holds the location of the source mesh, so the default value parents the points under the mesh.

Tip

${scene:path}/.. may be used to place the points alongside the source mesh.

name

The name given to the object generated - this will be placed under the parent in the scene hierarchy.

density

The number of points per unit area of the mesh, measured in object space.

densityPrimitiveVariable

A float primitive variable used to specify a varying point density across the surface of the mesh. Multiplied with the density setting above.

referencePosition

If you want to preserve the uv positions of the points while the mesh animates, you can set up an alternate reference position primitive variable ( usually the same as P, but not animated ). This primitive variable will be used to compute the areas of the faces, and therefore how many points each face receives.

uv

The UV set used to distribute points. The size of faces in 3D space is used to determine the number of points on each face, so the UV set should not affect the overall look of the distribution for a particular seed, but using the UVs provides continuity when adjusting density. If polygons that are large in 3D space are small and narrow in UV space for the given UV set, you may encounter performance problems.

primitiveVariables

Primitive variables to sample from the source mesh and output on the generated points. Supports a Gaffer match pattern, with multiple space seperated variable names, optionally using * as a wildcard.

pointType

The render type of the points. This defaults to “gl:point” so that the points are rendered in a lightweight manner in the viewport.