Latest Version

Discover the latest, currently supported, versions of our Tool!

5.5.3

28 February 2025

Blender Compatibility: Blender 4.2 LTS, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5LTS

Retro Compatibility: Accepts system(s) made with Scatter 5.0/5.1/5.2/5.3/5.4/5.5

Release-Notes: This is a bugfix release, introducing minor changes.
Improvement: Add support for UNC/network plugin installation path.
Improvement: Fetching online biome previews now downloads the previews only when necessary.
Bugfix: 70% of ui elements in the system-lister drop-down menu were missing on blender 4.2 due to a missing icon.
Bugfix: Biome system didn't apply the bezier-spline distribution settings properly.
Bugfix: Fixed blender freezing when resizing the N panel width to a too small amount (division by zero error).
Bugfix: Unhiding now a system send an update signal to our camera-related features like it should!
Bugfix: Fixed issues for our camera-related features when using choosing a non-camera type as scene camera.
Bugfix: Fixed potential handlers interaction/conflicts with other plugins.
Bugfix: Fixed an integer conversion issue when animating some plugin properties via keyframe or drivers.

5.5.2

28 February 2025

Blender Compatibility: Blender 4.2 LTS, Blender 4.3, Blender 4.4

Retro Compatibility: Accepts system(s) made with Scatter 5.0/5.1/5.2/5.3/5.4/5.5

Release-Notes: This is a bugfix release, introducing minor changes.
Improvement: Compatibility fix for the upcoming Blender version 4.4 (Assuming blender devs do not break the API until release).
Improvement: The Tweak > Scale > Distance Fade feature also has a distance measurement modal operator (eyedropper button).
Improvement: Long text and paragraphs benefits from a new word-wrap functinality depending on the context interface width.
Improvement: Automatically export an image file that might be used by one of your scatters texture-data to your biome library.
Improvement: New description features for scatter-systems & scatter-groups. In your system lister drop down menu, you'll be able to show or hide description properties that can edit. Once a description is defined, you'll be able to read it's content simply by overing on the scatter-item name of the lister interface.
Improvement: When you are tweaking a scatter-system, in the 'per category' header menu (the gearwheel icon) you'll have the ability to apply the active system settings to all members of the same group.
Bugfix: We fixed unreliable camera update signals, impacting any camera related features.
Bugfix: Manual mode distributed instances not refreshing when swapping a surfaces in the 'Tweak > Surfaces' panel.
Bugfix: Creating a link override was adding an extra fake user.
Bugfix: Fixing error message "KeyError: '.S Replace UUID MKV' not found.""
Bugfix: Unreliable behavior when when using scatter operators with multiple blender windows simultaneously.
Note: We improved our documentation website anchoring system, and added a new search functionality.

5.5.1

6 December 2024

Blender Compatibility: Blender 4.2 LTS & Blender 4.3

Retro Compatibility: Accepts system(s) made with Scatter 5.0/5.1/5.2/5.3/5.4/5.5

Release-Notes: This is a bugfix release, introducing minor changes.
Improvement: Added support for spline distribution in the quick-scatter pie menu.
Improvement: Added spline pathway width parameter in the 'on-creation' popover menu for the spline drawing mask option.
Improvement: Improved json exporter operator after user request.
Improvement: You can now drag and drop a .scatpack to install.
Improvement: You can now save your biome as favorite in the biome dropdown menu. The show favorite button is located next to the biome search field.
Improvement: Improved biome search method. New recursive search level option exposed in ui. New .blend path caching system, the paths of your .blends will be saved for faster later use.
Improvement: Scripts cleanup. Implementing use of match case for python 3.10.
Improvement: Clearer legalities and product shipment structure in accordance to BlenderFoundation guidelines, clearer indication of trademarks using special trademark unicode caracter.
Bugfix: Slow blender performances due to excessive call of depsgraph handler functions.
Bugfix: Quick-scatter pie menu not working properly.
Bugfix: Errors when scattering biomes with unsupported RGBA colors.
Bugfix: Error messages when using our plugin in blender headless/background mode.
Bugfix: Errors when loading biomes from non standard strings in directory path.
Bugfix: Fix errors when updating older scatter-systems to 5.5 geometry-node engine.
Bugfix: Fix error when copy/pasting a scatter with bezier-area distribution.
Bugfix: Some of our interface icons sometimes rendering transparent. Please contact us if you have this issue again.

5.5

15 November 2024

Latest Major Release

Blender Compatibility: Blender 4.2 LTS & Blender 4.3

Retro Compatibility: Accepts system(s) made with Scatter 5.0/5.1/5.2/5.3/5.4/5.5

Credit: Hero Artwork by Maarten Nauta

Release-Notes: In this a major release, we introduce 3 new distribution methods and important new features, such as ecosystem density, or proximity imprint simulation and many others changes, improvements, and fixes.
Compatibility-Notes: Some settings have changed since previous versions, expect changes when updating your scatters.
New-Feature: 3 new distribution methods
- ‘Bezier-Area’ Scatter within the inner area of a selected bezier object, then optionally project the distribution into your chosen surface(s). Because the distribution is generated first on a curve object, then projected on your surface(s) the workflow allows you to distribute on areas of extremely large terrains with no issues.
- ‘Bezier-Spline’ Scatter on a chosen spline, with various options and submethods available. Option to project on your chosen surface(s) also available. This distribution method is also available on the 'on creation' settings menu located in the creation panel: You are able to directly paint a curve spline mask for biomes if the paint method is set to draw spline.
- ‘Empties’ Choose a collection of empties, and instantiate objects on them. Option to project on your chosen surface(s) also available.
New-Feature: Rework of the ‘In Volume’ distribution method. Now supporting random or grid distribution submethod.
New-Feature: New 'Efficient Distribution' option available for the camera culling feature. Enabled by default, this option significantly boost your compute speed when working with large terrains.
New-Feature: New ecosystem density feature, scatter only on dense/scarce areas of chosen scatter-systems.
New-Feature: New manual mode brushes
- ‘Line’ distribution brush. Draw points at regular interval along a straight line projected from the global Z axis.
- ‘Lasso Delete’ removal brush. A new lasso deletion brush.
- ‘Push’ translation brush. Push manually distributed instances around depending on the direction of your brush-strokes.
- ‘Split’ translation brush. Create a pathway between manually distributed instances. Press CTRL for the reverse effect.
- ‘Attract’ translation brush. Attract manually distributed instances together. Press CTRL for the reverse effect.
- ‘Turbulence’ translation brush. Randomly push the location of manually distributed instances around, great if you'd like to create a random.
New-Feature: New 'smoothing' options, handy if you'd like your effects to not be influenced by the slightest mesh imperfection of your surface(s). Available for the 'rotation align normal/tangent downslope' and 'abiotic slope/orientation/curvature' features.
New-Feature: Enhanced and improved Wind-waves features with new options and sliders. You are now able to create wind patterns that also tilt on its sides instead of tilting unilaterally facing the general wind-wave texture direction.
New-Feature: New proximity imprint simulation option for the proximity repel features. Create an imprint effect from passing colliders. (This option requires an animation running).
New-Feature: Automatic data-transfer of surfaces attributes when using these new distribution methods, also for manual mode distribution. (previously it was required of users to click on an operator to transfer the surface's attributes).
New-Feature: New methods for the align Z/Y axis features, in order to align the rotation instances to the active camera.
New-Feature: Improvement of the offset features. Now featuring new local/global spaces methods, seeds, and a reworked 'random' offset method, previously called 'noise animation'.
New-Feature: For features relying on the active camera (such as camera visibility) the camera update behavior drop-down enum now features a new ‘real-time’ option. When choosing this option, the Geometry-node scatter engine will use the recently added 'Active Camera' input node instead of relying on our plugin constantly feeding camera transforms information. So use this feature if you'd like to send your .blend file to a cloud render.
New-Feature: Better passive data management:
- We now support appending/linking scatters from other .blend files. To do so, simply append or link scatter_obj or emitters from your other files.
- We now support duplicating scenes containing scatters. Behavior when scattering across multiple scenes is improved.
- We now support cross ‘.blend’ file copy/pasting of objects containing scatter systems. Use the CtrlC/CtrlV shortcuts on an emitter or a scatter object ('scatter_obj' objects containing the instances scatters) from one file to another.
New-Feature: New universal feature mask image paint method. Define your feature influence area with the help of an image. We also slightly changed the feature masks interface, it now uses a toggle button, default set to False, instead of a drop down set to 'None'.
Improvement: Official support for the new extension system (you can now drag and drop a plugin .zip directly into blender 4.2+ to install.)
Improvement: Scatter-Engine rework, we have improved our geometry-node Scatter-Engine to support the new 'matrix 4x4' socket. Most transforms information are now stored as matrix attributes or field noodles instead of vectors resulting in performance enhancements.
Improvement: The scatter-system(s) lister interface colors now supports alpha values. If you set your blender viewport display colors to 'object' you'll be able to adjust the transparency of your scatter-layers by tweaking the color alpha value.
Improvement: Enhance scatter export operators, convert scatters into real blender objects from a newly designed dialog box operator located in the extra panel, or in the system lister drop-down menu.
Improvement: Better error notification and management-system for missing scatter_obj or emitters or else. You'll get notified & directly proposed a solution if a problem were to occur.
Improvement: New default user-interface look consisting of checkbox buttons with icons. If you don’t like this style, disable ‘use toggles with icons’ in the plugin preferences.
Improvement: Scattering the selected assets will now consider the selection across all possible open asset-browser editors instead of picking the first one found.
Improvement: New ‘animation data’ interface in the extra panel in order to easily overview the currently animated plugin properties via drivers or keyframes.
Improvement: The visibility frustum culling feature now supports blender horizontal or vertical sensor fit method camera data options.
Improvement: Manual mode ‘Relax’ translation brush improvement. The relax algorithm is much faster and better at offsetting manually distributed instances at equidistant locations.
Improvement: The Copy/paste systems operation located in system lister drop-down menu now supports manual mode scatters as well.
Improvement: Conformity to 'bpy.app.online_access'. The plugin won't connect to the internet to load available scatpacks icons if blender is on offline mode.
Improvement: It is now possible to have negative seed properties values.
Improvement: Added the ability to choose a local or global space for the noise features masks.
Improvement: Improved responsiveness when tweaking Vector or Color scatter properties.
Improvement: We added new 'helper' placeholders to the placeholder list (in the 'Display As' feature). Two new placeholders are available: A triangular tangent green arrow, and a normal blue arrow.
Improvement: Biome creators can now set custom python instructions on biome-loading operations. A new "script" dictionary need to be added in the .biome json file manually via a text editor. This dict should contain an "operation_name" string value as well as a "file_name" value being the name of the script the creator want to execute during loading. This script will have access to the variables 'psys', 'surfaces' and 'emitter'.
Improvement: We rewrote, added, and enhanced most of 'on hover' descriptions. To learn more about features, sliders and options, hover over their properties in the interface with your mouse while staying still for half a second. You should be able to understand features without the need of using this documentation website
improvement: Addon-preferences properties improvements
- You can now import or export your Geo-Scatter plugin settings as '.geoscattersettings' files. Great to save your settings and shortcuts saved across multiple versions of Geo-Scatter, or across many computers.
- Our plugin can now support multiple languages. You are able to swap between languages if a translation '.csv' file is found in the directory '..plugins/Geo-Scatter/translations/'.
- A new option to fully hide 'scatter_obj' modifiers in addition to their object viewport status is available in the Geo-Scatter plugin preferences. By default only the scatter_obj will be hidden in the viewport, you can use this option to force hide also the scatter_obj geometry node modifiers, this will save up some evaluation time therefore saving on performances.
Bugfix: Operator-override error fix, when trying to open the biome-manager.
Bugfix: Operator-override error fix, when using operators of the procedural vertex-group workflow.
Bugfix: Important fixes on keyframes/drivers animated plugin properties. Because blender encode animation data of any plugin's PropertyGroup in an orderly manner, deleting a scatter would've resulted in a re-order of the scattering system's PropertyGroup therefore making any animation data incorrect. While there's no direct way to fix this issue, we've found an indirect solution to this problem.
Bugfix: Creating a new empty emitter thrown errors.
Bugfix: We tweaked the behavior of the clump rotation normal influence slider, this only applies to clump distribution method.
Bugfix: Batch randomizing scatters led to changes in clump-distribution densities.
Bugfix: Interface error if no instancing collection was chosen.
Bugfix: For our textures-data system, we fixed the visualizer, as it sometimes produced inaccurate projection-transforms.
Bugfix: Fixed wrong texture muscgrave_type to noise_type since blender musgrave textures are gone.
Bugfix: Fixing few bugs related to manual-distribution mode.
Bugfix: Inaccurate final render statistics.
Bugfix: Inaccurate calculations if setting a transition slider to 0.
Bugfix: Fixing an 'offset falling animation' property still active if the rotation sub-option was disabled.
Note: Some of you reported an unjustified lag when playing an animation, we reported this issue, and it is related to a blender geometrynode bug. (See Report)
Note: For the new bezier-spline distribution method, we are aware of a blender geometry-node bug where the curve incline won't follow the curve-tilt data in global space. (See Report)
Note: If you used the 5.5 BETA and saved some .blend files with it, please use the 'Force-Update' button located in the plugin manager preferences to update your blend file with the official released 'Scatter-Engine MKV'.

5.4.2

20 January 2024

Blender Compatibility: Blender 4.0 to Blender 4.2

Retro Compatibility: Accepts system(s) made with Scatter 5.0/5.1/5.2/5.3/5.4

Release-Notes: This is a blender 4.0+ compatibility release. Please note that installation on blender 4.2 needs to be manual. Prefer to use v5.5.
Bugfix: Fix missing manual mode scatters. Update signal will be sent when entering manual mode again.
Bugfix: Compatibility with blender 4.0+ new asset browser API.
Bugfix: Compatibility with blender 4.0+ new context override API.
Bugfix: Fix error when calculating an estimated scatter count of over 2 billion 147 million instances (being blender integer limits).

5.4.1

4 October 2023

Blender Compatibility: Blender 3.3 LTS to 3.6LTS

Retro Compatibility: Accepts system(s) made with Scatter 5.0/5.1/5.2/5.3/5.4

Release-Notes: This is a minor bugfix release
Improvement: Added the possibility to set a scatter-texture to None in order to reset a scatter-texture back to nothing.
Improvement: more options for the 'Apply to all' operator located per categories corner menu.
Improvement: when shader visibility is enabled, placeholder will retain the assigned color of the scatter instead of turning white.
Improvement: An operator is available in the plugin preferences to reload the icons if needed (sometimes some icons can be transparent).
Improvement: borders scale transition can now reach negative values.
Improvement: The infobox in the 3Dviewport can now be resized.
Bugfix: Automatically fixing a missing links when swapping blender version (correction of a blender bug).
Bugfix: Groups features couldn't be animated with keyframes.
Bugfix: Error message when trying to display a warning popup.
Bugfix: Biomes 'bounding box' warning sometimes not needed when already using the 'display as' option.
Bugfix: Biomes environment path fix: We now first take into consideration the 'custom paths', great for fixing naming collision with the asset browser .blend names.
Bugfix: Couldn't align the instance normal to the surface normal with manual mode scatter's.
Bugfix: Features visibility states improvements.
Bugfix: Updating the nodetrees to the latest version was sometimes leading into error messages.
Bugfix: Manual mode uuid error message on launch.

5.4

4 July 2023

Major Release

Blender Compatibility: Blender 3.3 LTS to 3.6LTS

Retro Compatibility: Accepts system(s) made with Scatter 5.0/5.1/5.2/5.3/5.4

Credit: Hero Artwork by GurJas Studios

Release-Notes: In this release, we introduce the concept of Scatter-Groups. Scatter-Groups are not only great to organize your scenes, but they will become the new standard on how to intuitively assign your environments composition on your surfaces with ease!
Compatibility-Notes: Some settings have changed since previous versions, expect changes when updating your scatters.
New-Feature: New group implementation:
- Group or ungroup the selected scatter-system(s) in the system lister right drop-down menu.
- Organize your scatter layers by renaming and opening/closing a group interface
- Set a group as active in order to access group features, like group culling masks, group pattern, or group scale boost
- Biomes and on creation biome masks will now use the group implementation
New-Feature: New set of icons for system-lister's interfaces, representing the features being fully enabled/partially enabled/fully disabled for a given collection of scatters.
New-Feature: Complete rework of the large, dedicated, system-lister interface.
New-Feature: Ability to batch randomize scatter system(s) in the large system lister or in the small system lister drop-down menu.
New-Feature: The FOV settings can now be saved per camera's
New-Feature: Ability to batch enable/disable the bounding box of the selected system(s), this option is located in the large lister left panel.
New-Feature: New dedicated statistic interface.
New-Feature: New apply settings operator, in the per-feature header popover menu. We now have the ability to apply the active settings to the selected system(s), to all selected system(s) across all emitters, or to all the system(s) of your scene.
Improvement: Perfected user interface.
Improvement: Interface warnings if one of your surface(s) scale isn't applied, this message will pop in the scale feature category.
Improvement: Option to fix a scatter system if some errors got detected.
Improvement: Better swap between scene behavior, Geo-Scatter will no longer automatically hide scatter-layers from one scene to another.
Bugfix: Non-reactive camera visibility feature.
Bugfix: Numpy versioning issue.
Bugfix: Pattern texture vizualisation not working.
Bugfix: MacOS users non-alphabetical presets filtering.
Bugfix: Elevation feature not working for altitudes higher than 300 meters
Bugfix: Error when opening the biome manager from the creation panel.

Compatibility Advices

It's important to follow these advices for an issue free experience!

Compatibility Advices

Please verify your Blender plugin compatibility before installing anything. Plugins are not compatible with any Blender versions.
The best demeanor with any software is to stick working on your projects on the same version from start to end.
Never read a blend file from a higher version in a lower version of Blender. Saving new file in olrder version might corrupt your file forever.

Compatibility Table

Y axis represents the Plugin versions, X axis represents Blender versions.

The checkmarks are highlighting Plugin versions compatible with Blender versions.

	3.0	3.1	3.2	3.3	3.4	3.5	3.6	4.0	4.1	4.2	4.3	4.4	4.5
5.5.3										✔	✔	✔	✔
5.5.2										✔	✔	✔
5.5.1										✔	✔
5.5										✔	✔
5.4.2								✔	✔	✔
5.4.1				✔	✔	✔	✔
5.4				✔	✔	✔	✔
5.3.2				✔	✔
5.3.1				✔
5.3				✔
5.2.1			✔
5.2			✔
5.1		✔
5.0	✔

Older Versions

Older versions of our plugin, no longer maintained!

5.3.2

28 February 2023

Blender Compatibility: Blender 3.3 LTS & Blender 3.4 [Outdated]

Retro Compatibility: Accepts system(s) made with Scatter 5.0/5.1/5.2/5.3

Release-Notes: This relatively small update fixes a few bugs, a crash, and improves some features.
With this update also comes an important platform improvement consisting of the following:
We launched www.geoscatter.com
All biomes available are now elegantly displayed within www.geoscatter.com/biomes take a peek!
Change in our licensing: Our scripts are indeed released under GNU GPL, however, our geometry-node engine is released under a license similar to royalty-free, with the added benefit granting licensees the ability to freely share a scene containing the engine, and the added restriction to prohibit interaction with our nodes through scripts coming from unknown sources. Please read www.geoscatter.com/legal for the complete legal agreement. If you have questions regarding this license, don't hesitate to reach us.
We released our free "Biome-Reader" plugin, a dumbed-down version of Geo-Scatter available for all b3d users. Users will be able to install, read, and scatter biomes freely. Biome-Reader can be downloaded for free at www.geoscatter.com/download/. Please do not install both plugins simultaneously.
The old "starter library" that used to be shipped with our plugin has been improved:
We reworked most assets and textures to create a higher-quality collection of plants. It's now standalone and rebranded as "The Plant Library", it's free and accessible to all Blender users! Why? We do not want to sell vegetation, this library was always meant to be a demonstration of the capabilities of our plugin, and now it serves as a very good introduction to our Biome system. Checkout the differences!
The old library will now be considered as "Legacy", rest assured it will still be available for download within the new product page. Both on the Blender-market or gumroad.
The Winter and Tree assets are currently missing from this rework, we intend to update them later on.
The biomes also have been reworked, there are fewer, but they are much better in terms of quality. Compare by yourself: old biomes vs new biomes.
Both can be installed simultaneously.
improvement: You'll no longer see "Scatter5" in the plugin name or in your collections. Please make sure to uninstall older "Scatter5" plugins first.
Improvement: New notification system, a new panel will appear if context informations are needed.
improvement: better viewlayers management system, the plugin will not change viewlayers automatically, the viewlayers will stay intact per scenes.
Improvement: now we have four various ways users can switch emitters in each panels headers. We added an "emitter-switch menu".
Improvement: You'll be also able to switch emitters from the quick lister menu (CTRL+SHIFT+Q by default)
Improvement: Quick scatter pie menu is back, users didn't like the shortcut-based operator we introduced recently.
Improvement: Better security behavior warnings will now let you the ability to undo default behavior.
Improvement: Licenses written within the plugin preferences, & extra indication if the user is holding Individual/Team/Studio variants.
Bugfix: Inaccurate rendering view states for optimization features.
Bugfix: Manual mode instances disappearance.
Bugfix: Camera clipping stops working.
Bugfix: Bounding box security message not appearing for the biome loading operator.
Bugfix: Procedural watershed mask not working.
Bugfix: Keyframing vectorial values didn't work.
Bugfix: Crash on keyframes animations & other animation crashes.
Bugfix: Snow animation playback even if all scatter-system(s) of your scene is hidden .
Bugfix: Fixed the need to constantly reload your biome-library when opening new .blends.

5.3.1

15 November 2022

Blender Compatibility: Blender 3.3 LTS [Outdated]

Retro Compatibility: Accepts system(s) made with Scatter 5.0/5.1/5.2/5.3

Release-Notes: Important Bugfix Release, and smaller feature improvements, please prefer using 5.3.1 over 5.3. Rebranding: Did you know that we are the first scattering plugin for Blender? Back then we simply chose to name our plugin "Scatter". We will now call ourselves "Geo-Scatter". Why "Geo"? Because of the act of scattering 3D geometry, and the fact that our plugin is built on a powerful geometry-node pipeline! We sincerely hope that you like our new name.
New-Feature: New operator that can convert all .blend files in the selected folder to an asset-browser compatible format. This option is located in the plugin manager > preferences.
Improvement: Greatly improved the biome environment path behavior, added a new "search in asset libraries" option.
Improvement: Previously, biomes were forced to store all their assets in a single .blend per layer, it is no longer the case. Now, a single biome layer can contain many assets from many different .blend files. This version will be a requirement for all upcoming biomes pack releases, newer biome packs will probably not be readable in older versions of our plugin.
Improvement: Security-actions overhaul. The plugin will now ask you if you would like to enable some optimization features instead of simply warning you.
Improvement: Ability to export biomes that are using many .blend files as assets sources.
Improvement: The camera fov-boost option is now also available in the scattering operators behavior menu.
Improvement: Ability to batch add/remove objects from our collection interface with the ALT key.
Bugfix: Blender crash on rendering an animation.
Bugfix: Impossible to render animated plugin properties.
Bugfix: Inaccurate render-states options for the display/ visibility features (this fix will be available only for newer files).
Bugfix: Falloff revert button not working for the camera distance-culling feature.
Bugfix: Export as mesh bug.
Bugfix: Asset browser areas located in non-active windows not being recognized properly.
Bugfix: Repulsion feature enabled for some biomes, even tho all pointers are empty.
Bugfix: Removed the hard limit on the clump density property.
Bugfix: Missing copy/paste functionalities for some of the display properties.

5.3

4 October 2022

Major Release

Blender Compatibility: Blender 3.3 LTS [Outdated]

Retro Compatibility: Accepts system(s) made with Scatter 5.0/5.1/5.2/5.3

Credit: Hero Artwork by Megatecture

Release-Notes: This update consists of major improvements to our plugin features, interface, and pipeline. Most importantly, the multi-surface scattering implementation.
Compatibility-Notes: Some settings have changed since previous versions, expect changes when updating your scatters.
New-Feature: One of the most ambitious features we worked on so far, is the integration of a multi-surface scattering ability, which we rigorously implemented deep into our scattering workflow! That's a first for Blender plugins, here are a few implementation examples:
- All our features have been adapted in order to work in the global world-space, or per individual surface space.
- The ability to distribute in local or global space has been preserved! Working with animated surfaces is possible, as we'll keep the density stable with the local space option.
- Some inputs will be highlighted in red if a mesh-attribute (vertex group/ vertex color/uv layer) is not shared across all of your surfaces.
- We made sure painting vertex masks on many surfaces is a smooth experience. When creating or painting masks, the plugin will ensure that the attribute is shared across all of your chosen surfaces & will be set as active automatically.
- The creation operators now have a "future surfaces" option in their creation popovers.
- Manual mode also accepts many surfaces as one large painting canvas. The scattered points will be automatically attached to each parent-surface. Swapping surfaces won't remove the created points.
New-Feature: We implemented new transition falloff controls everywhere in our toolset. This implementation consists of two new functionalities:
- Transition-graph, useful for defining user-defined transitions falloff. When interacting with the graph, we do support theALT-for-bach & settings-synchronization features.
- Transition-noise, blend your transition with a noise pattern. This effect is quite overlooked in most scattering plugins, even in other 3d software, and it is quite essential in order to reach a more natural-looking transition in our opinion!
New-Feature: Instance count.
- You are now able to distribute instances based on a density (/m²) or by a total instance count slider.
- Calculate the total number of instances shown on screen/render in the visibility category, or in the plugin manager lister interface.
- New "Max amount" visibility feature. Automatically prevent your scatter to reach a given instance count threshold.
New-Feature: We added a new "display as point cloud" option, this display method is quite promising and very useful to understand the final shape of your distribution while taking advantage of the very fast point drawing. Note that T93245 & T92963 are important issues that need to be solved by the Blender developers.
Improvement: Better Camera Optimization.
- The camera frustum will adapt automatically, by default.
- An occlusion culling method is now available.
- If you'd like your settings to be unique per camera, please toggle "Per Cam Settings".
New-Feature: It is now possible to sample alpha channels in color-masks or pattern features.
New-Feature: New boolean density-mask, mask inside/outside volumes of objects in a given collection.
New-Feature: New rotation features.
- New normal alignment methods: "random" and "surface origin".
- New tangent alignment method: "surface origin".
- The rotation > tilt feature has a new "noise" method.
Improvement: Better proximity features.
- The "remove near" and "lean near" features have been merged into a single "repel" feature. Two repel slots are available.
- The "outskirt" feature is much faster (be aware that it is still relatively heavy to compute than the usual settings).
New-Feature: The Altitude abiotic feature now supports meters or percentage units.
New-Feature: Patterns:
- A 3rd pattern slot is now available.
- A new object texture projection method is available.
Improvement: Wind animations now have clip length controls for loop-able or fixed animations.
Improvement: Easily open the geometry node engine of the active system (in the side menu next to system-lister interface).
Improvement: Better interface.
- We no longer have a double-panel structure.
- Each feature has collapse arrows.
- The collapsable arrows of panels & features can be opened/closed with a sliding gesture, just like native Blender.
- Collection pointers now have popover interfaces for quickly adding/removing/selecting objects.
- The per-settings gear icon will contextually change if the settings category is locked or synched.
- There are new toggles to enable/disable settings per category in the header.
- There is a new "apply to selected" operator right next to the per-category copy/paste options.
- The "viewport/rendered/render" states of the visibility & display optimization features now use icons instead of drop-downs for a clearer UX.
- New icons for our distribution methods.
- The system lister interface of our plugin manager has been improved.
Improvement: Biomes are now loading much faster!
New-Feature: use CTRL+SHIFT+Q to quickly open a small system-lister interface
Improvement: Better Presets Handling
- Applying a preset to the selected scatter-systems or to a settings category is clearer with the new drop-down menu.
- New per-category presets if you'd like to quickly save & re-use settings combinations. The presets will be saved in your scatter-library.
New-Feature: Scale fading. Force the scenery perspective by scaling up/down your instances depending on how far/close they are from the active camera.
New-Feature: Convert your scatter to one large merged mesh. Please be aware of the large polycount it might produce.
New-Feature: "Bounding-box" & "Point_cloud" proximity contact methods are now available for the ecosystems & proximity repel features.
Manual Mode rewrite:
- Improvement: New on-screen drawing cursor (using Blender gpu module).
- Improvement: New tool visual hints while drawing.
- Improvement: New gesture widgets for various tool property types.
- New-Feature: Non-destructive multi-surface support.
- New-Feature: Reorganized tool drop-down menus in the header.
- New-Feature: Optional unified tool settings (for per-tool properties).
- New-Feature: Optional exponential scaling for radius gesture.
- New-Feature: Tools can use falloff to fade their effect.
- New-Feature: Tools can use surface normal interpolation (averaging face normals in tool radius) and direction interpolation (averaging mouse surface or screen movement direction).
- New-Feature: Tools that use radius can use scene or screen relative sizes for it.
- Improvement: Better key config in preferences.
- Improvement: Shortcut for Enter Manual Mode (can be executed in 3d viewport).
- Improvement: Tools can define more gesture shortcuts.
- Improvement: Color theme for all on screen drawing available in preferences.
- Improvement: Dot Brush
  - Created instance can be moved (on mouse move), rotated, and scaled (mouse wheel) while mouse button is pressed down.
- Improvement: Spray and Spray Aligned Brush
  - New Uniform Sampling option: uniformly distributed random points in spray radius.
- Improvement: Lasso Fill Brush
  - New Omit Backfacing option: do not create points on polygons facing away from view.
  - New High Precision option: high resolution for drawn area.
- New-Feature: New Clone Brush
  - Sample points under cursor and clone to a new location. points can be rotated and scaled. rotation and scale can be aplied on sampled instances as well. rotation and scale can be randomized after each use.
  - Sampled points are kept until the end of session.
- Improvement: Move Brush
  - New Proportional Mode.
- Improvement: Relax Brush
  - New Update Surface Normal option.
- Improvement: Drop-Down Brush
  - Optionally can drop to ground plane if no other surface is bellow instance.
- Improvement: Eraser Brush
  - New Screen mode to erase points away from any surface.
- Improvement: Dilute Brush
  - New algorithm with a more even result.
- Improvement: Operators
  - New Convert From Procedural option to Preserve Appearance of system being converted. will use Instance > Spawn > Manual Index to preserve instance assignments to points.
- Bugfix: Camera related features not rendering properly
- Bugfix: Various manual mode bugs
- change: The quick scatter operator now calls a shortcut-based modal menu instead of the old pie menu. A new dynamic selection process for future instances is also available within this modal state. If you do not like this change please let us know, we are looking to improve the quick scatter experience and your feedback is welcome.
- change: In the side menu next to the system lister, the "remove selected system" operator has been replaced by a "remove all" operator. Now in order to remove the selected system(s) please hold the ALT key while pressing the remove button (subtract icon).

5.2.1

03 September 2022

Blender Compatibility: Blender 3.2 [Outdated]

Retro Compatibility: Accepts system(s) made with Scatter 5.0/5.1/5.2

Release-Note: Small bugfix release
Bugfix: Blender 3.2.2 broke our shortcuts (ALT behavior), please use Scatter 5.2.1 for Blender 3.2.2+

5.2

13 June 2022

Blender Compatibility: Blender 3.2 [Outdated]

Retro Compatibility: Accepts system(s) made with Scatter 5.0/5.1/5.2

Credit: Hero Artwork by Luan3dr

Important Note: You might need to re-adjust your wind settings or placeholder settings if using an older system.
Note: We updated the scatter5 geometry node engine to Blender 3.2.
please run the "update node-tree" operator in order to convert your scatter system(s) first.
Note: There is a new biome collaboration available: Forestation by bproduction.
Improvement: Manual mode has new features:
- New-Feature: New 2.5d "relax" brush, useful for smoothing out points positions.
- New-Feature: Surface move brush now supports rotation & scale operations with the mouse roll hotkey.
- New-Feature: New "intersect points" operator, useful to update the position of your manually distributed points on a new surface.
- Improvement: Manual mode now supports Vgroup's/Vcol's or UV's related features. please run the "Refresh Attribute" operator in order to transfer the attributes on the scatter-object mesh first.
- Improvement: Like Blender native behavior, the CTRL shortcut to quickly access the erase brush when using creation brushes.
- Improvement: Manual mode now supports custom navigation shortcuts.
Improvement: More seeds options:
- New-Feature: The scatter-textures data, used by the pattern features, now include a random transform option based on chosen seed.
- New-Feature: The 'noise' universal features mask now includes a random transform seed slider.
- New-Feature: We implemented a master seed in the extra panel that has an influence on every other scatter5 seed of your blend file.
  Changing this seed is a fast way to iterate on your environment design (Pro tip: you can animate this seed with the '#frame' driver, and run an animation).
Improvement: 3 new distribution modes:
- New-Feature: New "Stable deform" distribution mode. This distribution method is based on UV space and is ideal when you are actively deforming/animating your emitting surface, as the location of instances will stay stable.
- New-Feature: New "Volume" distribution mode.
- New-Feature: New "Per Edge" distribution mode. Either choose to place your instance per edges center or align the instance following the edge direction. An extra "edge length influence" feature is available in the scale category.
Improvement: Wind features improvements:
- Improvement: The wind-wave feature is now loop-able by default, it will automatically adapt depending on your scene start/end frames.
- Improvement: We exposed the 'distortion" slider of the wind-wave pattern.
- Improvement: The turbulence feature is now optionally loop-able, it will automatically adapt depending on your scene start/end frames.
Improvement: "Per Face" distribution mode improvements:
- Improvement: The default tangent that stays stable even when rotating a face.
- New-Feature: New "face size influence" feature is available in the scale category.
New-Feature: Scatter5 can automatically hide the system(s) when hiding the emitter.
This update behavior is available on the 'Extra' panel, it will be turned off by default.
New-Feature: The placeholders now have preview icons and we added 10 new placeholder objects. This means you might need to re-select your previous placeholder object when converting a scatter system from 5.0 or 5.1.
New-Feature: New "Boundary" tangent alignment feature, ideal for hard-surface scatter where instances should stay aligned according to the surface boundary edges.
New-Feature: All Scatter5 properties now partially support keyframes/drivers. Be aware that Blender will store this animation data depending on your scatter system list order, this is sadly a Blender limitation that we cannot change.
New-Feature: New "Face Preview" visibility feature. Useful when working with large emitter surfaces, as you are able to sample a preview area on the viewport and render the full area on render.
New-Feature: The "Remove Near" feature now has an extra "Consider Volume" option.
Improvement: The curvature/border abiotic features are now calculated in real-time.
Improvement: The camera update dependencies are now set on the 'halt' mode by default. It is now also possible to set a custom update rate.
Improvement: The collections pointer properties now have an "Add" operator to quickly create a collection containing the selected objects.
Improvement: Clearly comprehend which categories of settings are being activated with the new sub panels icons.
Improvement: All our modal operators now have a new info box interface to display shortcuts or other information.
Improvement: The enter manual mode operator now retains the last brushes used.
Improvement: Better performance when hiding scatter system(s).
Improvement: A new warning message subpanel will appear when needed in the tweaking panel.
Improvement: Working on multiple unique scenes is now fully supported.
Improvement: Linking a scatter_obj from another file is now fully supported.
Improvement: The property math operation is now also supported on other distribution modes, and on the default scale feature.
Bugfix: Error message when using the draw bezier area operator from the quick scatter mode.
Bugfix: Error with manual mode shortcuts.

5.1

13 April 2022

Blender Compatibility: Blender 3.1 [Outdated]

Retro Compatibility: Accepts system(s) made with Scatter 5.0/5.1

Credit: Hero Artwork by BD3D

Improvement: The creation process of our scattering workflow has been improved! We added new handy scattering operators based on pie menus and shortcuts that let users scatter faster than ever.
Improvement: The manual workflow of Scatter5 also had its dose of polish and new brushes!
Improvement: The bezier-area mask now has a brand new painting mode, we'll be able to paint scatter areas with a lasso style active tool. It is also possible to call this paint operator directly after a biome has been scattered, this is a very efficient way to paint biomes on your emitter surface.
Bugfix: A lot of bugs have been fixed!

5.0

17 December 2021

Complete Rework

Blender Compatibility: Blender 3.0 [Outdated]

Retro Compatibility: Accepts system(s) made with Scatter 5.0/5.1

Credit: Hero Artwork by Florent Lebrun

Important Note: Complete rework of our plugin.
please run the "update node-tree" operator in order to convert your scatter system(s) first.