Scatter
What it does
Scatter drops a cloud of points across a source: a mesh surface, a shape's interior or edges, an image's bright areas, or a plain rectangle or circle when nothing is wired in. Every point gets a position, a normal, and an id, so downstream nodes can instance geometry, drive particles, or feed a stamp directly from the result.
Layout is pure random, blue-noise Poisson disk, a stable GPU blue-noise variant, or a jittered grid. Quantity is set either as an exact count or as a spacing distance. Point size takes optional per-point variation, and a relaxation pass spreads out clumps.
When to use it
Points over a surface, inside a shape, along an outline, or across the bright regions of an image.
Nothing to scatter onto yet: points are still produced in a synthesised rectangle or circle, so downstream work can start before a source is wired.
Varying density: an image wired into Density Modulator rejects points in darker areas, and Source Attribute pointed at a named attribute biases density per region.
Evenly spread points without visible clumps: raise Relax Iterations, or switch Distribution to Poisson Disk or Stable Blue Noise.
Gotchas
Mode defaults to Bounds, not Surface, so a freshly placed Scatter node produces visible points in a synthesised rectangle even with nothing wired in. Switch Mode once a real source is connected.
By Count and By Density are mutually exclusive framings of the same knob. By Count targets an exact point total and lets the algorithm pick spacing; By Density targets a spacing and lets the count emerge from the bounds area. Only one of Count / Min Distance is visible at a time, matching the mode picked.
Source Attribute appears only once geometry or points are wired into the main input, and only in Surface / Interior / Edges / Density modes. It reads a named scalar attribute and rejects candidates stochastically in proportion to its value. Blank turns density modulation off.
Poisson Disk (CPU) is strict, with no two points ever violating the minimum spacing, but it is slower and can be unstable frame-to-frame under an animated seed. Stable Blue Noise gives an equivalent look with an approximate spacing guarantee, stays stable under animation, and runs on the GPU. Prefer it for anything moving.
Worked example
Add a Scatter node. With nothing wired in, it already produces a scatter of points in a rectangle, a quick way to preview downstream nodes.
Wire a shape or geometry into the main input, then set Mode to Surface or Interior to scatter on it instead of the default bounds.
Set Count Mode to By Count and raise Count for a denser scatter, or switch to By Density and lower Min Distance for the same effect.
Wire an image into Density Modulator to thin out points in darker regions, and wire a colour source into Fill to tint each point.
Raise Relax Iterations if the result still looks clumpy.