Various Rock Scatter

[jophus14]

I'm looking for a way to scatter a few hundred rocks along a path. I need the rocks to vary in rotation but not intersect. I have tried "Scatter" in Max and the scripts Advanced Painter and Gtools Scatter. I don't have VrayScatter so that option is out. I was thinking Reactor but do I have to create all of the rocks first and then have them drop into place? I also played around with VrayDisplacement but it looks to generic. I'm looking for some other suggestions. Thanks.

 

See attached:

[Peter M. Gruhn]

I'm having success with the following:

 

Create a rock.

Create a box.

Scatter the rock in the box volume.

- add vertex chaos, rotation and scale to taste.

- set number of rocks to "enough".

I sized the box narrow but tall enough to prevent most interpenetration

Use the detach script in Soulburn to turn each rock back into an item.

They're selected, cool, so hit the "rigid body collection" button and in they go.

Add an unyeilding ground plane.

Set settings.

Preview in window.

Update Max.

 

You can see I got some interpenetration. Machine was running wicked slow. Should have used finer res on the sim and a lower res but concave mesh for the rocks. I think that would have helped.

[jophus14]

Nice job. I will try your method soon and let you know how it goes. Thanks.