3D scatter brushes
Painting instanced geometry along a stroke — the six scatter kinds, capturing your own elements, billboards, and the 3D Scatter controls.
Reference
- Tool
- Draw
- Panel
- Brush Settings
- Section
- 3D Scatter
A 3D scatter brush does not stamp and does not sweep. It places real geometry along the stroke — leaves, links, berries, or objects you made yourself — oriented to the path and seated in the 3D scene. Drawing a garland is drawing a garland, not a picture of one: orbit the camera and the leaves turn.
Scatter is the highest-precedence system a brush can carry. A brush that scatters 3D elements will not sweep its ribbon and will not paint its texture, and the Custom Brush section says so rather than leaving the shadowed system switched on and inert.
The scatter kinds
Six procedural kinds ship, one per built-in brush in the 3D Scatter category. Each has its own palette of element meshes, generated rather than shipped as models.
| Kind | Elements instanced |
|---|---|
| Foliage | A light leaf and a dark leaf, alternating. |
| Garland | Leaves and flowers on a fixed repeating pattern — mostly leaves, with a flower periodically, in two flower colours. |
| Chain | Interlocking torus links. |
| Ribbon | A flowing twisted ribbon segment. |
| Vine | Light and dark leaves alternating along a slender path. |
| Berries | Clustered berries in two colours. |
Two further kinds are reached by capturing rather than by selecting a brush:
| Kind | Elements instanced |
|---|---|
| Custom | Your own captured 3D objects. |
| Billboard | Your own 2D design, placed on world-space quads. |
There is no picker for the kind. A procedural kind comes from selecting one of the six built-in brushes; Custom and Billboard come from the capture and import actions in the Custom Brush section.
The 3D Scatter section
This section of Brush Settings appears only when the current brush is a scatter brush.
Instances per 100 canvas points of stroke length. A long stroke at high density is capped at 20,000 instances.
Element scale as a multiple of the stroke radius — so the brush Size still governs how big the garland is, and this sets the elements' size relative to it.
Random rotation of each instance around the path's tangent, up to a half-turn either way at 100%. Leaves and berries want this; chain links do not, which is why Chain and Ribbon ship at zero.
How far each instance sags toward world-down, which is what makes a garland hang rather than stand.
Per-instance brightness and hue variation.
Orients each element along the stroke's tangent. With it off, the elements keep a fixed orientation regardless of the path's direction.
Snaps each instance's up-axis to the drawing surface's normal, so the scatter lies on the surface rather than standing off it. All six built-in brushes ship with this off.
How instances are placed
Density is a rate, not a count: the engine steps along the stroke every 100 ÷ density points,
with a minimum step of 2 points, and places one instance per step. Each instance is then jittered
along the path by up to 35% of the step, so the spacing reads as natural rather than as a ruler.
Every instance seeds its own random generator from the stroke's seed and the instance's index, so a scattered garland is identical on every reload.
Elements are drawn from the kind's palette in order, cycling. Garland is the exception: it follows a fixed six-step pattern so that flowers recur at a musical interval rather than at every other leaf.
Making your own elements
The 3D Element row of the Custom Brush section builds a scatter brush from your own work.
Captures the most recent 3D object on the active layer — a volumetric stroke, a sculpted surface, or a filled 3D shape — and makes the brush instance it. The panel describes the workflow: "Design a garland segment in 3D, then paint garlands with it. Draw a volumetric stroke, sculpt a shape, or fill one — then capture it."
The captured object is normalised into the same element frame the procedural leaves use, so it responds to Element size, Spin and Droop identically.
With no 3D object on the layer: "No 3D object on this layer — draw a volumetric stroke or sculpt a shape, then capture it." A volumetric stroke is made with 3D volume (tube) in Scatter & Randomize.
Appends a second, third or further object to the palette, so the brush alternates between them the way Foliage alternates light and dark leaves. Shown once the brush is instancing your own elements, where the row reads "Instancing n of your own elements along each stroke."
Imports a 2D image and paints it on world-space quads along the stroke.
Captures the active layer's design as a billboard. If the layer is empty: "Nothing to capture — draw the design you want on planes on this layer first."
Turns each billboard to face the camera. Shown only for a billboard brush.
Removes the scatter and returns the brush to painting flat marks.
Capturing replaces, adding appends
Capture 3D object as element on a brush that already instances your own elements replaces the whole palette. Use Add another element to build a palette of several. Re-capturing a billboard likewise replaces its image, though it keeps density, size and spin.
A capture is a snapshot. Editing the source object afterwards does not change the brush, and changes no stroke already painted with it — re-capture to update, and old strokes keep the geometry they were drawn with.