Effects Tab

The final tab on the SurfaceSPREAD object is the Effects Tab. This tab offers a range of effects that control the position, rotation and scale of the clones. These effects can be best demonstrated in video.

The following is a brief description of the options:

Static Offset - Clones can be offset from their original position in either or all of the 3 axes. A typical example of when you would use this is if the object to be cloned had its axis in the centre. By using a Y axis offset the clones can be positioned to sit on top the surface rather than only the top half showing.

Random Offset Along Normal - With this parameter the clones can be offset along the surface normal by a random value. There are min and max options as well as a intensity strength slider.

Offset By Material - This option is if your terrain has a material with displacement so that your clones don´t sink into the ground too much. This option uses the Colour Channel of a material not the Displacement Channel so in practice you would probably copy the Displacement Channel in the Colour Channel of a new material and just use the new material in the material field. Probably this should be changed just to use the Displacement Channel from the material applied to the terrain / SurfaceSPREAD object to make things less complicated. You then adjust the height amount if required so that the clone offset matches the displacement.

Random Alignment - This is random rotation. When you are cloning trees for example you will want to randomly rotate them (in the axes you choose and by how much) so that they don´t all look the same. Like other effects there is a intensity strength slider.

Base Scale - Often the scale of the clones won´t match the surface being cloned on to. Trees or rocks are a good example of this where you will often want to reduce the scale. The Base Scale settings allow you scale clones in one, two or all 3 axes.

Random Scale - This is different than the Base Scale options. Those scale all clones by the same amount. The random scale option randomly scales clones. Again another useful option to make clones not look all the same. There are number of further options like an intensity strength slider.

Scale By Vertex Map - With this option, if the surface being cloned on to has a Vertex Map this map can be used to control the scaling. Like most other options there is a intensity strength slider.

Scale By Material - Similar to the Vertex map option but instead you use a material instead. Darker areas on the material makes the scale smaller e.g. Black = 0% and White = 100% scale. If you are using the SPREADscape object you cannot create a vertex map as the SPREADscape object is a parametric object. (It needs to be made editable to convert to a polygon object). So on a SPREADscape object you would use a material to control the scaling rather than a vertex map.

Scale By Modifier This option uses the Scale Modifier object. A Scale Modifier is pretty much the same thing as a MoGraph Plain Effector using the scale option and with a spherical fall off. So anything with the spherical fall off field will be scaled. There are options to adjust the radius of the falloff and the blending between areas within the fall off and areas outside the fall off. The Scale Modifier object can either be created manually and dragged and dropped into the Modifier field on the SURFACESpread object or more easily just by clicking on the Add Modifier button which creates the Scale Modifier Object and adds it to the field all with one click. You can have multiple Scale Modifier Object´s and they can be animated to create some interesting visual effects.

Scale By Weight - This effect scales the clones on the basis of weighting´s calculated by the 3 types of filter system on the Distribution tab. An example of using this is to make the scale of trees or rocks with higher altitude smaller than those at lower altitudes. The image below shows the 3 groups of settings. The Intensity Geo slider for example is on 90% strength and clones are scale based upon their altitude. The Distance From Camera Filter is enabled, and the Intensity Performance slider is 0%. No additional scaling takes place.

All these effects can be combined. When you do this you will need to play around using the intensity strength sliders to get the desired result. I may have lost you with some of the descriptions above. In practice and once you have used the Plugin for a short while these options are very straight forward to understand and use.