Procedural Scattering & Placement Suite

Module: Art · Category: Scatter · Tool ID: ProceduralScatterSuite

A five-tab environment art workflow for raycast-based scatter and drop placement. Drop & Place drops meshes from height and lets them land naturally on surfaces. Drop Controls adds PolygonFlow-style jitter / reset / duplicate / mobility-toggle. Scatter Recipe does ray-cast area scatter with slope and collision filters. Rule Presets gives one-click setups for Foliage, Debris, Rock, Crowd, Interior. Backend & Bake bakes the scattered actors to HISM for runtime efficiency.

Suite open on Drop & Place tab, with several rocks scattered on a terrain via the drop, viewport visible behind.

When to use it

• Environment dressing: rocks, debris, foliage, crowd actors, interior props
• Quick natural-looking placement that physics simulation can’t reasonably do at runtime
• Bulk scatter into HISM for ten-thousands of instances at runtime cost of one
• Iterative dressing pass: drop, jitter, reset, refine

What it isn’t for

• Don’t expect interactive viewport brush painting. That’s planned for a Phase 2 update with a custom EdMode. V1 is button-driven.
• Don’t use this for runtime spawn. It’s offline-authoring, baking to HISM at the end.

Opening the tool

1. Open the EQLabs Hub and search for Scatter (or browse to Art → Scatter).
2. Click the tool card.
3. Use the tab bar: Drop & Place, Drop Controls, Scatter Recipe, Rule Presets, or Backend & Bake.

Tab 1: Drop & Place

Drop meshes from a configurable height and let them land on surfaces.

Interface

Field	What it does	Default
Physics Drop Mesh picker	The mesh to drop	(empty)
Drop Count	How many instances to drop	10
Drop Height Offset	Height above the target surface to spawn	500 cm
Scale Min / Max	Random scale range	0.8 / 1.2
Scatter Radius	Horizontal radius around the drop point	500 cm
Orientation Mode	Realistic / Randomized / Locked	Realistic
Drop & Simulate	Spawns the drop and runs a brief sim

Orientation modes

Mode	What it does
Realistic	Natural rotation, changes based on collision
Randomized	Random initial rotation; doesn’t change on collision
Locked	Maintain original orientation regardless of surface

Tab 2: Drop Controls (PolygonFlow-style)

Manipulate dropped instances after the drop.

Interface

Action	What it does
Jitter	Randomly perturbs positions of dropped actors
Reset Positions	Restores initial drop transforms
Duplicate Dropped	Duplicates the dropped set
Select All Dropped	Selects all dropped actors in the viewport
Toggle Static	Toggle Static / Dynamic mobility per actor
Clear Dropped	Removes all dropped actors
Undo Last Drop	Undoes the most recent drop operation

Tab 2 with several dropped actors visible in viewport, Jitter / Reset / Duplicate buttons in the panel.

Tab 3: Scatter Recipe

Ray-cast area scatter with slope and collision filtering.

Interface

Field	What it does	Default
Scatter Mesh picker	The mesh to scatter	(empty)
Density	Instances per area unit	100
Min / Max Scale	Random scale range	0.8 / 1.2
Random Rotation	Toggle random Yaw rotation	true
Slope Max (deg)	Skip surfaces steeper than this	45
Collision Avoid Radius	Minimum distance between instances	50 cm
Scatter Area Radius	Total scatter area	2000 cm
Execute Scatter	Runs the scatter

Tab 4: Rule Presets

Built-in scatter presets for common environment-art use cases.

Available presets

Preset	Tuned for
Foliage	High density, low scale variation, steep slope tolerance
Debris	Medium density, high scale variation, irregular distribution
Rock	Low density, high scale variation, gravity-aware
Crowd	Even spacing, low scale variation, vertical alignment
Interior	Tight spacing, no rotation, surface-snapped

Workflow

Pick a preset from the list — it pre-fills the Scatter Recipe tab’s parameters. Tweak from there.

Tab 5: Backend & Bake

Bake scattered actors to Hierarchical Instanced Static Meshes for runtime efficiency.

Interface

Action	What it does
Bake to HISM	Converts every scattered actor into instances of a single HISM component

After baking, draw call cost drops from N (one per actor) to 1 (one per mesh, regardless of instance count).

Settings reference

Every tab persists its settings to [Project]/Saved/EQLabs/Settings/ProceduralScatterSuite.json.

Output

• In-place actor placement. Drop and Scatter create real AStaticMeshActor instances in the level.
• HISM baking. Bake to HISM converts them to a single Hierarchical Instanced Static Mesh.
• Undo. Operations are wrapped in ScopedTransaction. Drop Controls’ Undo Last Drop is a dedicated action.

Tips and gotchas

• Drop Height Offset matters. 500 cm is fine for most props; very tall objects need more headroom to settle naturally.
• Slope Max controls cliff scatter. At 45°, rocks won’t scatter on steep surfaces; raise to 90° for full coverage including walls.
• Collision Avoid Radius prevents instance overlap. Set to roughly your mesh’s bounding radius for natural spacing.
• Bake to HISM is cheap at runtime, expensive at edit time. Once baked, individual instances are harder to edit. Author first, bake last.
• Display name is “Procedural Scattering & Placement Suite”. Class and tool ID are ProceduralScatterSuite.

Related tools

• Spline Asset Placer — for spline-driven distribution (roads, fences, pipes)
• Foliage Placement Analyzer. Analyze the foliage-specific side after scatter.
• Modular Kit Auditor (Modeling module) — validate placement after scatter