Manual Scatter
Substance Designer is characterised as an eminently procedural app, where everything is placed in its place in an automated, numerically controlled way. But there are times when we need to place copies of a shape in very specific places and in a completely manual way.
Normally this requires the use of several Transformation 2D nodes (one for each copy) in combination with multiple Blend nodes… which quickly generates very densely populated Graphs. This is where we can use these nodes: Manual Scatter.
Note that this product really include 4 nodes: Manual Scatter (Grayscale and Color) and Manual Scatter Pro (Grayscale and Color)
Manual Scatter
To manually place up to 16 copies of a Foreground shape, with or without Mask, over a Background. User can control the overall Opacity, Blend Mode and Size of the copies, and also control the placement by moving Gizmos or through Sliders.
When all copies can have the same size, general orientation and opacity, then we can use this ‘normal’ version, which is also faster.
To place each of the copies we can use the Gizmo that appears in the 2D Viewport or we can use the Px and Py Position Sliders, if we need a much more accurate placement.
TIP: as with the Tile Generators, it is better to reduce the size of our shapes, so that everything goes faster. For example, if we are working on a 2048 px Graph, it is more than enough to give 512 px to the base shapes. Or even 256 px will suffice in many situations.
Manual Scatter Pro
Same than Manual Scatter, but additionally, with this Pro version user can control individual Size, Rotation and Opacity for each copy. A numerical Helper is provided to quickly identify each copy
In this Pro version we can also control the size, orientation and opacity of all copies globally. But it is also possible to modify each of these parameters individually, using sliders.
To avoid going crazy, especially when we can have up to 16 copies, and to identify which copy belongs to which set of sliders, we can Show Helpers, which will place a numeric identifier next to each copy. Of course, when you’re done, you’ll have to hide it.
TIP: do not use this “pro” version if you really don’t need an individual control for Orientation, Scale and Opacity, since the normal version is faster.
More details in this “Substance 3D Tools” section, side by side with other resources.
SBS file created with Designer 14.0.0 - Use and learn from it, but please: do not resell.