host boundry improvement

Hi I’ve been running into issues where the size and shape of my host object conflicts with how I want the boundaries of my skater composition to work. mostly it’s a case of the boundary reading the edge of the geometry as the edge of the mask. for a while I was trying to scatter across two pieces of geometry the edge between them would confuse the boundary system. I then grouped those two pieces and added the single group. this was an improvement but it still left spots at the edges of the geometry where I wanted the scatter to continue. If there was some way of telling the boundary system to ignore the host edges I think this would give more control.

I’m not sure I understand what you are trying to do.

What do the two screenshots show? Is one the desired result and the other what you are currently getting? Which is which?


I think this image from the boundary section of your manual illustrates the issue well. I would like the option to chose whether or not the surface affects the boundary calculation. the affect being that when activated you would get scattering in the zone I’ve drawn in red.


I also can’t get this V1 workaround to work either.

Hi @Noel_Heard
Unfortunately, this is not currently possible.

In Skatter, the Boundaries filter is applied on all the boundaries defined by the edges of hosts and masks, without distinction.

We’ll discuss internally if we can separate those two types of boundaries to pick one or the other.

We will look into adding “Ignore boundaries” overrides to hosts and masks.

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Hey guys would it be possible factor in masking specific boundaries e.g. paint selected areas with the brush tool?

In my case I would like an option to scale high->low for plant borders etc where the rear is highest for example against a wall. Similarly it’d be cool to control density fall off on the rear most boundaries only.

Could this be done using two separate compositions?

I understand that what you are asking for could be powerful, but it sounds like a really niche use-case. It would require quite a lot of development time for not a lot of use, as well as make the UI even more complex.

No problem - i just thought it might fit with the context of the thread.

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Yeah! I think this is a great example of exactly the kind of problem that I’m talking about. I’m constantly running into issues where I want to use a feathered boundary but I can’t because I end up with feathering where I don’t want it like up against a wall. As it stands without more control the boundary feature is not very useful.

Sometimes it’s possible to hide the feather within the depth of the wall or other geometry but it’s often not.

Hi all, we added more options to the boundaries filter in the latest Skatter update:

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