UV Scatter Script 1.4.0 for Maya (maya plugin)

• Quickly scatter multiple instanced objects over mesh surfaces.
• Control the density of scattered objects using an image map.
• Objects can be oriented to face normals.
• LOD Grouping is setup automatically  if required and associated with a camera of your choice.
• Now with mac OSX (tested on Mountain Lion) support
• Object culling to hide objects invisible to your animated camera
  

FOR EXTENDED DOCUMENTATION PLEASE VISIT my website

Major Update in 1.4:

• Object culling to hide objects invisible to your animated camera
• Orientation to surface fixed
• Developer Mode added for anyone that wants to edit the plugin (activate by setting debugMode to true in debug.py
• Meta node added
  
• Low grid density crash fixed.
  

Major Update in 1.3:

• Scale and rotation controls added.  They are driveable by image maps if required.

Major update in 1.11:

• Fixed UI loading error.
  

Major update in 1.1:

• Scattering without LOD setup is now supported

Please note this plugin requires the pyQT libraries, see the installation guide for details

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INSTALLATION GUIDE:
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Install the PyQt Libraries if you have not done so (they are required to run this plugin). They can be downloaded at:  https://nathanhorne.com/?p=460 for windows and https://www.justinfx.com/2011/11/09/installing-pyqt4-for-maya-2012-osx/ for osx
Copy them into site-packages folder located in your maya install directory.
e.g C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2013\Python\Lib\site-packages

Copy ScatterMap.ui AND the scatter_modules folder  to your default script directory located in your user folder.
e.g. C:\Users\username\Documents\maya\scripts\

Copy the shelf file “shelf_uvScatter.mel” to your default shelf directory.
e.g. C:\Users\username\Documents\maya\2013-x64\prefs\shelves\
Copy the shelf icon  “uvScatter.png ” to your default icon directory.

e.g. C:\Users\username\Documents\maya\2013-x64\prefs\icons\

Copy ScatterMap.py to your maya plugins directory.
e.g. C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2013\bin\plug-ins\

Open up maya and display the plugins menus (windows -> setting/preferences -> Plugin Manager).
 
Activate the plugin (if pyqt is found and the UI file is loaded successfully the plugin will activate)

Load the shelf

To launch the scatter plugin, click the shelf icon or type: uvScatter; into the mel command line at the bottom of the maya window