You can rotate the populator itself and it will populate on any angle you want. But it essentially populates perpendicular to the plane of the populator, so imagine that gravity is generated by the populator directly perpendicular to it and instances were "dropped" from there to land on the surface the populator is anchored to. Any surfaces on which a "dropped" object would not be able to "land" will not get populated. But for example you could surround an object with populators on all sides and completely cover it in populated instances, it would just take multiple populators. It's best to test this with an object and you'll quickly see how it works.
- Oshyan