Placing objects on a surface

[Paradox^]

I’m trying to place instances of an object (copy to points) on a plane with a mountain sop, and have the object’s Y point in the direction of the plane’s normal. Is there an easy way to accomplish this? I’ve spent the last two days sorting through documents on orientation, upvectors, and all that follows, but I can’t find a simple way to accomplish this. Could anyone help me out?

Edited August 20, 2018 by Paradox^

[kiryha]

The orientation of copied objects defined by several built-in attributes

Here is the example of how you can control those attributes to control copied objects position, rotation and scale.

Offtopic: Hellow from ex AnnArbor citizen

 

[Tronotrond]

One other way you can do this is setting normals on the instance points (attribute transfer from the mountain geo). It doesn't give you full control, but your scatter objects Z-direction will always point in the direction of the normal - so you can achieve this by giving your scatter object the right orientation first. To have full control of all three axes you need to combine three vectors into an orient attribute matrix. You can do this with playing around with cross products, but might be overkill for what you're trying to achieve

Edited August 21, 2018 by Tronotrond

[Paradox^]

Thank you guys, I’ll look into both of them! I’m getting the hang of playing with attributes, but it’s a little over my head sometimes.

And hey from Michigan , the weather’s nice here right now.