Quick Start Guide

This guide will walk you through your first environment placement in under 5 minutes. You can choose between the Automated Demo Workflow (recommended for testing the tool instantly) or the Manual Placement Workflow (for adding objects to your own scene).

To bypass all manual collider, bounds, and profile setup:

  1. Open the Unity menu: Tools -> Decnet -> Setup Demo Scene.
  2. Click Awesome in the popup dialog.
  3. The editor will automatically:
    • Create and load a new scene: Assets/Decnet/AI Level Scatter/Demo/DemoScene.unity.
    • Instantiate a ground plane with a grass material and collider.
    • Run the scattering algorithm using the ForestFloorProfile preset.
    • Spawn a floating 3D Text User Guide directly in your scene view.
  4. You can immediately hit Play or use the editor tools to experiment.

Method B: Manual Placement Workflow

If you want to configure scattering on your own terrains or custom meshes, follow these steps:

1. Select the Target Surface

  1. Open the main window: Tools -> Decnet -> AI Level Scatter.
  2. Select your ground plane or terrain in the Hierarchy.
  3. In the ⚙ Scatter tab of the tool window, click the Use Selected button next to the Target Surface field.
  4. If your target mesh does not have a collider, the tool will automatically add a MeshCollider and log a notification in the Console.

2. Configure Selection Bounds

  1. Click the Fit Bounds to Selection button.
  2. An emerald-colored bounding box will overlay your selected ground object in the SceneView.
  3. (Optional) Adjust the Boundary Padding slider to pull placement away from the outer edges (this is automatically clamped to 40% of the bounds size to prevent errors).

3. Assign a Scatter Profile

  1. Click Create New Profile to write a new ScriptableObject configuration asset, or assign an existing preset profile (e.g. ForestFloorProfile from Assets/Decnet/AI Level Scatter/Presets/).

  2. Self-Healing Feature: If you create a brand-new profile and leave its prefab list empty, the tool will automatically generate and attach high-quality procedural trees, rocks, and grass demo prefabs on the fly, allowing you to test right away.

4. Preview and Apply

  1. Click Generate Preview. The tool will calculate valid placement candidates and draw wireframes in the SceneView:
    • Green Circles / Lines: Accepted candidates.
    • Red Crosses: Rejected candidates (clumped too close, slope is too steep, or outside height boundaries).
  2. Adjust the Density (sample points) and Min Spacing sliders, and click Generate Preview to see the changes update in real time.
  3. Once satisfied, click Apply Placement.
  4. All spawned prefabs are grouped under a [Scatter] parent in the Hierarchy. Press Ctrl+Z to undo the placement at any time.

Next up, learn about the core architectural concepts of the tool in the Core Concepts Guide!

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