Population not leaning as expected

[mrjrdnthms]

My goal is to populate a grid of evenly space objects. I would like the vertical of each object to lean to terrain normal. I can't seem to get it to work though. Attached is a simple setup with card objects in a grid population. You can see in the sample render the tops of the card objects don't seem perpendicular to the terrain normal which is what I expected with the settings. I set lean effect to 1. Any idea what I am missing?

[Oshyan]

If you're using the default settings, I would venture to guess that the "Don't lean if slope below" setting default of 45 degrees is too high. Try setting that to 0 and see if you get some effect. Also note that the Plane is not the best tester object for this.

- Oshyan

[mrjrdnthms]

I did set the "Don't lean if slope below" to 0 so I know thats not it. Here's another render using a blade of grass set to 1 meter tall. Again you can see the blades don't lean as expected.

[Oshyan]

To get a "perfect", i.e. 100% lean-to-terrain, you'd also want to set "Reduce Lean If Slope Below" to 0. When I do that, it seems to be working as I think you expect.

- Oshyan

[mrjrdnthms]

That fixed it. I wasn't understanding (carefully reading I guess) that option. Thanks for your help Oshyan.

[Oshyan]

No problem, glad it was something simple. I'm honestly not sure these are the best defaults, we may reevaluate that in the future...

- Oshyan

[mrjrdnthms]

I think it was the "don't" negation that I was confused by. For me it makes more sense thinking about a range of values over which an effect is applied. Example: apply the lean effect for slopes 0 to 9, reduce lean effect for slopes 0 to 30.

Attached is a mockup of what I mean and what I would expect defaults to be.