Component Spray

You don't need Skatter to plant trees randomly and quickly!

The component airbrush plug-in can quickly fill the model with components (trees, people, stones, grass, etc.) according to various shapes of spray, options, and conditions. As a powerful tree planting function command, components can be easily placed on any terrain, with many ways to place them as desired.




Click on the plugin to launch the component spray pen settings dialog box:


1. Select spray component
There are eight lists to choose from for spraying components, and the dropdown list will display the existing components in the model for selection.
At least one component must be selected. When selecting multiple component objects, different components will be randomly mixed for spraying.
If there is no selection, a prompt will pop up saying 'No component selected. Please select at least one component.'.
If the same component name is selected twice in the list, the number of components will increase proportionally during spraying.

Example:
Select 5 different components, each with the same spray probability.


Select 3 different components, each with the same probability of use, and having blank spaces between the lists does not affect.


Three different components have been selected. Because the 'Car Sedan' has been selected three times, its spray probability is more than three times that of other components. Bed "has been selected twice, and it has one chance of spraying out of three uses.


2. Spray shape and density
A、 When no object is selected, there are ten shapes (or ways to place components) available when clicking on the plugin:


(1) Point: Place a component at the clicked position, which will be randomly selected from the selected component list.
If the restriction conditions are not met (such as spraying outside the restricted elevation), the status bar will display "Cannot place components here".

(2) Line: Click on two points to randomly place components between them.
The origin of the component is on the drawn line. After clicking the first point, you can enter the length of the line in VCB.


(3) Triangle: Click twice to locate the center and vertices of the equilateral triangle, and the component will be randomly inserted into the area defined by the triangle. After determining the center point, you can input the length of the distance between the center and the vertex in VCB to perform spraying within a fixed range.


(4) Square: Click twice to locate the center and vertices of an equilateral square, and the component will be randomly inserted into the area defined by the square. After determining the center point, you can input the length of the distance between the center and the vertex in VCB to perform spraying within a fixed range.

(5) Rectangle: Click three times to locate the starting point, length, and width of the equilateral rectangle, and the component will be randomly inserted into the area defined by the square. After determining the starting point, you can input the length and width in VCB to spray within a fixed range.

(6) Pentagonal, Hexagonal, Octagonal, Circle: Click twice to locate the center and vertex of the equilateral shape, and determine the shape range by radius. The component will be randomly placed on the area defined by the shape. After determining the center point, you can input the length of the distance between the center and the vertex in VCB to perform spraying within a fixed range.

(7) Spray: Basically similar to a circle, but it can place any number of components on the circular area without determining the center and radius each time. When you move the mouse over the model, you can see a blue cone, and the components will be placed within this range. Clicking on a component once will randomly place it once. Enter a value in VCB to change the radius of the cone.


B、 After selecting the model object, clicking on the plugin will display these four options:

(1) Intersection point of faces: Select edges before launching the plugin, and place a component at each end of each edge after spraying. When edges share vertices, only one component is placed at the shared vertex. This option also applies to arcs, circles, polygons, freehand lines, and Bezier curves. Automatically ignore objects that are not edges.


(2) Edge lines: Select edges before launching the plugin, and insert a component at each endpoint and segment of each edge after spraying. It will prompt for the input of 'number of places per edge'. When the edge is a curve, each segment is considered as one edge. When edges share vertices, only one component is placed at the shared vertex. This option also applies to arcs, circles, polygons, freehand lines, and Bezier curves. Objects that are not edges will be ignored in the selection.


(3) Face vertices: Before launching the plugin, select faces directly in the model, or enter groups or components to select faces (in which case the sprayed components will not be within the group, but outside the group), and place components at each vertex of each face. The selected faces can be adjacent to each other or not. When sharing vertices face-to-face, only one component is placed at the shared vertex. Non face objects will be ignored in the selection.


(4) Select Region: Select a region before launching the plugin. You can directly select a region in the model, or enter a group or component to select a region (in which case the sprayed component will not be within the group, but outside the group). The component will be randomly placed on the region defined by the boundary of the region. Non face objects will be ignored in the selection.


Density: default value is 50%
Move the slider left and right to adjust the number of components to be placed. 0% will only place one component, and 100% will not cover the entire area with components (please refer to the meaning of density and the calculation method of pressure below).

(Density 10% -50% -100%)

3. Layer Settings

Target layer: This is the layer where the component is placed and defaults to the current active layer. Please note that only visible layers are available for selection.
Layer Mask: This is a layer that does not place components, and all other layers can receive components. If you do not want to use a layer mask, leave it blank.

(With "); Lake "; As a layer mask, all components will be in the '; Lake "; On other layers. ）

4. Geometric constraints
There are three options available to limit the spraying conditions of the component: altitude, slope, and scaling.


(1) Altitude: Move the slider control component to spray between the lowest and highest altitudes.
If the insertion point Z value of the component matches the range, the component will be sprayed between these two values. The default values are the current actual lowest and highest altitudes of the model. If the set high altitude is lower than the low altitude, the value will automatically reverse.



(2) Slope: Move the slider control component to spray on the surface with a slope between the lowest and highest.
Slope is the angle measured from the XY axis (red green axis) plane [0 °=horizontal ->90 °=vertical]. When the ray casting method hits an edge instead of a face, the same principle will be applied. The default values are 0 ° and 90 ° (unconstrained). If the high slope is lower than the low slope, the value will automatically reverse.

(3) Scaling: Move the slider to control the component to scale between the lowest and highest scaling factors when spraying.
The default values are 1 and 1 (without scaling), and a value of 0 will reset to 0.01. If the high ratio is lower than the low ratio, the value will automatically reverse (see also "Maintain Ratio" option).

5. Optional conditions
The following options mainly indicate how the placed components will be scaled, mirrored, overlapped, collided, and rotated.
There are 9 options available, and the following are the default values:


(1) Maintain Scale: If you want to set the same X, Y, Z scaling ratio for each placed component (cubes will always be cubes, spheres will always be spheres, etc.), please check the box.

(2) Allow mirroring: If you want components to be mirrored randomly, please set the checkbox.

(3) Allow overlap: If you want components to overlap randomly, please check the box.


(4) Allow collision: If you want to delete components that may intersect with each other, please check the box. Please note that not allowing collisions may result in slow calculations and may even require waiting for a few seconds before completing the injection.


(5) Ignore hidden objects: If you want to remove all components through hidden geometry, please set a check box. Please note that this also applies to hidden entities and entity components on hidden (invisible) layers.


(6) Keep Vertical and Keep Normal Vertical
Check one of the two radio buttons: If "Keep Vertical" is selected, the blue axis (Z) of all components will be parallel to the Z-axis of the model. If you choose 'Keep normals perpendicular', all components have their Z-axis parallel to the normal of their face (perpendicular to the face).


(7) Random rotation and blue axis rotation
Check one of the two radio options: rotate around the 3 axes of each component, or rotate only around its blue axis. These options are used in conjunction with the "Keep Vertical" and "Keep Normal Vertical" options, with "Keep Vertical" having higher priority than "Keep Normal Vertical" and "Blue Axis Rotation" having the highest priority.

Example:
All components are vertical, and the blue axis rotation range=0 indicates no rotation


All components are vertical, with a blue axis rotation range of 360 degrees

All components are vertical, with a random rotation range of 360


All component normals are perpendicular, blue axis rotation range=360


All component normals are vertical, with a random rotation range of 360


6. Additional notes

(1) It should be noted that all setting conditions may be inconsistent or disjointed, and the plugin may not be checked or validated before running, which may result in unpredictable results, and even SketchUp windows may not respond for a period of time.

(2) Some shapes have very fast filling speeds, while others have slower filling speeds, especially when placed in large areas under high pressure. Some shapes have slower filling speeds (such as when using forced conditions), and even encounter situations where they cannot be successfully sprayed. That's why some basic settings need to be made during this process to control the injection.
In this situation, the plugin will prompt to create a large amount of data, and you can choose to continue or abort, as shown below:


If you choose to continue launching, the plugin will continuously attempt to place components, conducting 5000 test placements each time. When the current 5000 experiments have been completed and the target number of components to be sprayed has not been reached, a prompt will pop up:


Click 'Yes' to continue more than 5000 experiments, click' No 'to abort.
The status bar always displays the percentage of completion:


(3) You can 'undo' at each step of the process.

(4) Once executed for the first time, all of the above tools can be run again with the same parameters. Parameters can also be changed between each spray.

(5) Object types that can place components: edge, face, group, component, image.

(6) Due to the component being placed downwards from the top of the model, the first object hit by the ray tracing method is considered a receiver. This means that if there are objects on the inactive layer, assuming the 'Ignore hidden geometry' checkbox is not selected, these objects will also be considered as receiving components.

(7) The holes in the model or holes within the surface will not affect the calculation of the plugin:

(In the above figure, the lowest face is selected, and the cube has already been...); Calculation "; Arriving at the highest hole. ）

(8) How to calculate stress?
Each component has internal boundary values: depth, width, height. Considering only width and depth, each component has a '; Area "; This is displayed as a red surface.
The plugin will calculate the average area of all selected components to be sprayed, divide this average area by the defined area to be sprayed, and then divide this average area by the defined area to be sprayed: this gives the total number of components to be sprayed, which needs to be multiplied by the pressure percentage set in the dialog box.
When using components, depth and width are considered equal (avoiding extremely high component placement quantities).
When using a line type, the length of the line is divided by the average width of all selected components to define the total number of components to be placed along the line, and then this number is multiplied by the pressure percentage in the dialog box.