@unearthed said:

I haven't tried this yet as I'm on the road but have been hoping poisson distribution would get scripted for SU. A while ago ago I posted this query http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323%26amp;t=55779%26amp;hilit=+poisson .

Did not see your post, distributing plants is certainly something I also thought of before! Not sure about Poisson Sampling with ruby, was thinking going the other way - a more performant solution using OpenCL or CUDA - because sampling is quite numerically intensive.

@unearthed said:

Currently when I want these (for 'random' planting layouts) I run them in R and export to dxf - Your method offers possibility of saving two steps and keeping everything 'in house'. One extra though - would you be able to add a ratio for each different component so as to get an effect as in the link's first image?

Right, the percentage of the total samples for each component? I could certainly do this, perhaps I will make an update this weekend if there is time.

As with regards to using different radii (for each sample/plant to have a different minimum radius), as also mentioned in your other post - I will see how quickly it can be done, perhaps if it takes more than a few hours (if done efficiently!) I'll think of releasing a commercial plugin.

Greetings

The plugin Disperse Components [alpha] is now available through extension warehouse! The plugin is free (will also probably stay so) and is available at http://extensions.sketchup.com/en/node/2826

Greetings,
Mike

@jiminy-billy-bob said:

This draft became the "uniform" distribution type in Skatter. It's essentially a grid with a random jitter which is a percentage of the grid spacing.

Anyway, I think it's great that at least one free plugin offers this kind of distribution! People might not want to pay a Skatter license for just that feature.

That is interesting, although I've tried a slightly different method, there are scripts/plugins that use grid jitter technique. It is an excellent way to improve object placement.

As far as I see we have slightly different goals. Skatter seems to be a fairly sophisticated rendering tool for vegetation.

The only functionality my plugin provides is object distribution, but doing so without collisions and more evenly - as (arguably) can be observed in the nature.

I have no plants for the rendering part whatsoever; but if there is an interest - I might add more features like variation of the distribution or ecosystem simulation.

@bob james said:

@mike basil said:

I have uploaded an alpha version of the plugin that scatters objects more evenly but at the same time in a random manner: http://www.michaelvasiljevs.com/sketchup-plugin-disperse-components/.
Hope somebody will find it useful. Any suggestions or even requests will be very welcome.

I haven't tried this one yet, but at least I don't have to wait until September and travel to London to get it

I have uploaded an alpha version of the plugin that scatters objects more evenly but at the same time in a random manner: http://www.michaelvasiljevs.com/sketchup-plugin-disperse-components/.
Hope somebody will find it useful. Any suggestions or even requests will be very welcome.

Many thanks for your replies and for correcting the link.

Regarding MakeFur - I had a look at it and it does not say what algorithm it uses but my guess that samples are placed independently of each other because I can see intersections in the generated grass.

As far as I see Compo Spray functions in a similar way to MakeFur and the author writes "not allowing collision can be VERY slow" perhaps because intersections are removed in a brute-force manner.

My plugin uses Poisson disk distribution - the same way photoreceptors are scattered in a human eye. It has very nice blue noise properties. Cook of Pixar (1986) wrote "With purely random distribution, the samples tend to bunch up in some places and leave large gaps in other places" .
The MatrixProximity script actually uses jittered grid algorithm which somewhat approximates Poisson disk method and is easier to implement.
Also indeed my plugin should be a little faster because C++ built code was used.

Greetings

I needed a method for scattering objects within a given (planar) area but the closest plugin I could find was [anchor=http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7612 goto=:2aag9zkp]MatrixProximity[/anchor:2aag9zkp]by TIG.

I needed something somewhat more "natural" and decided to write a new plugin. It would be nice if somebody could use it too, so please get the alpha version on [anchor= goto=http://www.michaelvasiljevs.com/sketchup-plugin-disperse-components/:2aag9zkp]my site[/anchor:2aag9zkp], currently for windows only (SU 2014/2015 should work).

Would appreciate any feedback even if something like "you fool, SketchUp already has functionality for this!!"!

Greets
Mike