Are people starting to ditch Forest Pack for Chaos Scatter?

[Luke]

Just wondering if people are starting to ditch Forest Pack in favour of Chaos Scatter?

I've not used Chaos Scatter as yet, but am keen to hear other's thoughts...

Cheers,
Luke.

[mase]

In our studio, we have FP preset library with custom made presets for grass, bushes, trees, people etc. So moving to Chaos Scatter would be a hassle.

On the other hand, 90% of the time we only use the basic functions of FP and on very rare occasions do we turn to effects or other specific parts of FP. So in reality, most of it could definitely be achieved in Chaos Scatter. But a few times that I have tried I missed a few key functions from FP and so I switched back again.

Interesting to hear what others think.

[hurrycat]

ForestIvy (Forest 9) is a game changer for the projects you need custom vine plants. I don't think Scatter offers the depth of options that Forest gives you, but that could be me as I haven't used Scatter in a while. Surely you may not need all those options half the time, but I always start with creating Forest objects in case I need them down the road.

[arqrenderz]

I dont think so, chaos scatter lacks many tools, too bad developers don't listen carefully or development is very slow.

[TomG]

I dont think so, chaos scatter lacks many tools, too bad developers don't listen carefully or development is very slow.

Neither :) It's that Scatter is not, and has never been, seen as a way to "replace" Forest Pack. The intention is pretty much what people describe above - to give, for free, a tool that works in a great many cases, so that many people don't need anything else and can also have a simplified workflow; and when extra control is needed then there are indeed third party plugins. Of  course, we do keep enhancing what Scatter can do, but it still is not seen as "one day it will replace..." in terms of its aims, goals, and direction. That would likely be a fairly futile exercise given that the developers of third party tools are companies and development teams dedicated specifically to "software that arranges objects" and they do not also have to develop a render engine :) So they can always push things one step ahead.