Population Tool Locator

Population Attributes

This panel contains parameters to precisely manage the slot placement in the locator.

The slot size is the bounding box of the Perception Shape, which is defined in the Character Maker and can be overridden with any geometry in the Entity Type node Perception Attributes. Slot size also takes into account the mean scale defined in the Entity Type Character Attributes and the Entities Scale in the connected Crowd Field or in the Crowd Manager Node if the Population Tool is not connected to a Crowd Field.

Placed Slots	Actual number of slots placed in the area. It can be different from the number of slots if a Terrain Node with a NavMesh has been assigned to this locator and there's not enough space to fill the Population requirements (size, distance between slots)
Slots	Number of wanted Entities. Notice that if the zone is too small or contains too many obstacles, it is not always possible to generate the wanted number of slots.
Number of Columns	Number of columns of the area. This attribute are editable only with the center point shape, by updating the size of the grid. With other shapes, it's an information about the size of the computed grid.
Number of Rows	Number of rows of the area. This attribute are editable only with the center point shape, by updating the size of the grid. With other shapes, it's an information about the size of the computed grid.
Refresh Bboxes	Trigger a manual refresh of the Perception bounding boxes in all the Population Tools. This is useful when Perception Bounding Box is edited in the Character Maker or the Character file is replaced in the Entity Type.
Distance X / Z	Distance between slots. A negative distance brings slots even closer together.
Distance Noise X / Z	Position noise of Entities. For curve population tool, will noise X in curve tangent direction, and Z orthogonally.
Safe Distance X / Z	Distance to add around the slots to prevent them from getting any closer to other slots. The Safe Distance parameters are in the slot's local coordinate system.
Orientation	Orientation of Entities
Orientation Noise	Orientation noise of Entities
Look At	Modify the orientation of Entities in order to look at a Locator Look at orientation
Density	Open the Paint Tool to paint the Population density
Particle System	Choose "New" to create a new Particle System, or select a Particle System from the scene to replace or merge it with current particles.
Crowd Field	Choose "New" to create a new Crowd Field, or select a Crowd Field from the scene to link with the created / replaced particle system. Is it also possible to choose "None" to emit particles which will not be assigned to a Crowd Field. A Crowd Field can also be created afterwards if required (see Crowd Field documentation).
Create	When you get the wanted repartition, press this button to create a new Particle System. The Particle System will be fed with an initialization positions, directions, Entity Types and other requested attributes
Replace/Append	Replace or append the Particle System selected in the previous combo box with the new one. Notice that replacing a Particle System will preserve existing connections and expressions.
Several Population Tool Locators selection	When you get the wanted repartition in several Population Tool Locators, select them and press the Create button to create a new Particle System containing relative particles. Replace or append the Particle System previously selected in the Combo Box with particles from the selection.   Create, replace or append particles from selected Population Tools Locators

Orientation Attributes

Decimate Attributes

Decimation offers different ways to limit the population slots output, either by distance to an element or a slope criterion.

Decimate by distance to the selected plane on top of view, on a grid population tool, for example: the audience of a concert

Decimate by slope: for example, some vegetation only growing at these slopes.

Edit Slots

 
Edit Slots in Free Place mode (left) or in UV Mode (right)

It is possible to edit Population Tool either using the Population Tool Free Place mode or in Maya's UV mode using Maya Translate, Rotate and Scale manipulators.

• To go to the Population Tool Free Place mode, click the Edit in Free Place Mode button
• In Maya UV Mode (F12), select one or more slots in the Population Tool Locator, enable Maya Translate Tool (W), Maya Rotate Tool (E) or Maya Scale Tool (R) and use the gizmo to move, rotate or scale the slots. To reset the slots position to their original positions / orientations, set the Slots count to 0 and reset it at the previous value

Edit in Free Place Mode	Open the Population Tool in Free Place mode to edit the Population Tool Locator slots.
Refresh From Selection	Refresh positions of Slots that have been created on object components by selecting both the population tool slots and the components and hitting this button As Maya selection for components of different kinds can be a bit tricky, here is the order of selection that will work: start by selection the population tool slots in param point component (F12) hold shift key and click on the object to select components from switch in the correct component mode (point/edge/face) hold the shift key and click on the components to add on selection hold the control key and click on the population tool node from the outliner click 'Refresh From Selection' button
Show Slot Id	Display the Id of each slot
Lock Slots	Lock the selected slots. A locked slot will be displayed with dotted lines . A locked slot is not affected by the placement attributes updates, its position and orientation are locked. However if the total number of slots is not sufficient to place this locked slot, it will be removed.
Unlock Slots	Unlock the selected slots. Unlocked slots will be displayed with continuous lines
Sort slot indices	Sorts slot indices according to an axis (useful to allocate targets slots to specific entities)
Major sort axis	The slots will first be sorted against this axis
Minor sort axis	If several slots share the exact same major axis value, minor axis is used to further order them.

EntityTypes / Group Attributes

EntityTypes Attributes

New Entity Types can be mapped by choosing it in the combo box and then by clicking on the add button . To remove an Entity Type just click on the related remove button . Clean all mapped Entity Types with the remove all button.

 
Illustration of the use of Entity Types during the placement step with different weights

Group EntityTypes Attributes

This panel defines which Group Entity Types will be affected to the emitted particles.

As with EntityTypes, the ratio of Group Entity Types will be affected by changing weight attributes.

Group Size Attributes 

Group Min Size	Entities will be grouped by at least this value
Group Max Size	Entities will be grouped by a maximum of this value

By using these attributes, you will be able to group several Entities inside a Population Tool Locator. The same Group Entity Type will be used by the Entities inside a cluster.

Illustration of Group Size Attributes (min:3 and max:5)

Emitter Attributes

The populationTool can be used as an emitter. In this case, it will emit from the first (active) frame of simulation, at emitter rate, until max count is reached. The generated particles will be configured as defined by the Population Tool: same slots, EntityTypes weights, etc. If the number of population tool slots has been consumed by the previous emitted particles, the emission starts again at first slot.

Emissions can also be achieved via behaviors, see Emit

Scatter Attributes

Only used with a scatter mode populate on selection (). The scatter attributes give the min/max samples picked around a random position before changing it. If min and max are 1, the population is completely generated from the first randomly picked position.

Terrain / Collision Attributes

Terrain Locator	Terrain Locator attached to this Population Tool. The Terrain locator will be used to make the locator slots adapted to the terrain. Select the Terrain with the combo box. If you don't want the slots to be adapted to the Terrain, just unlink it.
Place on Connex Zones	Slots are only placed on the specified navmesh connex zones. See the Terrain Locator for more information about Connex Zones.
Enable Collision	If checked, slots in collision with slots of Population Tools listed in the In Colliders attributes will not be placed
In Colliders	Population Tools to consider slot collisions with. By default, Population Tools sharing the same Terrain Locator will be automatically added as Colliders.
Check Self Overlap	When enabled, the Population Tool removes Slots that overlap

Component Placement

This panel allows to modify a Population Tool created with the populate on selected component tool . 

Component Placement

Replace or append population slots into a previously created Population Tool (use CTRL Key to select the Population Tool in the Outliner after performing the selection of components). This action preserves configured attributes.

  
Append components to a Population Tool Locator

Emission Attributes (Per Particle)

For more explanation about how to use ppAttributes, see ppAttributes Handling.

Paint Attributes

Advanced Attributes

Disable AutoUpdate	Disable the automatic update of slots, useful when using heavy population tools with decimate or collision attributes which take a lot of time, to save performance while batch-changing attributes.
Quincunx placing	Use a quincunx shape for particles placing   Without quincunx placing (left) and with quincunx placing (right)
Placement Seed	Value used to initialize the current Population Tool Locator seed in addition of the Crowd Manager random seed. Changing this value has an influence on the Entities placement, but only in this Population Tool Locator.
Default Size	Default size to use for the slots in X, Y and Z axis, when there is no Entity Type or the mapped Entity Type has no character file.

Callback Attributes

This panel allows to define MEL or Python callbacks which will be called each time a Particle System will be created, replaced or appended by the Population Tool Locator.

Locator Display Attributes

Display Base Object	Activate the preview of the chosen entity types in addition of the slots, to have a look and feel feedback. Note that asset repartition and scales of the produced entities may differ. It is only for a quick preview purpose, and only active in the viewport. The crowd field generation IS mandatory to render the entities.  Display of a tree scene populated via scatter + slope decimate, with 'display base object' option active
Refresh Objects	If the entity types assets are changed, you may need to use this to refresh the population tool preview.
Display Color	Color of the Population Tool. This is also applied in the Outliner
Display Transparency	Transparency of the locator
Locator Height	Height of the Population Tool Locator for display only. Particles will still be generated on the terrain
Locator Scale Factor	Scale factor to apply to the locator display

Relationship between emitted Particle Systems and the Population Tool Locator

When a particle system is emitted from a Population Tool Locator, a link is created between the two objects. This link can be used to retrieve which Population Tool Locator has been used to emit one particle system.

Relationship between emitted particle systems and their Population Tool Locator

When a particle system is emitted from a Population Tool Locator, some special Per-Particle Attributes are created and set automatically. If some of those Attributes do not exist, Golaem uses default values. The created Per-Particle Attributes are the following:

Created Per-Particle Attributes

Overwritten Per-Particle Attributes

For more explanation about how to use ppAttributes, see ppAttributes Handling.