XGen is a great tool for scattering elements in a scene giving you enough control to quickly randomize or govern placement. It all comes down to the XGen Archive. This is the geometry, piece or element that gets replicated. It can be a modeled blade of grass, trees, rocks, or hair.
Some quick tips and tricks to help you work with XGen Archives.
One thing that can get quickly out of hand is the amount of rescues needed for replicating objects at high density in a scene. XGen is built to handle a high amount of objects, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to worry over the size of your Xgen Archives.
Here, Autodesk’s Daryl Obert shares some great tips and tricks that can help you work with XGen Archives in Maya. Watch how to prepare the archive to work with LOD’s, and how to work around high density on the large geometry that you might have in an XGen Archive. Setting Level Of Detail for an XGen scene can be an amazing tool for managing density. Daryl also walks through some tips on using and painting masks, which can be critical for managing high density scenes.
