Asteroid Organizer
Automated way to add and edit Asteroid geometry.
The following is a short discription of how this plugin works
STEP #1 >> Create a random field with geospheres - parameters are not important since they are set by the plugin
STEP #2 >> Go to the 'Common Setting' dialog and click on 'Add Geosphere(s)'. This will cause the plugin to perform a number of processes and the progress will be shown in a dialog with progressbar.
STEP #3 >> In the 'Common Settings' rollout you will find a listbox with the objects that are currently in cache. Below the listbox you will find a number of parameters which set for instance the global scale - individual scale and iterations.
STEP #4 >> To add a more random distribution of the currently selected objects in the listbox you can add random scale - translation and rotation. Note that they are absolute values.
STEP #5 >> When creating the first instance of the plugin - the plugin creates two keys: one on the animation range start - and one on the animation range end. If you change you're animation range - than you can set the start and end key either manually or automatically. The spinners 'start' and 'end' define respectively the first and last keyframe - when pressing 'Set automatically' the keys are placed at the start and end of the animation range. You will find these parameters in the 'Animation Range' rollout.
STEP #6 >> A special feature regarding materials is that every asteroid-object is given a random material-ID - ranging from 1 to 10. So when you go to the rollout 'Material Settings' you will find materialbutton. You can choose all available materials - but I suggest that you take a submaterial-material since this will increase the randomness of the total scene. TIP: try to add some deviation to the diffuse - specular and ambient components of the individual material - this will create a more realistic picture!
STEP #7 >> The last step is setting the display options in the rollout 'Display Settings'. The global color adjust the wirecolor of the asteroids. And dependent on the speed of you're computer - you might want display the asteroids as bounding box. This can be set by checking 'Show bounding box'.