Atlas Scenario Editor - Random facing direction for trees on placement?

[sternstaub]

Hello to everyone, but exspecially to the map-editing members of the community

since i am editing a large forest-blotched map at the moment (and hence am placing tons of trees in the process),
i noticed that it becomes visually repetetive at a certain point.

So i started to turn the flora objects randomly by spinning the mouse, with good results.

 

...sadly, this idea came into my mind long after i started placing the forests, so i will have to re-work all the other map-parts for a more natural appearance

Perhaps this would be a good option to implement into atlas? Random object placement rotation?

Sadly, i do not know too much about the atlas GUI libraries, and how such option could be added. But if someone knows, i would like to look for a way to add this when there is time for it.

What do you think? Does this make sense?

EDIT: this is probably a more performance-friendly way of providing random appearances than using the random meshes, which are being reduced often for the sake of performance.

Edited December 2, 2023 by sternstaub

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

A quick hack would be to double click the trees to get a selection of them, then ctrl-right_button-drag. Please report back.  

[sternstaub]

It is possible, but all trees have the same rotation then

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, sternstaub said:

It is possible, but all trees have the same rotation then

Select smal groups randomly and repeat the process a few times. It's much faster than doing every tree individually. 

[vladislavbelov]

On 2/12/2023 at 2:01 PM, sternstaub said:

Perhaps this would be a good option to implement into atlas? Random object placement rotation?

Yeah, that'd be good. Unfortunately it's in a low priority right know. But!  I wrote a script to do simple batch updates. So if you have Python 3 installed (or you're able to), you can use it (don't forget to backup your map files before running the script and resave the map from Atlas to format the file correctly after the changes by the script):

python3 path/to/entities.py path/to/map.xml --pattern your/tree/name --list --rotate random

entities.py

You might run the script without the rotate argument just to test the list of matched entities.

[sternstaub]

First of all, thanks for your answers

It does not surprise that such concerns are of low priority at the moment, with A27 finalization going on. Perhaps some Atlas reworks can be done before the game's campaign mode will be created. So yes, it is irrelevant to the game at the moment.

Still both workarounds are helpful in some fashion. Sadly i could not use your script for the current map @vladislavbelov, because many trees are already placed and some have intended rotation (overhanging cliffs etc.). But this definitley has a lot of utility value from just a simple script.

...inspiring me to simplify such processes myself in the future