How can i "scatter" something over a surface?

[svenip]

if you don't want them to use after the scatter you can use the partilces.

select your surface and go to the dynamics menu. select particles-emit from object. then select the new particles, shift select the surface and particles-goal. select the particle object and set the goal weight to 1. now go to the AE in the folder add dynamic attributes and hit generall. click the particles tab and select goualU and goalV. click ok. in the AE in the folder per particle array attributes right click the goalU and select Creation Expression.

goalU = rand(minU,maxU);
goalV = rand(minV,maxV);

min and maxU or V you have to get from your surface (i hope it's nurbs or you have UV's on them) in the AE of the surface you can read them on top, there are the attributes you need to insert

click ok. now you can use the particle instancer to replace the particles with the object you wanna scatter. make sure that the pivot is in the botton of the object, because the instancer places the object on the particle n relation to the pivot.

now hit play and stop if you have enough. delete the emitter etc.

that's it

[svenip]

another simple way may be with the usage of the geometry constraint. place the pivot of the object to the bottom. select the surface, shift select the object and constraint-geometry. place the object. duplicate it with up-and-downstream connection. and place again and so on and so on and so on.

after that all you may want to delete all the constraints out your scene

[bigfatMELon]

And here's a third option that might be a bit clunky to set up, but offers nice control and interactivity. The geometryPaint script in the artisan section of highend3d.com let's you paint any object onto any nurbs surface. Nice because you can alter scale and rotation of the riveted objects with tablet pressure or whatnot.

-jl

[svenip]

hi bigfatMElon :)

this is even better then my ideas. didn't thought about the easiest solution for that :hmm:

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