BY-GEN Scattering
< BY-GEN
Introduction
BY-GEN includes some scattering techniques for quickly concepting various distributions of objects. Being a newer addition to the addon, the variety is limited for the time being. Added with version 6 of the addon are the City Scatter techniques, as featured in the standalone generator available on Gumroad and Blender Market.
City Scatter
How to Run
In version 8 of the addon, the City Scatter techniques can be found in the BY-GEN - Scattering panel in the 3D View toolbar (N Menu).
In earlier versions of the addon, the City Scatter techniques can be found through the Shift+A menu.
BY-GEN→Scatter→
City Scatter - Circular
City Scatter - Rectangular
Alternatively, they can be found through the search window (F3).
Calling the operations will show the operator properties window in the bottom-left of the 3D View. In here is where you specify the different parameters for the procedure and tell BY-GEN which objects you want to scatter.
Developers can access these operations with the following calls:
bpy.ops.object.bygen_scatter_city_circular()bpy.ops.object.bygen_scatter_city_rectangular()
The Procedure
Both methods require slightly different parameters. As you can see, the Circular method requires three separate collections of objects to be provided (identified by a name), whereas the Rectangular method required only one collection of objects.
Circular Method
Variable Size Distribution
For the Circular method, objects closer to the center of the circular distribution will sourced from the large collection, whereas objects closer to the outer boundary will be sources from the small collection. The distances from the center that each of these will start to appear is defined by the 'Large Radius', 'Medium Radius' and 'Small Radius' values.
Overlap Detection
The Circular method will try to prevent objects from overlapping. The minimum distance new objects need to be from each-other is defined by the 'Neighbor Threshold' value. Naturally, this feature means that the operation will take longer to calculate than the rectangular alternative.
Rectangular Method
Grid Layout
The Rectangular method will take objects from the provided collection and scatter them on a uniform grid, with a size specified by the X-Size and Y-Size parameters.
Random Placement
The Random Placement parameter for the Rectangular operation will randomly decide whether a building should be placed in each cell of the grid. Enabling this will create gaps in-between some of the objects.
Street Level Content
Neither method is specifically designed to support street-level content, but the Rectangular method can support this if the street content is joined to the major building pieces. The unpredictable scattering from the Circular method makes it unsuitable for uniform street content.