DEM Earth 4.35 introduces a new Geographical Cloning object. 



The DEM Earth cloner (currently) uses world tree data to figure out where to place trees( or whatever you want to scatter).


The DEM Earth cloner works in geographical space (it does not use polygon geometry), generating a constant, homogeneous data set, for the entire planet,  downloaded on demand. Generating hundreds of trillions of reproducible tree node location candidates.


This new cloner, uses multi instances to display large quantities of nodes, quickly.


Setup


The basic setup is as simple as this :

you can insert as many objects as you like under the dem earth cloner. you do not have to pre-scale your objects. The dem earth cloner will automatically take care of the size of your objects for you. Moving, rotating, and scaling to fit the size of the dem earth geographic surface. 


to use with octane or any other engine that does not fully support multi instances, you can use the dem earth cloner, to drive a mograph cloner. Set it up like this.

and link the Mograph Cloner link, in the settings.

easy. 


When you link to a Mograph cloner, how you no longer need a child object under the DEM Earth cloner. When driving a mograph cloner, everything is used from that mograph cloner, including the child objects.


you can turn off the Draw mode at any time, to speed up scene redraw. Octane (or any other engine) will still show the results in its live viewer.


Once you have the basic setup in place, and the dem earth cloner has downloaded some data, you should see something like this 


Generate


  • Seed : is your random planet seed.
  • Distribution :  Poisson disc, Random, Grid and Hex modes are available.

  • Invert : inverts the forest mask.
  • Forest : changes the range of the planet mask.
  • Density : is the density of points. (Poisson disc sample range)
  • Extent : At 100% the dem earth bounds are used. Because the sampling is not polygon based, you can extend far beyond the geometry of the surface.
  • Object Size : changes the size of all of the objects being cloned.


Variation

  • Scale :  Increase or decrease individual instance scale by random percent (uses seed)
  • Direction :  rotation by random percent (uses seed) 
  • Height: surface offset (height above or below surface) by random percent (uses seed)


Cull

  • Max.altitude : cull all Instances  above Max.Altitude. 
  • Min altitude : cull all Instances  below Min.Altitude.
  • Max.Slope : Slip maximum limit in degrees.
  • Min Slope : Slope minimum limit  in degrees.
  • Viewport : remove any instances that are outside of the view frustum.
  • Max.Distance :  Instances are culled between Between Min.Distance and Max.Distance. the farther away they are , the more likely they are to be culled. Nothing is visible beyond Max.Distance. Everything is visible before Min.Distance.
  • Min.Distance :  Cull nothing that is before Min.Distance.


Info

  • Instance count
  • Object Count
  • Memory Usage


Mograph.Drive

  • Mograph cloner :  A link to a Mograph cloner, which is to be driven by DEM Earth Cloner. 
  • This can be used to get The DEM Earth clones, into Octane. 
  • Anything that can see mograph clones, can use DEM Earth clones when connected by this link.


TIPS ( for driving mograph cloner with dem earth cloner ): 

  • Mograph cloner has to be above the DEM Earth cloner in your hierarchy, so that DEM Earth cloner is executed after Mograph.
  • Mograph cloner settings are ignored, as it is being driven by the DEM Earth cloner, in zombie mode.
  • Have your Mograph cloner do as little as possible. Any results it produces, are simply overwritten.



Falloff


  • Fields : you can use Fields to modify the final size of instances. its easy. Try it :)


Tips:  

  • you can use the scene LOD settings to reduce the number of points.
  • When you link up to a Mograph cloner, that cloner needs to be positioned above the dem earth cloner, in hierarchy. 
  • The DEM Earth cloner needs to be processed after a mograph cloner.



using DEM Earth cloner with octane:

messing around in octane.