3DS Max scatter issue

ghaztehschmexeh

I was looking to scatter some coal objects onto part of my mesh. I found out about the "scatter" compound object in 3ds max, and decided to give it a try.

I must have misclicked or did it the wrong way round as it moved the wrong things around. So I undid it and saved/closed max. I come back and my max is really laggy. Turns out one of the objects has become a "scatter" object.

It's not like it's converted it to an edit poly or anything. It was turbosmoothed with isoline display on, and it's not displaying the usual shading errors that come with collapsing with that on.

So is there a way to get back to my old object? Or am I going to have to start again? Seems pretty stupid that it automatically collapsed itself.

Thanks for any help

Ace-Angel

Quickly check and see your Autobak files in My Document / Max, you might have access to an older version of the file, that saved itself right before the scatter collapse.

Also, for the scatter thing, don't use any modifiers, instead use the Ribbon tool (there should be a brush that allows you 'scatter' a copy of a model onto the verts of another model.

If that doesn't work, search on Scriptspot.com, there are plenty of scatter scripts that just do that.

ghaztehschmexeh

Ace-Angel wrote: »

Quickly check and see your Autobak files in My Document / Max, you might have access to an older version of the file, that saved itself right before the scatter collapse.

Also, for the scatter thing, don't use any modifiers, instead use the Ribbon tool (there should be a brush that allows you 'scatter' a copy of a model onto the verts of another model.

If that doesn't work, search on Scriptspot.com, there are plenty of scatter scripts that just do that.

Yeah I ended up using an autobak file, didn't lose too much work. Still seems really stupid that it works like that and that it's still in max.

Anyway thanks for replying.

poopipe

the original object should still be stored with modifiers as an operand of the scatter object

Mark Dygert

poopipe wrote: »

the original object should still be stored with modifiers as an operand of the scatter object

Yep. In the modifier stack open scatter, click on operands, in the operands menu click on the object (notice your modifier list changes), click extract operand.

It will spit out a copy as it was when you added it, modifiers and all. So if you had an edit poly object with turbosmooth on top, it will be that way when you extract it.

If you choose "Instance" it will allow you to edit all of the scatter objects by changing just the one object it extracted. You can treat that one object like you normally would, change it, add modifiers, collapse the stack, make copies, whatever. As long as you don't break that link it will keep updating.

In the future you can do the reverse and choose instance when adding an object and all of the scatter objects will reference that one piece.

This works with a lot of modifiers, ProBooleans, PathDeform(WSM) ect...


As for scattering objects, I agree paint scatter is a lot better, it gives you a lot more control. the ribbon scatter is pretty good, but I still prefer SoulBurn Scripts "object scatter". It comes in a pack of other scripts that are crazy helpful too but his object scatter has finer control over the settings.

The new "select and place" tool in 3dsmax2015 is pretty great at placing objects on a surface one at a time for those times when you want even finer control.

tynew

Sorry to necro this thread. 

It looks like Scatter does not retain vertex colors. Applying vertex colors to the extracted operand instance also does not translate them across to the scattered mesh. 

Does anyone have a solution for this or is there a better tool in current max?

poopipe

I've not tried it in this context but you may be able to copy the vertex colour channel into a uv channel of your source object then copy it back out on the scattered versions using the channel tool ( in utilities)
You'd probably need to do the copy on top of the final scatter object 

tynew

That worked just fine thanks! Actually wasn't too sure how the channel tool in utilities worked with pasting. So I just copy pasted the vertex color channel through unwrap uvw modifiers.