Purchasing FAQ

List of common questions we recieve by future customers

What is Geo-Scatter?

Geo-Scatter is a professional scattering solution for Blender, helping 3D artists automatically populate large environments with objects like plants, rocks, buildings, or anything else you can imagine that needs to be repetitively spread on a surface evenly or randomly.
It provides advanced features and a streamlined workflow tailored to meet the needs of professionals who require efficient and robust tools for massive and precise scene creation.
With its efficient design, innovative features and easy to use interface and workflow, Geo-Scatter saves both time and costs to professionals across the world, by providing the ultimate scatter tool to their toolbox.

Is there a system requirement for Geo-Scatter?

Geo-Scatter has no special requirements beyond those of Blender itself.
Users working with very large scenes should still have a powerful computer to handle the geometry and rendering load nonetheless. This load depends on the scale of the environment they are trying to render of course. At least 16gb of RAM, a good Nvidia GPU with at least 8Gb of Vram is recommended when working in environmental rendering.
Note that Geo-Scatter includes optimization features that help with performance in large-scale projects. Learn more about Geo-Scatter optimization features on the optimization page!

Why use Geo-Scatter when i can use Geometry node?

While Geometry Nodes are powerful and versatile, building a fully streamlined scattering solution from scratch requires significant time and expertise. Even if you’re comfortable with advanced vector and matrix math, developing and maintaining an in-house pipeline can be a major investment. Why spend valuable resources on R&D when Geo-Scatter is already optimized for your needs? Thousands of professionals have adopted it and never looked back—give it a try!
Geo-Scatter offers an intuitive, ready-to-use solution that simplifies scattering without compromising power. It provides a user-friendly interface and an optimized Geometry Nodes pipeline, designed specifically for professional use. With no complex math required and hundreds of features at your fingertips, Geo-Scatter helps you save both time and effort, making it the most efficient choice for your business.
With Geo-Scatter, you're not just getting a tool; you're investing in reliable support and long-term value. Our team is here to assist with any troubleshooting or technical help, ensuring a smooth experience every step of the way.
Need full flexibility? No problem. Our node-based scatter engine allows for precise customization. You or your team can easily modify the nodetree, add custom Geometry Nodes, or fine-tune the setup to match your exact needs. Plus, our open-source interface code lets you adapt the tool to your workflow seamlessly. Looking for a tailored solution? Contact us at contact@geoscatter.com—we're here to help.

What kind of support and updates can I expect with Geo-Scatter?

Reliable Support: Our team is available to assist with any customization or technical questions, ensuring a smooth experience tailored to your workflow. However, please note that we reserve the right to prioritize inquiries and may not respond to questions that are excessively repetitive or indicate a lack of reasonable effort in understanding the documentation.
Future-Proof Investment: Geo-Scatter evolves alongside Blender, guaranteeing long-term value and compatibility with the latest versions. We are committed to providing continuous updates and improvements based on industry needs and user feedback.

Geo-Scatter comes with an asset-library?

Geo-Scatter is primarily a powerful scattering tool, not an asset library. However, we offer the free Plant-Library, which integrates seamlessly with Geo-Scatter’s powerful biome system—providing an excellent starting point at no additional cost.

Which assets are compatible with Geo-Scatter?

Geo-Scatter can work with any assets in blender, whether they are selected in your viewport or through the Blender Asset Browser editor.
Some third-party creators offer premade “biome packs” specifically designed for Geo-Scatter, that doesn't mean only their assets are only compatible with our tool. Bonus: you can also create your own custom biomes with any assets you like.

Is Geo-Scatter compatible with other renderers such as Octane?

Yes. As long as the scattered objects themselves are supported by your chosen render engine, Geo-Scatter will work as expected. The plugin instantiates standard Blender objects, making it compatible with third-party renderers.

Is Geo-Scatter compatible with render farms or dedicated render servers?

Yes absolutely, because Geo-Scatter is essentially a Geometry-node set-up under the hood, any blender renderfarm will accept the scatter system for the vast majority of its features, they won't need the plugin installed on their server!

Can I redistribute Geo-Scatter online, or to friends & collaborators?

Our product includes an independent script used for the interface licensed under GNU-GPL, which you may share freely, but the scattering is done via our separate 'GEOSCATTER ENGINE' stored in the “engine.blend” file, covered under a royalty-free EULA. You may not redistribute that file or the Geo-Scatter® brand name/logo without our legal permission.
If you own a Team or Studio floating license, our legal agreement grants you the right to share accordingly your floating 'GEOSCATTER ENGINE' license with members of your team (up to 6 users) or across all employees of your studio.

Can I share scenes I made with Geo-Scatter online, or to friends & collaborators?

Yes, you can share your .blend files that use Geo-Scatter, as part of collaborating or showcasing your work if the .blend file is not made public. They won't need a license to read your file.
However that doesn't mean that you transferred a valid license to them. If they wish to interact with the 'GEOSCATTER ENGINE' comprised in your scene, they will need to aquire either a 'Biome-Reader' or 'Geo-Scatter' official license available through the official resellers displayed on our website.
Please be aware of the assets used in a scatter, you may share a scene containing a 'GEOSCATTER ENGINE' but it does not mean the assets of the scatter are legally shareable.
You wish to share a scene made with Geo-Scatter publicly? Don't hesitate to contact us and we'll clear things out.

Can I move my license on other computers?

Yes. The license is “floating,” meaning it’s assigned to you personally, not restricted to a single machine. You can install and use Geo-Scatter on multiple computers as long as you are it's owner.

Can I keep my product forever?

Yes, once purchased you can keep using your version of Geo-Scatter (with it's compatible blender version of course) indefinitely. We don't put any time limit on your usage.

Will I have access to free updates?

All paying customers receive access to the latest product updates. For more details on claiming your copy, see this article.
While updates are currently provided at no additional cost, our update policy may be subject to change in the future.

Can I use your products on commercial project?

Yes, you can use Geo-Scatter, Biome-Reader or Plant Library in any commercial or paid work.
However, this does not mean that you can resell or redistribute them by yourself.

I have another question!

Feel free to reach out to us through Discord, Blender Artists, SuperHive. We’ll be happy to assist with any additional inquiries. See links in the header below.

Commonly Asked Questions

List of common questions our users are asking

How can I locate the original instance object?

If you're unsure where the instances you are scattering are located in your scene, go in NPanel > Geo-Scatter > Tweaking > Instancing and click on the select icon next to your object name to select the objects in your scene. Alternatively, you can hold ALT while clicking on the select icon to recenter the view around the selection. From there you will be able to edit the object in edit mode or change the object materials for example.

How to share my scene to a render farm or to a collaborator?

First of all, make sure the Blender version your collaborator or render farm is using is the exact same version as yours!
Be aware of any linked data or images in your blend file. If you have linked any objects or collections or materials in your scene, your render-farm or collaborator might have missing libraries from their ends.
If your collaborator/render farm also has installed the same version of Geo-Scatter or Biome-Reader they should be able to read your scatters with no issues.
If not:

When you scatter something with our plugin, it will append a geometry-node modifier on a newly created 'scatter_obj'. Therefore your render-farm or friends should be able to read your scatter with no problems, except for the following exceptions:

When animating any of our plugin interface properties via keyframes or drivers, it will require our plugin to be installed and activated to be animated. If you want to ship animated scatters to a render node or collaborator that doesn't have our plugin installed, you will need to animate the equivalent properties of the Geometry-node engine located on your 'scatter_obj' objects.
If you are using features related to the active camera, please set the camera update method to 'real-time' before sharing your .blend file.
If you are using features related to the active camera and your camera has animated lenses or resolution, you will either need to disable the related feature altogether, or animate the camera info matrix values in the Geometry-node modifier of the equivalent 'scatter_obj'
Note that any display or visibility features that are automatically being turned off during rendered view won't work if our plugin isn't installed.

If you have any doubt, for a guaranteed result, use the "export as instance" functionality available in our plugin extra panel, this will bake the scatter-system(s) as real Blender instances. Unfortunately, any kind of animated scatter effects won't be supported when exported.

Troubleshooting

List of the commonly reported problems and their solutions

My plugin won't install

Please make sure your version of Blender matches the version of the plugin you are installing.
For information about compatibility with our plugin, please read your plugin version release notes.
A potential fix would be to quit your Blender app & restart.
Are you on MACOS? This is probably an unzipping issue. Safari might have unzipped your file automatically. Check out the Installation page for more information.

My biomes don't work

There's a chance that you forgot to also install the associated asset library in your blender asset browser.
Most reports we receive are related to this omission. If you are unsure if you installed your biome pack correctly, please read the installation page or see our tutorial.
There's a small percentage of chance that there's a name conflict, for example, a creator created a biome that relies on "rock.blend", but this name is already taken in your asset library & therefore the assets cannot be found. We always insist with biome creators to ensure their .blend naming are unique, however, sometimes mistakes happen. A simple solution to this problem is to set a custom environment path in your plugin preferences. Check out the installation page for more information about this functionality.

I don't see my scatter

Please make sure your version of Blender matches the version of the plugin you are installing.

Did you have a forward compatibility issue perhaps?
Please be careful when switching Blender version while working on your projects, it could corrupt your files forever. The best demeanor when working with 3Dsofwares is to stick to the same blender and plugin versions from start to finish.

Please verify if your system(s) are visible in Npanel > Tweak > SystemList. You should see a screen icon activated.
Please verify in your outliner if some of your scatter-collections or 'scatter_obj' are not hidden.
To do so, first make sure to enable all outliner restriction filters. In Blender, there are many ways an object can be hidden in the outliner, most of the time this is done by mistakenly hitting the horizontal numberpad of your keyboard, as this will hide collections in your outliner.
In Tweak > Distribution make sure that the distribution density is not too small, relatively to the size of your terrain.
You might want to apply your terrain scale, perhaps its scale is very big. Alternatively in Tweak > Scale > DefaultScale, you could set the default scale reference to "global".
Please verify if your scatter-system has any designated instances. In Npanel > Tweak > Instancing. If no instances are chosen and no display as options are activated, then we'll display nothing as there's nothing to be instanciated.
Please inspect the features you have enabled for your system or system-group. Perhaps one of them is not tweaked correctly and therefore masking out everything.

Most of the time the ecosystems feature might be the culprit, if you create relations with a system hidden or that does not exist anymore.
A visibility feature might be responsible.
The pattern feature might mask an unusually large area.

Incorrect scatter scale

By default your scatter-system(s) will have a scale relative to the scale of your surface(s), which means that if your surface has a scale of [100,100,100], your scattered instances will be x100 as larger than the scene unit. To resolve this issue you have two possible solutions:

Apply the scale of your surfaces with CTRL + A
Set your scatter default scale to "global" space instead of the "local" surface space, this is located in Tweak > Scale > Default Scale.

Make sure the scale of the instances you assigned to your scatters is set to [1,1,1] (to easily retrieve your original instance go in Tweak > Instancing & click on the select icon).
Make sure you are working in the correct scene scale, Blender beginners often forget to follow Blender native scape, 1 Blender unit is 1 meter. With our plugin, a unit of 1 will always be 1m.
Optionally you can change the default scale of your instance in Tweak > Scale > Default Scale.

My instances are rendering black

Are you using a version of your asset library for the correct render engine? If you install an object pack made for 'Octane' render for example, and if you don't have Octane installed, the shading will be black because you chose the wrong shader pack for your active render engine. Please choose the correct engine.
Please inspect your object's shaders. You can do so in the Tweak > Instances panel, click on the select icon to select your original instance object in the viewport , from there, open your selected object materials in the shader editor, and see if your shading nodes are not broken.
Do you have a light in your scene? No? Please make sure you are using some (stronger) lights. The objects might be black due to the lack of light in your scene.
Are you using cycles? Perhaps the shader you are trying to render requires more transparency rays bouncing within your opacity layers. To do so go in the properties panel, go in Render > Light Paths > Max Bounces Set your light bounce twice as much, and set your transparency rays much higher, see if your object is less black then.

Incorrect instances render colors

If the scattered instances are not displaying an accurate color, that's probably because you did not create the shaders of the objects scattered, is that correct? If the objects you are using are indeed created by someone else, the shaders surely rely on the display color Blender property to drive the color in render, this is possible thanks to the object info node used by Cycles/Eevee render engines.
In Geo-Scatter you are able to tweak the display color of your scatter via N Panel > Geo-Scatter > Tweaking > System(s) List. Please consult the creator of the model used to verify if/how the display color property is being used. If you are using botaniq, consult this page.

Problems when switching Blender versions

As you may know, the Geo-Scatter plugin is based on "Geometry-node". Geometry-node may vary from one version of Blender to another, meaning that it is important to be careful when changing Blender versions, please consider the following pieces of advice when switching from one Blender version to another:

First of all, please be aware that changing your software version mid-project is a bad demeanor. Please avoid doing so or you will have problems sooner or later, with your blender shaders or with the plugins you are using. Always stick to using the same version of your software from the beginning to the end of your project. Additionally, make sure to document which software version your project was made on to avoid corrupting any Blender files by opening & saving your project in the wrong version later. If you really need to upgrade your software version make sure to save a copy of your project beforehand.
Avoid at all cost forward-compatibility errors, or you might corrupt your project forever. Blender '.blend' files are not forward-compatible! Unsure what forward compatibility means? Here's an example: You are working on a project made in Blender 3.2, and your collaborator join-in & starts to work on the same .blend file but in Blender 3.4. A few days later you re-open your projects in Blender 3.2 and surprise, all your shaders node-trees are corrupted, all color-mix nodes suddenly became "undefined", because the internal code of these nodes changed in Blender 3.4. In conclusion, never open & save a .blend file made in a newer version in an older version, it's your job as an artist to manage your Blender version clearly, especially when working as a team.
Please make sure the plugins you are using are compatible with your Blender version. Do not assume a Blender plugin is compatible with all Blender versions, it is a common wrong assumption. You will find compatibility information about each of our plugin versions on our Changelogs page.
When upgrading your Geo-Scatter plugin, all scatter-system(s) you created with our plugin in your project will need to be updated. As we explained above it is not advised to switch your software version mid-project but if you really need to: Click on the "update node-tree" button to update all internal geometry-node system(s) we are using. Additionally, you are able to force update all node-trees in the Geo-Scatter plugin preferences, in the "debug" area. If you encounter errors while updating, restart your Blender session. Still not working? Please contact us with a link to your file.

I see wired boxes everywhere

We advise being more familiar with a native Blender option called 'objects-displays'. It is a very important optimization feature located per object properties, it will potentially save your computer from crashing. This option is located in Properties Editor > Object > Viewport Display > Display As. Our plugins might enable this Blender option automatically if the object you are trying to scatter is very heavy in terms of polycount. If you do not like this security behavior you are able to disable it in N Panel > Geo-Scatter > Create, in the behavior popover menu, located next to any creating operator button.

My animation crashed on render

Please toggle the "Lock interface" option in the Blender main header render menu (Blender can be unstable when this option is not toggled with any plugins enabled (Blender can be worried about python interaction between frames during final render).

Render is not the same as viewport

It is very likely that you have a modifier on one of your surfaces that is changing the mesh topology during the render. In most cases, the culprit is a subdivision modifier!

Please make sure that your modifier has the same level of subdivision within the viewport & within the render.
Note that if your surface is very high-poly, you could use a low-poly surface invisible on render only used for the scattering. This trick will be needed if you'd like to work with materials with adaptive displacement.

Perhaps you have a collection or an object in your scene with a different viewport/render state?
Perhaps you have an optimization feature in Tweak > Visibility on one of your systems enabled only for the viewport? The icons next to the visibility features dictate their status during viewport / rendered view / final render.

My scene is unusually slow

Are you beginning in 3d? Perhaps you have false expectations on what Blender/your computer is capable of doing. Unsure where to start? Here are some questions you can overview:

Is your computer able to handle large Blender 3D scenes? Did you ever work on large 3D scenes in Blender/Maya/3Dsmax in the past? Or perhaps this is your first time creating environment scenes? Then perhaps the slowdowns you are facing are completely normal, your scene might just be really heavy for your GPU to draw or for Blender to compute.
How many points are you initially scattering? More than a million? Is your scatter area very large?
Solution: Use visibility optimization features, hide your unused scatter-system(s) in the viewport, and separate your scatter-surface in foreground /middle-ground /background.
Is there an extreme amount of triangles drawn on your screens? Blender uses rasterization to render the viewport, this rendering technique will scale depending on the number of triangles displayed. Check out our optimization page for more useful information.
Solution: Use display optimization (display as point is the fastest option). Hide your unused scatter-system(s) in the viewport.
Is the surface you are scattering upon high poly? Perhaps with heavy-to-compute modifiers enabled?
Solution: Use a low poly invisible surface only used as a scattering surface, you can keep your high poly mesh for the final render.

Did you know that some features might be slower than others? For example:

The random distribution mode with limit distance enabled is slower than the original random distribution mode.
Any features using proximity calculation such as Tweak > Proximity or Tweak > Ecosystems are computer intensive, especially when calculating proximity with high poly meshes.

If you believe your scene is unusually slow compared to another similar Blender environment scene, please contact us maybe you found a bug! Our plugin is/should be highly optimized and we did an abundance of research on the subject. Note that an easy way to see if the slowdowns are related to our plugin, is to disable the plugin in your addon preferences and see if the slowdowns persist.