"Ground those objects" plugin for Mac ?

[olahaldor]

I read through the Basic Instances tutorial, and at the bottom there's a few hints about where to get plug-ins that will make points stick to an irregular ground object. However, it seems to be windows only, since it's a '.p' instead of a '.plugin' file.

What do you Mac guys use to do this ? Needless to say it's for scenes with grass.

[3dworks]

afaik, the only way on mac is to use sumatra http://svenart.de/sumatra_about.htm or probably - but only in modeler, some LWCAD tool. unfortunately, there is no simple ROG plugin for mac UB anymore (but there was a free PPC mac modeler plugin on the dstorm site).

the sumatra solution is commercial, but has the big advantage to work on modeler and layout level and to offer much more than simple ROG functionality. i've tested all releases of the mac version for sven, and i can just reassure you that it works well - and if something breaks because of a new LW build (like 9.6.1 open beta), sven is very fast to fix it, usually. you can simply try the demo to see if it suits your needs.

cheers

markus

edit: after re-reading you post i thought that maybe the title was misleading me. if you need to align a point cloud to a mesh, you probably should use the 'conform to background' - BGconform - tool in modeler...

[olahaldor]

Wow, that sounds like an interesting plug-in! I'll give it a go after the weekend. Thanks for the tip!

[jdomingo]

if you dont want to buy commercial ROG plug in (like me), you can use the "STIPPLE" tool. it's under create tab, points and look for stipple. even you have a terrain with different elevation you can still use the stipple. you just assign spacing in x,y,z and it will automatically lay points base on the object (also you dont have to put the object in background layer). after laying the points, you can delete the object and while on point mode, you can assign a bit jitter modification but make Y as zero. and you know that you can use point to place instance in kray right?

[3dworks]

maybe already OT, but still concerning geometry placement for instancing:

i found out today that when you need the points cloud to follow a certain shape, like used for example in baroque style landscaping, in modeler, there's a nice trick. create a complex flat single sided poly with the shape which should contain instances. then put that layer as backgroubd layer. now position your flattened 2point-poly cloud over that shape and go to boolean/drill. in tool options select y axis. voila', all your points now are contained within the shape, all others are nicely cut out.

but maybe i'm telling an old story everyone here know already?

cheers

markus