While work with that new input port i figured out that this port not fully control the height of each instance, but just add height to instance, if height of mask is higher than height of instance
I think that here is a problem in how developer did discribe this feauture, or it is a bug that do not allow to do what did developer write
Why i think so:
Because i want to actually and fully control height of each instance. If i want to provide empty mask with zero height - i want to receive zero instances. But currently it not work in such way. This “control” is only add height, but not decrease it, so it is look like lack of usefulness
Here is how ~100%, ~50% and ~0% mask work with that port. You can see that here is no actual “control”, just adding of height:
You can control the presence of an instance by attaching a mask to either the opacity or density parameter - they will differ in what happens with a partial value (opacity will fade out the instance, while density will apply a hard cutoff)
You can control the elevation range by attaching a mask to the “Elevation scale” parameter, which sets the height scaling of the shape.
The new input completes the control by allowing you to specify the base height of an instance - for example, so that it can be embedded into the terrain.
I considered adding it as a parameter instead of a main input port. As I see it, the factors for and against are:
Add as a parameter:
Allows you to set without a map, which could be useful
Consistency with the other placement parameters
Add as an input:
Guarentee a 1:1 mapping to the placement height. For the primary use case of this input (embedding objects into a terrain), this should be as foolproof as possible. Exposing as a spatial parameter requires you to set the spatial range to the maximum possible, which is not immediately obvious.
Here’s an example of the intended use. In this world, the elevation scaling of the object is set to zero, so it has no height of its own - it’s just stamping out a flat area.
