The Arnold Scatter object allows you to distribute millions of instances over a selected surface in an efficient way. You can specify the density (number of points per unit of area) or a total number of points on the surface, use vertex maps, or any C4D shaders (e.g. Bitmap, Noise, Gradient, etc.) to control the distribution. You can also utilize the power of Cinema's Effectors to create complex animations.
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Arnold Scatter uses the position of the object's pivot to position the object. |
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The mesh to be scattered. Only poly meshes are allowed currently, splines and volumes are not supported.
You can distribute instances over the selected vertices/edges/polygons only by specifying a Selection tag.
Select from the following distribution methods:
When enabled instances are uniformly distributed over each edge. Otherwise, the distribution is random. Available only in Edge distribution mode.
Controls the density of instances over the surface. 100% means 1 point per square unit. For instance 10000 instances over a 100x100 cm Plane.
Controls how many points are generated per surface area. For instance, the default 1 cm setting means 1 point on each cm^2.
This is an optional strict limit on the number of instances to be generated in Density mode, to avoid fatal accidents, like generating billions or trillions of instances on a huge surface unintentionally, resulting in possible out of memory error.
When the number of points generated based on the density settings exceeds the given Max Points value, a message is displayed on the UI.
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Controls distribution variations in Surface and Edge modes.
You can use any Cinema 4D shader (e.g. Bitmap, Noise, Gradient, etc.) to control the density of instances in texture space via greyscale textures. Black spots mean no instances, white spots mean full density. The texture is used over the above distribution controls.
When enabled instances are pushed to keep a minimum distance between them.
The minimum distance between instances when the Push Apart feature is enabled. Two instances (two scattered points on the surface) can not be closer than this value.
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Choose where the instances are defined. You can select any object from the scene (custom shapes) or use the child objects as instances.
See the Geometry Parameters page for further details on common shape parameters.
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Specifies the up vector (Y) of the instances. Possible options are:
axis: Select the object space axis where the instances point to. For instance +Y means the up vector of the surface.
Specifies the direction (Z) where the instances look at. Possible options are:
axis: Select the object space axis where the instances point to. For instance, +Z means the forward vector of the surface.
These settings allow you to add an offset or random variation to the position, scale, and rotation of the instances.
Use any Cinema 4D shader to control the offset in texture space. The grayscale texture acts as a multiplier over the specified offset.
Randomize the offset over the instances. 0% means no random variation, 100% means randomization in the full offset range.
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Controls how many instances are displayed in the viewport by reducing the number of instances to the given percentage.
Controls how the instances are displayed in the viewport.
Shader: Display each instance as shaded mesh.
When enabled bounding boxes, wireframes or shaded meshes are displayed with the Display Color of the instances.
Specify the list of Effectors used to alternate the transformation and color of the instances.
Step effector used to change size of scattered instances |
