Everyone will have their own requirements. I have watched countless blender tutorials on youtube and this is my input if it will help you;
For the voice it’s fine for me. But I don’t like it too slow talking or rambling. It should move clearly but at a good pace. It is easy to pause, go back 10 seconds if you need time on one step.
Keep each tutorial <5min but very focused on one topic.
Do not assume any steps. So make sure each action you have clearly shown what is required (sometimes an addon needs to be activated, a material downloaded, etc.)
Make sure you have mouse and keyboard interactions turned on so any shortcuts or off screen actions are seen.
And finally even though in 1 I said move at a good pace, dont rush the keyboard and mouse steps that people miss what you pressed. There is nothing more frustrating than having to pause start and replay multiple times to catch all keystrokes a tutorial presenter has done.
Great to see you working on this ! If I can help, will be happy to chip in, give comments, preview and try the tutorials, etc.
Quick precision about tutorials, I see that there’s a lot of enthusiasm here, so i’d like to calm down expectations a bit and give a bit more precisions about this subject.
right now my top priority is to be ready for geometry node when it comes out, so I need to focus on Scatter5, I will release only one tutorial covering the basics of Scatter4 this week (3 themes will be presented: 1) scattering with presets/biomes, 2) create altitude/slope masks on displaced terrain, 3) example case with typical archviz scenes, with a bad terrain topology, the need of camera clipping and achieve clean borders)
But nothing more, as I will need to redo the tutorial with Scatter5 when it’s out anyway, as there will be some slight changes in gui/workflow/etc…
note that making a tutorial is quite time consuming, the time spent on making tutorials is time I could spend creating new biomes, achieve more collaborations, or code more useful features, ect… So i believe i will ask a friend for help when the time comes.
So far I didn’t create a lot of tutorials, as I knew that the current particle-hair instancing system would be deprecated and a Scatter update for geometry node would be therefore needed. So i can’t wait to get this done and finally put the Scatter addon on a solid foundation of concrete to finally settle somewhere stable…
The quick gifs are good, BUT, unfortunately they are to fast and to low in resolution.
Short video clips with the same content may look less flashy, but are more user friendly.
i am using Scatter 4 but i have issues, i explain:
I am using Scatter, version 4 for a short time, and I am running into problems that I did not have with another Software + plugin.
It is a performance problem, and it is the following:
I want to distribute some trees of high / medium mesh resolution (110,000 polygons each tree), in a high resolution terrain, which the topographer has passed me, with a high number of polygons (92,000 polygons), you can suppose the consequence, distribute them, distribute them … but the scene becomes unmanageable, suppose 110000 x 92000 = 10,120,000,000 polygons … and of course, the pc want dead. Several things to comment:
You can select any option to distribute the trees, until a button is pressed. I say this because those trees only go in some areas of the land, 5% -10% of the surface, and can mask before, suposse.
In the other plugin, you can select that nothing is distributed, and then add the zones
You can also select, that they are proxies, or icons …
If I try to distribute the same tree in a smaller area … 100x100 quads, and without problem.
What would be the process for this type of work … Distribute a bad one with many polygons in an area with many polygons.
Indeed, working with a lot of instances in blender can be tricky.
There’s solutions in Scatter4 for that :
-You can create your particle system hidden by default, only visible in render
-You can reduce your particle system viewport visibility percentage
-You can directly change your object display to bounding boxes (recommended with high polys instances)
-You can use Lodify to work with a lower resolution model (proxy) on viewport
Note that I’m currently working on some new options, masks on creation, in Scatter5:
-Directly assign to an existing chosen mask, or multiple masks on creation
-Directly assign/create inside curve area mask (if in selection)
-Directly assign/create inside camera clipping mask (if active camera)
-Directly start in a layer-painting mask after creation.
Also, Scatter5 options on creation will be much clearer in GUI for beginners, as a dialog box will pop-up with options & additional information.
Let me know if you have any other requests coming from another plugin perspective.
Sorry to change my mind, I believe it’s not worth it to do a Tutorial about Scatter 4 at all.
Scatter5 will be ready for geometry node when it will be released (for 2.92 in 2 and a half month). It will bring improvements in many different areas of the plugin. so i’d better focus all my energy in this next version. If somehow Scatter5 or geometry node is delayed or released with important missing features i may reconsider, but one thing is sure, creating a temporary tutorial only for a short period make no sense, it will most likely create confusion.
I keep doing tests to include Scatter in my Workflow … and I have doubts …
A- Once I have selected the object to distribute, the object in which it is distributed and the type of distribution, and scatter the object… Can I change the type of distribution “on the fly”? or do I have to delete the particle system and recreate it.
B- When I erase the particle system, to create another one and try to have the scene explorer clean … I have a copy of the object that I have distributed that I cannot remove, without erasing the original, as if they were linked.
.
C- Is there a mask that allows me to place units, trees, individually in precise places?
D- I can distribute the geometry through a bitmap … where I draw a black / white point where the object to distribute has to go? that point has to have a certain size. Explanation … this is because of the type of scene I want to make … in a geometry with an aerial photo projected as a texture, I want to place a tree where they really are according to the photo … for this with an image editing program , in other software, I draw a white point where the tree should go …
A- Once I have selected the object to distribute, the object in which it is distributed and the type of distribution, and scatter the object… Can I change the type of distribution “on the fly”? or do I have to delete the particle system and recreate it.
Yes you can change settings in tweaking of course
In blender you can link objects in multiple collection at the same time. This object is in double in your outliner because you deleted a collection without unlinking the objects first, so the instances will automatically move in the parent collection. Also, please don’t remove modifiers, vertex-groups, or collections scatter have created
C- Is there a mask that allows me to place units, trees, individually in precise places?
Not yet, but that would be nice indeed
D- I can distribute the geometry through a bitmap … where I draw a black / white point where the object to distribute has to go? that point has to have a certain size. Explanation … this is because of the type of scene I want to make … in a geometry with an aerial photo projected as a texture, I want to place a tree where they really are according to the photo … for this with an image editing program , in other software, I draw a white point where the tree should go …
Scatter5 will have a builtin vertex-group/color baker that will be able to save your masks to images easily (witouth using cycles, thanks to @carbon2 )
Jesus.
i never even realised the mask workflow potential in non-scattering area until now
For example you can link a particle proximity mask to a displace modifier super easily
