Hi Guys-

Very new to Houdini.

I'm looking at using something like the Copy Asset (as shown here, https://vimeo.com/86459380 [vimeo.com]) to do some vegetation scattering in Maya. It seems to work well for single objects (like rocks or grass), but I'm not sure how to go about scattering grouped objects, like trees which may have defined geo for the trunk and branches, and other geo for the leaves, with their own material applied.

Really, I just wanted to ask if this were possible… and hopefully get a clue about how to go about this.

Later on, ultimately I'd like to expand the features of this Asset to allow controlling of things like density or scale based on painting a vertex map (in Maya) or through a bitmap texture. But for now I'd like to keep my question short, in regards to allowing grouped objects with multiple materials to be scattered via something like this Copy Asset.

Houdini Engine looks fabulous, and I hope to be able to get a lot of use out of it.

Cheers, Hello, and Thanks
Ekar

I just came across a potential answer to my question in this thread..
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=39248 [sidefx.com]

…using selection sets to define material assignment (which seems to work). Not sure if this is the best way but it atleast seems to be a way.

What about using Maya's “Mesh -> Combine” to combine the multiple Maya mesh objects into one mesh object? You can then pass that geometry as one object into the Houdini asset. In the end, this becomes something like using selection sets though. It's just slightly easier to setup.

Yes, I guess it's just a habit of wanting to avoid component shading.

More testing tonight