Scattered objects

Objects

An object is a SketchUp group or component that will be scattered thousands of times over hosts. Each copy of a scattered object is called an instance.

To add new objects, click the icon and pick groups or components in the model. When you're happy with your selection, click anywhere in the Skatter interface to stop picking objects.

Another way to pick several objects is to first select them in SketchUp and then click the icon while pressing the Shift key.

Parameter	Description
Probability	Relative probability of the object to be assigned
Insertion point	Local origin of the picked object
Scale multiplier	Adjusts the size of the instance with respect to the picked object

Probability

By default, objects have a probability of 100% so a composition contains an equal quantity of each object's instances.

Probabilities are relative. For example, if object A has probability 300% and object B has probability 100% then object A is 3 times more likely to appear.

Insertion point

The Insertion point parameter adjusts the final position of instances depending on its object's internal axes.

Insertion point	Description
Origin	Simply places instances using the axes of their group/component.
Center	Uses the center of the actual geometry contained in the object. This is particularly useful when a group/component has off-center axes but we want to ignore this offset when scattering instances.
Bottom center	Same as Center but at the bottom of the group/component. This is particularly useful for objects like trees or street lights.

LODs

LODs (Level of Detail) are placeholder objects that replace the main object depending on their distance to the camera.

They are typically used to replace a detailed object with variants with lower and lower resolutions as they get farther away from the camera, which enhances performance in the viewport and when rendering.

LODs are dependent on their position relative to a user-defined camera. Please make sure that this camera is properly set up.

Object groups

It's possible to create object groups in order to keep closely related objects together.

Object groups become particularly powerful when used for zoning, as they make it possible to create zones that contain mixed bags of objects, as well as empty zones.

To create a new object group, click the icon. You can then drag existing objects into that new group. To move an object out of a group, drag it to the drop zone at the top of the interface.

Probability

Object groups have their own probability. When zones are enabled, the probability of object groups (as well as the probability of standalone objects that are not part of a group) controls the number of zones associated with that group (respectively, with that standalone object).

The probability of objects inside an object group controls the number of instances of that specific object in that group.

When zones are disabled, the probability of a group is still taken into account. This can be useful to fine-tune the chance of each object appearing in your composition.

For instance, you can organize all your flower objects in a Flowers group and then set each flower's probability independently from the other object types.