Forest Pack 7 adds several changes that make the reference mode much more useful. If you’ve not seen this feature before, it’s accessed from distribution rollout by selecting Reference from the mode dropdown.
In this mode, you can place any item on any number of selected objects. For non-mesh items you can use an object’s pivot point to place an item, but for meshes, you also have the option of treating each triangle as a separate marker. It is this feature that has been improved.
In previous versions, reference mode was able to put a single item in the centre of a reference triangle. But In the new version, the position can be randomised. This is great if you are using a surface to layout multiple items and you want to break up the grid-like structure.
Another new feature is the ability to specify the number of items to add per triangle. This mode works with randomisation, in which case their position is shuffled, or you can turn Randomisation off and the items will be placed in a grid.
Another often requested feature was the ability to filter which triangles are used based on their material ID. For some cases, this can be a handy alternative to using Forest’s UV Surface scatter mode (which doesn’t support limiting by material ID).