Looking to populate a whole field with flowers
Griffin Avid
Posts: 3,763
Yes, another one of those subjective-peer-review-powered-what's-the-best.... type threads./....
Looking for the easiest and most robust (aint we all) method of pupulating large areas with repeating objects or instancing.
So far, I am researching Ultrascatter
https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascatter-advanced-instancing-for-daz-studio
and https://www.daz3d.com/instances-plus-for-daz-studio
It looks like Ultrascatter is the most powerful and simple to use.
Are there any others (and other methods) that I might have missed or even a more up to date solution?
Looks like I might have to eat this at full price, so I'm not playing over what is what. 
Any ideas and help is appreciated.
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This product has a flower option and it is on sale. https://www.daz3d.com/realistic-grass-evolution
how about this one, https://www.daz3d.com/scattered-plants-spring-flowers - there's an option to use it with ultra scatter
If you're willing to step into Blender there's some great videos on modelling simple grass or flower objects and replicating them using Blender's particle system. Blender Guru has some videos on that. And it won't cost a penny. I think he also sells some pre-made kits of vegetation. Super powerful and realistic.
i cannot tell a lie. I looked at both of those and I want a long term solution. I want to simulate LOTS of grassy plains with different kinds of grass, so I grabbed every grass product that looks like a plane.
so I have the perfect grass- morphs textures etc, so all i need is way to populate. I have the worLd builder product, but everything is lush and well watered.lol.
I need the kind of tall grass a lion would hide in.
thanks I should have been more specific. sorry about that.
in carrara would be surface replication.
thanks . daz and iray. i basically own every badlands, outback, and field. easy this and easy that.
what happened, no one likes ultra scatter?
I use ultrascatter and it is great, but you can do it yourself with just instancing. Create a large, manageable square with all the flowers you want and then parent them to the square (parented items will copy along with the base). Now create as many instances of the square as you need and place them next to each other. If you need to populate rolling hills or uneven terrain, then ultrascatter works great for this. keep in mind though, this will kill performance, even with instancing.
You can create the instances yourself, but it is far quickier and easier to use ultra scatter, particularly for something like flowers where you may need to create 1000s of instances.
I have both ultrascatter and instances plus, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. The ultrascatter scripts give you more control over where the instances are being placed, and is much faster when creating very large numbers of instances. I would not recommend instances plus if creating more than 100 or so instances, it would take too long. However a key advantage of instances plus is that you can reposition the scattered instances manually yourself, just in case any ended up incorrectly placed. Ultrascatter creates a single object that represents all instances, and whilst this is faster, it does mean you can not tweak each one individually.
I would like to use Ultrascatter, but I'm stuck in DS4.8 and I'm under the impression that it does not support that version of DS. I didn't realize you can't reposition instances though, that's interesting to note. From the perspective of having used instancing in Bryce, I find that I often want to adjust individual items after instancing is complete, sometimes to hide obvious repetition by slightly changing size/angle, or to prevent one object poking through another, or to correct for discrepancies in the desired density if there are too many or two few instances once viewed from the final render camera.
With instances plus, although I've not yet taken the time to become extremely familiar with it, I believe there is an issue with rotation under certain circumstances. Check the forums on that if you feel this is a critical concern.
Also check out https://www.daz3d.com/infinito-1-0 .
Another thread that might be of interest: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/93001/what-s-the-best-way-to-scatter-something-in-daz
I think it does, or at least it did when it was first released, although that may have changed with updates.
Found my original question here https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/101156/ultrascatter-advanced-instancing-for-daz-studio/p2 , the actual answer was "It was developed using 4.9 so I think it will require 4.9". But if anybody has 4.8 and is able to get it to work, either fully or just partly, I'd love to know!
If you only need it for the illusion... the good ol' fashioned mirror trick would work well. Just sayin'
https://www.daz3d.com/kaleidoscope
Quick example in Carrara using surface replicator.
If you want a free solution, use the Replicator-script http://www.sharecg.com/v/77603/browse/21/DAZ-Studio/Replicator-for-DAZ-Studio
It works similar to Ultrascatte with a few less options but it's fast and works well.
I'm writing a script at the moment- approaching it from a different angle that should give you a ton of flexibility in this area. It's 80% done. I'm just relooking at my algorithm to get the time down which is proving more tricky than I anticipated.
In the meantime the free replicator script is incredibly powerful, it just doesn't have collision detection as far as I know which shouldn't be a problem for fields and flowers.
ultra scatter is also extremely powerful. I've only tried it a handful of times, but it worked well.
I haven't tried instance plus.
DAZ Studio doesn't have coliision detection except the beginning of it in their new dForce. It's not complete though. If collision detection worked really, really good right now that could stop poke through and drop character to floor would work and lots of other things could be make to work better.
by collion detection I mean that it doesn't take the position of other instances into account, (as far as I remember) which means that you could end up with instances overlapping each other.
OK
This sucks, but you what I did?
I made a an area in my scene with all the assorted grass products that I own.
1) Then I scaled some so they are HUGE.
2) I lowered my perspective camera under the 'ground plane' and saw the grass sticking out below. i raised it up so it shows up on the land.
3) I Edit/Create new node hierachy and Duplicated the grass props
4) Grouped all them together into one big area of grass.
5) Edit duplicated That big area, spread it out and will how duplicate that aea too.
6) Tedious, but I can't find any Dry Grass shaders to turn regular grass into the kind of dry grass I need. But what I made looks like I imagined so it's all good.
Thanks everyone for your time and input.
I'm a huge fan of ultrascatter.
It does a lot of things amazingly, and can handle instances better than just about anything, imo
UltraScatter has been developed in Daz Studio 4.8.0.59 so will work in 4.8. The very first release was only for 4.9 but since the first update it has been 4.8 compatible.
Fantastic news! Thanks for letting me know.