Houdini 22.0 Nodes Geometry nodes

Paint (Paint Instances brush) geometry node

Quickly paint assets onto surfaces.

On this page

This node is designed to customize the behavior of the Paint Instances LOP. See the help for Paint Instances for more information.

Overview

This brush is a general purpose paint brush to quickly scatter assets along a surface. Under the hood it uses the Scatter and Align SOP and has many of the same parameters.

Parameters

Brush

Radius

Radius of the paint brush, in world units. Shift+Ctrl+LMB drag in the viewer, or use the mouse wheel to interactively resize.

Spacing

The minimum distance the brush has to move before another dab of assets is placed, as a fraction of Radius. For example, at 0.5, you need to move half the brush radius from the last dab before the brush triggers again. Lower values place dabs more densely along a stroke; higher values space them further apart.

Normal Blend

A blend factor between the world up direction and the surface normal at each scattered point. At 1.0 (the default) the scattered assets are fully aligned to the surface normal. At 0.0 they point straight up regardless of the surface they're painted on. Values in between blend between the two.

Instances

Point Count Method

How the brush decides how many assets to scatter inside the brush footprint per dab.

By Size

Assigns a random size to each point, based on the given minimum and maximum radius of the assets, and spaces the points such that the assets will not overlap. See the Size section below.

By Density

Generates a base density of points across the brush footprint, falling off according to the Density Profile ramp. See the Density section below.

By Point Spacing

Derives the number of points from a desired spacing between them. See the Spacing section below.

Number of Points

Scatters a fixed number of points inside the brush footprint per dab. See the Number of Points section below.

Size

These parameters are visible when Point Count Method is By Size.

Min Asset Radius

The smallest radius of the assets that will be copied onto the points. Used by the scatter to space points so the smallest assets won’t overlap.

Max Asset Radius

The largest radius of the assets that will be copied onto the points. Used by the scatter to space points so the largest assets won’t overlap.

Uniform Scale

A value to scale all point sizes by.

Density

These parameters are visible when Point Count Method is By Density.

Density Scale

Scales the base density of scattered points. Higher values place more assets per dab; lower values place fewer.

Density Profile

A ramp controlling how density falls off from the center of the brush (left side of the ramp) to the edge (right side). The default is a linear falloff from full density at the center to zero at the edge, giving a soft brush profile. Flatten the ramp for a hard-edged brush, or shape it to bias dabs toward the center or the rim.

Spacing

These parameters are visible when Point Count Method is By Point Spacing.

Spacing

The desired space between scattered points. The brush will set the density so points end up no closer than this distance after relaxation.

Use Minimum Spacing

Turn on the checkbox next to Minimum Spacing to enforce a hard minimum distance between scattered points.

Minimum Spacing

A minimum allowed distance between points. Any points that would be closer than this are spaced out to this distance. This guards against parameter combinations that would cause a sudden spike in point density.

Number of Points

Total Points

When Point Count Method is Number of Points, this is the number of points to generate per brush dab.

Orientation

Max Random Cone Angle

Rotates each scattered asset away from its “up” direction (the surface normal blended with world up by Normal Blend) by a random amount, up to this maximum number of degrees. Creates variation in the tilt of the painted assets.

Rotation Around Normal

Min Angle

The minimum random rotation around each asset’s up direction.

Max Angle

The maximum random rotation around each asset’s up direction. The default range of 0-360 gives fully random spin.

Round Rotation Around Normal

When on, the random rotation around the up direction is rounded to the nearest integer multiple of Round to Multiple Of. Useful for instancing buildings or other assets that should only rotate by fixed steps (for example, multiples of 90 degrees).

Round to Multiple Of

When Round Rotation Around Normal is on, the random rotation is rounded to the nearest multiple of this angle (in degrees).

Offset Angle

An additional fixed rotation, in degrees, applied to every asset around its up direction after the random rotation has been calculated.

Scale

Use Scale from Scatter

When on, the scale assigned to each asset during the scatter process is multiplied by the uniform or random values specified in the other scale parameters. .

Use Random Scale

When on, each scattered asset is given a random uniform scale between Minimum and Maximum. When off, all assets get the same scale from Uniform Scale.

Uniform Scale

When Use Random Scale is off, every scattered asset is scaled uniformly by this value.

Minimum

When Use Random Scale is on, the smallest random scale factor an asset can receive.

Maximum

When Use Random Scale is on, the largest random scale factor an asset can receive.

See also

Geometry nodes