Mesh Clutter

Mesh Clutter is an object that can contain a great number of identical meshes which are positioned, oriented and scaled randomly and cannot be managed manually. Meshes of the mesh clutter object can be scattered in the certain areas by using an image or mesh mask.

The mesh clutter object is usually used for vegetation (for example, forest, leaves on the ground), for strewing identical objects (for example, rubbish).

Mesh Clutter is used to scatter identical meshes across the world (or the part of the world) or terrain. Mesh Clutter scatters objects procedurally, and renders only those objects which are in the viewing frustum. This allows to render the large number of meshes while keeping performance high.

See also#

The ObjectMeshClutter class to edit clutters via API
The Clutter sample located in the Art Samples suite:

To create Mesh Clutter, simply perform the following steps:

On the Menu bar, click Create -> Clutter -> Mesh.
In the dialog window that opens, choose the path to the .mesh file. This mesh would be used as the source one for the clutter.
Place the clutter object somewhere in the world.
Specify the Mesh Clutter parameters.

The Mesh Clutter is very much the same as World Clutter (that operates on different node references). It is rendered as a 2D grid, in each cell of which a number of meshes are randomly placed depending on the Clutter density and probability of appearing. The cells are generated one by one starting from the nearest ones. This approach allows to control how close or far the scattered objects are from each other and at the same time reduce the rendering load when the camera moves and farther cells become visible.

Mesh	Mesh, the copies of which will be scattered.
Size X Size Y	The size of the clutter bounding box along X and Y axis. Within this area objects will be scattered with specified density. The size is measured in units.
Step for cells	Cell size in units. The resulting number of cells in the Clutter is defined in the following way: size of the Clutter (both alongX and Y) is divided by the step. The smaller the step, the higher the number of cells is.
Density	Density specifies how many objects there are per square unit. By the step of 1 unit, the density cannot be decreased lower than 1 (less than 1 object per square unit). If the density value is too high, objects can be penetrating each other.
Visibility distance	Across the visibility distance the number of objects is strictly specified by the density parameters. It means that all objects that should be present are found in place. If set to infinity (inf), Fade distance parameter will be ignored. The real radius of Clutter visibility directly depends on the object (surface) maximum visibility distance and also its fade out distance. However, even in case it disappears at closer distance, further increase of the visible distance will carry performance penalty, because cell generation-related calculations are still performed. The visibility distance is actually measured up to the cell: when the camera moves on the specified distance form it, the cell is generated. Without the fade distance or object maximum visible distance, objects can be rendered per visible square.
Fade Distance	Across the fade distance the number of objects gradually decreases, as they disappear randomly one by one. Fade distance is measured starting from the Visibility distance. If fade distance is set, there is no clear line where the meshes abruptly disappear. Instead, a few of them will be left smoothly blend into the background without any visual noise. Notice For the best result, it is also recommended to combine this effect with objects fade-out.
Seed	The seed value for pseudo random number generator allows to create different patterns of automatic positioning. The seed is either be set manually or an engine provides a random value for a seed (Randomize option).

To randomize the appearance of meshes scattered by Mesh Clutter, two types of values are used:

Mean value (i.e., Scale, Offset, Rotation) defines the average value. This is the basic value that will be randomly made higher or lower.
Spread value defines the range for possible variation of the parameter. The higher the value, the more diverse the final result will be.
Spread value is optional: if set to 0, it will not influence the simulation process and only the mean value will be used for all objects.

After these values are specified, each parameter is calculated according to the following formula:

Result = Mean + Random * Spread

where Random is a random value in range from -1 to 1. For example, if a mean value of the parameter equals 3 and a spread value equals 1, the final result will be any in range from 2 to 4.

Min and Max Scale

The scale mean value of scattered objects depends on the minimum and maximum scale mean values and the image mask values: the mask values are used for linear interpolation between the minimum and maximum scale values.

The mean scale value cannot be negative.

Min scale	Sets the scale mean value for objects scattered in the areas with low density (according to the image mask). The higher the value, the bigger the objects will be in such areas. Notice When image mask is not set, this parameter isn't taken into account as the default mask stores only the maximum mask values (there are no areas with low density).
Max scale	Sets the scale mean value for objects scattered in the areas with high density (according to the image mask). The higher the value, the bigger the objects will be in such areas.

For example, if the following image mask is used:

The clutter objects will be scaled as follows:


Min scale = 1; Max scale = 3	Min scale = 3; Max scale = 1

Offset

Height offset parameter controls whether all objects are positioned at one height or some are found higher or lower. For example, with offset stones can be dug deep into the ground so that only a small top part is visible, or placed higher and look bigger.

The offset is measured in units.

Rotation X
Rotation Y Rotation Z

These parameters allow to randomly orient the scattered objects.

The rotation is set in angles.
If a spread value is set to 180, objects will be rotated by 360 degrees.

Besides scattering the meshes evenly across the whole area, a mask for their positioning can be used. It controls where the meshes should be placed.

Image Mask	Mask determines areas across which the objects are randomly scattered and areas where there will be no objects from the list. For example, on the terrain a mask allows to scatter stones across the rocky areas, while leaving the grassy ones free from rocks. Notice When the image mask is not set, the default mask with maximum mask values will be used. The maximum mask value is 255. The mask is one-channel texture (R8). If there are more channels in the provided mask, they will be ignored. Zero color value specify the areas without Clutter objects. The higher the color value is, the more objects there are in this area and the denser they are positioned. Color value of 255 means the density is as specified by the corresponding parameter. Masking is done for all objects that are contained in the Clutter list. Notice To paint the image mask directly in the scene, use Mask Editor.
Threshold for mask	To control the strength of masking, a mask threshold is used. It checks the masked density for an area and if a threshold value is higher than the color value of the mask, objects are scattered across it. If the masked density is not enough, the places is left bare. With the minimum value of 0, the mask is applied as it is. With higher threshold value, the objects will be scattered only in areas marked by the mask as dense. Instead of sparse distribution, objects scattered here and there, they are likely to be rendered in dense isolated groups. With the maximum value of 1, there will be no objects scattered at all.
Terrain Mask	Mask of the Landscape Terrain to be used to define the area where clutter object are to be placed.
Mesh Mask	A mesh-based mask can be used to place the objects. Vector masking makes it possible to create roads, rivers, etc. with extremely high precision regardless of the mask texture resolution. A mesh for masking should be a simple planar mesh. Mesh used as a mask Mesh-based masking
Inverse	The Inverse flag toggles if the objects are placed inside or outside the mesh contour. Inverse masking
Cutout Intersection	Cutout bit mask. This mask is used to cut out clutter meshes in the areas of intersection with objects and decals (e.g. can be used to remove vegetation under houses or from the surface of roads projected using decals). Clutter meshes will be cut out by objects and decals that have their intersection masks matching this one (one bit at least).
Cutout Inverse	Toggles the value that indicates whether the clutter meshes should be rendered inside or outside the areas determined by the cutout intersection mask.

Mesh Clutter can also scatter objects along the relief. For that, an underlying surface should me made a parent of the Mesh Clutter node. (If there are some nodes in the hierarchy between a terrain or mesh node and Mesh Clutter, intersections will still be checked.)

A parent for intersection can only be a terrain or a mesh object. The mesh should be terrain-like, i.e. it should have only one surface vertically, along the Z coordinate.

NoticeMesh Clutter performs only one vertical intersection testing with parent mesh geometry. If there are surfaces underneath the upper surface, they will be ignored. For example, to scatter reference nodes across the whole sphere, two hemisphere meshes need to be used.

Intersection	After the Intersection box is checked, objects will be scattered across the surface of the parent object. It does not matter if the Mesh Clutter is bigger than the parent object in size - the scattering area will be still be limited to parent object surfaces.
Orientation	This option allows to set a parent surface normal vector as the initial orientation for scattered objects. It means, if the surface in some place is vertical, the up direction for objects scattered over it will be actually pointing to the side. They can be still randomly rotated but relatively to the orientation of the parent normal. This parameter is enabled only if Intersection option is checked.
Angle	Just like in the case with grass, the scattering can take into account how steep the slope is. By the minimum value of 0, it makes no difference how flat or how tilted the surface over which the Clutter objects are scattered. The bigger the value is, the flatter the place should be for objects to be scattered over it. So, higher values make less steep surfaces bare. By the maximum value of 1, the objects can be scattered only over perfectly horizontal surface. This parameter is enabled only if Intersection option is checked.

If you require more freedom in adjusting an existing mesh clutter, you can convert it to a mesh cluster using the relevant context-menu option.

In This Article:

See also#

Creating Mesh Clutter#

Mesh Clutter Parameters#

Randomizing Clutter Objects#

Masking Areas with Objects#

Orienting along the Relief#

Creating Mesh Clusters from Mesh Clutters#