This widget is your main gateway to Dash, and is jampacked with features:

• Content: Dash features an amazing content browser, with Megascans & Polyhaven support, custom assets support, an IES library, and the ability to access all your assets from other UE projects! In this category, you will also find the reference image board tool, similar to Miro and PureRef.

• Place: This shows you a dropdown full of tools that help you with content placement. Features range from pivot setting to physics-based asset placement, and much more.

• Scatter: This is where all the cool scatter tools of Dash reside: You can scatter on a surface, along a spline, scatter decals, scatter in a volume, etc…

• Create: This is an extensive list of tools that help you create objects, from geometry & curve primitives, to cameras, vines, fog cards, etc…

• Edit: This is the main properties panel through which all your Dash tools will be edited.

You can make the dash bar smaller by going to the menu icon on the left, then selecting Toggle Scale to swap between full, minimal, and icon only. The shortcut for this is CTRL+E.

The “Find tools” text area is where you can search for tools. For example, we have a really useful tool called “draw curves” which allows you to interactively draw native UE splines. You can open it from the Create menu, or by just typing “draw curves” in the search field, then hitting Enter when you see it suggested. A lot of these tools are often in one of the menus; i.e. Draw Curves is in Create -> Curve Tools. But the search bar has a lot more tools broadly, from simple things like toggling nanite/collision on your selected objects, to more specific tools like the Channel Packer.

And finally, you have the Dash logo, which you can drag around to unsnap the Dash bar from its default position and move it around your screen, or double-click to expand/collapse the list of all tools available in Dash.

The Dash bar is responsive, meaning scaling the UE viewport will adapt its position and scale too. You can disable this behavior by clicking on the dots menu, then Toggle Responsive UI.

Dash AI Assistant

To help you get the most out of Dash, the product ships with an AI assistant you can speak to. It is trained on this documentation, and will do its best to answer your questions, such as:

• How do I mask objects by proximity?

• Where can I find my license key?

• Where do I find physics tools?

• I'm unable to scatter more assets after 1.0 when using surface scatter.

• etc...

Like most modern AIs, this assistant is not perfect, and occasionally make mistakes. Based on our testing, it seems to be helpful at dealing with most issues users encounter, and we've made sure to include links to our discord, documentation, and support email in the assistant window, just so you know where to reach out in case it's not helpful. We've also exposed a History button that helps you see all the questions you've asked during your UE session; meaning from the moment you started it, 'till the moment you closed it.

The assistant is limited to 25 questions per session, after which we usually recommend you to just read out to us and we'll troubleshoot the issue with you. You could of course just restart UE5 to ask more questions, but at that point, one of our developers would likely be a better assistant 😄

Properties

Base Properties

• Instancers: Instancers to operate on. Select them in your scene then click the + icon.

• Enabled: Enable or disable instance variation.

• Seed: Random seed for the variation.

Color Variation

• Noise Scale: Controls the scale of noise applied to the color variation.

Color Variation 2

• Minimum: The minimum value for color variation.

• Maximum: The maximum value for color variation.

Properties

Base Properties

• Density: Controls the density of the particles.

• Bounds: Controls the bounds of the particles.

• Scale: Controls the scale of the particles.

• Lifetime: Controls the lifetime of the particles.

• Speed: Controls the speed of the particles.

• Gravity: Controls the gravity of the particles.

• X Stretch: Controls the stretching of the particles in the X axis.

• Y Stretch: Controls the stretching of the particles in the Y axis.

• Hue: Adjusts the hue of the particles.

• Saturation: Adjusts color saturation.

• Brightness: Controls brightness levels.

• Opacity: Controls the visibility of the particles.

Properties

Base Properties

• Curves: Curves to create a pipe around.

• Radius: Controls the radius of the pipe.

Pipe Settings

• Sides: Controls the side divisions of the profile.

• Custom Profile: You can pass another curve to use as your pipe's profile.

• Custom Profile Scale: When a custom profile is provided, this value controls its size.

• Open Profile: If checked, the profile's sides will be opened.

• Close Caps: If checked, the pipes will be closed with a cap.

• Normalized UVs: When turned off, the UVs will be tiled depending on the mesh length in the scene.

• Normals Angle: Normals angle of the generated pipe mesh.

To start, you can download Dash here: https://www.polygonflow.io/download-latest-dash

If you’ve never tried it before, you can get a free trial, which is fully-featured, and requires no credit card info. You can start the this free trial when you later open Dash for the first time.

If you already have a paid license, you can proceed with the download and installation, you will be able to enter your existing license key later in Unreal Engine.

Installing

Before you start the installation process, make sure that you’ve closed all running Unreal Engine software.

During the installation, Dash will automatically detect all UE5 versions you’ve got available. In case it fails to get your UE5 path, help it by putting the engine’s installation path, which typically looks like this:

C:/Program Files/Epic Games/UE_5.X

Once you’ve set the path(s), click on next, and continue with the install.

As a final step in the installation, you will see a popup mentioning Console(s) Windows. This is an important step, as when you click OK on that popup one or two Console Windows will appear (depending on which UE versions you are installing Dash into). You must let these Console Windows run and close by themselves before proceeding to open Unreal Engine again. If these windows are closed before, our dependencies will not be installed properly, and then Dash will not work as it should.

License & Trial Setup

Once the installation is done, open Unreal Engine, and you’ll notice the Dash blue icon is now visible on the top left of the UE toolbar. Click on it, and the Dash bar, along with the license manager, will show up. From there, you have the following options:

Once the license is activated, you can close the License Manager, and this is where the fun begins!

User Interface Basics

At its core, Dash is a simple bar that’s jampacked with features. We separated them into broad categories that define various tasks in your workflow:

• Content: Dash features an amazing content browser, with Megascans & Polyhaven support, custom assets support, an IES library, and the ability to access all your assets from other UE projects! In this category, you will also find the reference image board tool, similar to Miro and PureRef.

• Place: This shows you a dropdown full of tools that help you with content placement. Features range from pivot setting to physics-based asset placement, and much more.

• Scatter: This is where all the cool scatter tools of Dash reside: You can scatter on a surface, along a spline, scatter decals, scatter in a volume, etc…

• Create: This is an extensive list of tools that help you create objects, from geometry & curve primitives to cameras, vines, fog cards, etc…

• Edit: This is the main properties panel through which all your Dash tools will be edited.

You can make the dash bar smaller by going to the menu icon on the left, then selecting Toggle Scale to swap between full, minimal, and icon only. The shortcut for this is CTRL+E.

The “Find tools” text area is where you can search for tools. For example, we have a really useful tool called “draw curves” which allows you to interactively draw native UE splines. You can open it from the Create menu, or by just typing “draw curves” in the search field, then hitting Enter when you see it suggested. A lot of these tools are often in one of the menus; i.e. Draw Curves is in Create -> Curve Tools. But the search bar has a lot more tools broadly, from simple things like toggling nanite/collision on your selected objects, to more specific tools like the Channel Packer.

And finally, you have the Dash logo, which you can drag around to unsnap the Dash bar from its default position and move it around your screen, or double-click to expand/collapse the list of all tools available in Dash.

We've got an extensive user interface guide that you can follow right here. Since this is a getting-started manual, and you've just got Dash working, let's create something!

Creating a Simple Environment with Dash

We'll scatter some foliage on a plane, then mask it out with a curve, and set up a camera to make it all look good!

First, let's make a simple plane. In the Dash bar, go to Create -> Mesh Primitives -> Create Plane.

Next, let's assign to it a random material color.

You'll notice that a new clock/time icon has showed up on the left of the search field. That's the history icon, and it lists the last 10 actions you've run from the Dash menus. Clicking on it will show you a dropdown with all the recent tools, and you can even CTRL+Click on it to just run the last action. Here, that means switching between multiple random materials with just one click.

I'll do the same thing with a sphere and a cylinder: Create -> Mesh Primitives -> Create Sphere/Cylinder.

As a side note, Unreal Engine's meshes are usually of type Static Mesh. Dash has a special type called Dash Preview Mesh Component. You can convert them to static meshes by selecting the mesh (like a plane) in your scene, then typing To Static Meshes or Bake in the Dash bar, then hitting Enter or clicking on the suggested action. This will convert it to a static mesh, and that mesh will now have its asset located at Content/Polygonflow/StaticMeshes. Additionally, you can also enable Nanite by typing "Enable Nanite" and selecting the suggested action "Actor Enable Nanite". I'll do both for my plane, sphere, and cylinder.

AI Assistant

We natively ship an AI assistant in Dash that'll help you with most pressing questions. It's fast, quite good, and our community + support is just one click away if you'd rather speak to a human 😇

Now that we have a ground, a sphere, and a cylinder, let's start using some tools!

Surface Scatter

First, we'll scatter the sphere on the ground. Go to Scatter -> Surface Scatter. Surface Scatter is an extremely flexible scatter solution that allows you to scatter instances on surfaces, be it meshes, landscapes, procedural meshes, dash meshes, other scatters, etc...

Dash has actions and tools. Actions are like "to static mesh" or "random material"; they're operations that work on your selection or some other context, and usually don't open any panel. Tools are like Surface Scatter: They open a panel, are non-destructive, and stick in your scene even when you restart Unreal Engine, until you delete them for good. When you open Surface Scatter, the Dash Tools Panel will show up and house your Surface Scatter:

Let's get straight to business: Select your plane, then hit the icon on the Surface property, then select the sphere, and do the same for the Scatter property. That's it! You should see your object scattered around, and now, you can just play with the density, scaling, and other values. For our case, I mostly adjust density, min/max scale, and sink.

Next, we'll draw a curve across our plane, and use it to remove some scattered spheres, which will give us a nice little path. To draw the curve, go to Create -> Curve Tools -> Draw Curve. This will start the curve context mode, and if you drag your mouse around the viewport with the left-mouse button pressed, a curve will be drawn. Additionally, you'll also notice that the Dash bar changes the buttons it shows, and now has options relevant to this specific tool. We can increase the number of points for our curves, smooth them, etc... Keep in mind, this works on even existing splines! Just select them, run the tool, and start smoothing/resampling them.

And now, let's use it to mask our instances!

Scroll down in the properties view until you see a group called Proximity Masking. Expand it, and with your curve selected, add it to the Objects property by clicking on the "+" icon, or double clicking on the property itself.

Surface Scatter is filled with amazing masking features: Landscape layers, raycasting, textures, volumes, sunlight, directional, height, vertex colors, clumping, angle, noise, mesh border, etc... As a brief side note, here's how easy it is to mask by texture: Load up the texture in your project, make sure your mesh has UVs, give it to Surface Scatter, and voilà. PS: You can clear your property from some objects by Right click -> Clear Objects, or Right Click -> Reset to Default.

Path Scatter

Back to our scene, the next step is to scatter the cylinder mesh we built earlier along the path, to have some kind of wooden posts. To do this, we'll use another tool called Path Scatter. Go to Scatter -> Path Scatter in the Dash bar, and its properties should show up in the properties panel. Give it the cylinder and the curve, and it'll do its magic.

Since our cylinder originally had a uniform size, I made some adjustments in the Scale Properties group by enabling Use Custom Scale, then toying with the min/max on all axes until I get the look I'm after. I then switched the pivot mode to Bottom. Path Scatter and Surface Scatter both have this pivot mode system, which allows you to override the original pivot of the object you're scattering. This can be very useful as you interact with content from asset libraries, all having different pivot standards/qualities.

Next, let's go to the group Path Width, and play with the width value! Let's also open the group Feature Masking, and pass our plane to the Projection Mask property. This ensures that all instances that aren't above the plane don't get spawned.

References

Look at that! We've got ourselves a cool little scene. Let's do a couple of things to make it all a bit more intuitive. First, both Surface Scatter and Path Scatter rely on the curve to set up a path with a given width. What we want to do is have the property in both tools to be controlled by one value, just so we don't have to jump between them anytime we feel like making the path wider. This is where References come in: You can right-click on a property, like say Distance in Proximity Masking, then create a reference property out of it. Then back in Surface Scatter, you can right-click on the Parallel distance, and assign to it your newly created reference. You can even double-click on the name of the property to change it!

When you make a numerical (float, integer) property a reference, you'll notice a Weight value appear on the right side of the slider. This weight is unique to each referenced property. So for example, while both the sphere and cylinder instances now share the same path width, you could tweak the weight on the spheres to make a bit of space between them and the cylinders.

To remove a reference, simply right-click on a property, then select Remove Reference. To view all references in your scene, from the Tools Panel, open the tools list , and go to Reference Tool. There, you can add, remove and edit your referenced properties.

In the video above, we're creating a Scene Container property, which can hold objects in our scene. We're giving it our curve, then going to our Path and Surface Scatter tools to make them use that reference instead of the curve directly. This makes it easy to add, replace, edit or do whatever we want with our reference, and see all tools update.

Compounds

When right-clicking on a property, you'll notice that we have a "Compound" section in the menu that shows up. In short, compounds are custom tools that can be used to group properties from multiple tools. For example, the setup we have so far could be a compound called "Path Creator", and in it, we could expose some reference properties, some regular properties, etc... from any number of tools. You can't create compound properties, you can only add existing properties to them.

In the video below, we start by Right-Click -> Add to New Compound on a property, then we do this again and again on multiple properties until we've covered all the basics. From then on, we don't need to even touch Path Scatter or Surface Scatter; this is our hub from which all major adjustments are made.

Editing Several Existing Tools

As you accumulate tools, it's important to keep in mind that there are multiple ways of accessing them to keep editing them later on:

• By selecting their result in the scene they will pop up in the Tools Panel and you can continue to edit them.

• By switching amongst them from the Active Tools list located in the top left corner of the Tools Panel, with this menu icon .

• Note, by pinning tools with the pin icon inside of the Tools Panel you ensure that changing the viewport selection doesn't switch tools within the Tools Panel.

When you create a new tool, it is pinned by default, as you might, for example, want to select some instances to pass them to this new tool, but don't want to accidentally start switching tools. Always keep an eye on the pin icon if you notice the panel isn't refreshing and showing the tool you expect to see.

Detailing

With just a few primitives and some scatter passes, we can create a really cute scene. In the screenshot below, we've created a few more spheres, scattered some on the ground, some on other scatters, etc... We've also used some of the scattered instances as proximity; you can see the dark green spheres are mostly clustered near the orange spheres, and that's because we used the orange spheres as proximity mask.

Camera & Grading

Finally, let's make a shot out of this! Go to Create -> Common -> Create Camera. This will create a Dash camera, which is a custom blueprint tailored for cinematic shots. The viewport will automatically switch to this camera, and the tools panel will also show its properties. From there, we can start toying with the color grading presets, shuffle through them, adjust the aspect ratio, bloom, etc... This part is mostly messing around with values and figuring out what works.

I then added a water plane from Create -> Common -> Water Plane, scaled and moved it around a bit, and here's the final result:

Closing

I hope you've learned the basics of Dash! We cover the user interface in more detail in the next page, and also have some more extensive use cases in this documentation. Most importantly, we can't recommend you enough to join our Discord community: It's a calm space with artists honing their craft, and our team is there around the clock to help you if needed.

Properties

Base Properties

• Texture: Provide an image (PNG, JPG) to create your alpha card/meshes from. This image should contain black and white pixels, where white pixels represent areas you want to convert into geometry.

• Material: Material to assign to the generated meshes.

• Face To: Your meshes can face up, making them laid flat in your scene, or front, making them look upfront.

• Pivot Position: Sets the pivot position to the center or bottom. Centered pivots are useful if for example you want to scatter leaves on a ground, while bottom is used for placing leaves on stems/branches.

• Border Density: Controls the vertex density around the borders of each mesh.

• Pivot Offset: Offsets the pivot upwards or downwards.

• Scale: Controls the overall size of your generated meshes.

• Position Override: Moves the generated meshes to this position.

• Min Res: Controls the minimum vertex density based on the scale of individual meshes.

• Max Res: Controls the maximum vertex density based on the scale of individual meshes.

• Border Resample: Preserves shape tries to keep the shape of each pixel island at the cost of more polygons, while reduce count gives you a better polygon count control method over your generated meshes, at the cost of cutting your pixel islands off in some areas.

• Border Padding: Offsets the generated meshes along the edges of each pixel island in your opacity map. This can be useful to control mesh clipping when some pixel islands overlap with each other.

• Ignore Ratio: Removes meshes with a size ratio below this value. For example, 0.1 will remove meshes that are 10% smaller than the average size of all meshes.

• DEV ONLY - Ignore Method: An for development use only property to set methods for ignoring dimensions.

• Flip Normals: A boolean option to flip the normals of the generated meshes.

• Pack To Center: If checked, all generated meshes get packed to the center, otherwise they use their position in your input alpha.

Noise

• Intensity: Controls the intensity of the noise.

• Frequency: Noise frequency that's applied on the meshes.

• Max: Maximum noise value.

• Min: Minimum noise value.

Tag Settings

• Create Tag: If set to true, a tag containing the generated meshes will be created, and accessible in the Scene Tags.

• Tag Name: Stores the created meshes under this tag.

Properties

Base Properties

• Surface: Surfaces over which the ivy will grow.

• Origin: Initial point from which the ivy begins to grow.

• Growth Iterations: Number of growth iterations for the ivy.

• Growth Size: Adjusts the overall size of the ivy; higher values result in larger ivy growth.

• Primary Weight: Determines the upward growth tendency; higher values encourage more vertical growth.

• Random Weight: Introduces directional randomness to the growth, adding variation and preventing uniform upward growth.

• Adhesion Weight: Controls the stickiness of the ivy, affecting how closely it clings to surfaces.

• Gravity Weight: Modifies the effect of gravity on the ivy, influencing how it hangs or droops.

• Max Float Length: Defines the maximum length branches can extend while not adhering to a surface, length is relative to the surface mesh size.

• Max Adhesion Distance: Specifies the furthest distance at which branches attempt to stick to nearby surfaces, distance is relative to the surface mesh size.

• Seed: Random seed value for generating variations in ivy growth.

Branches

• Branch Radius: Radius of the ivy branches.

• Branch Sides: Number of sides for the ivy branches.

• Branch Smoothing: Applies a blur effect to branch output to reduce noise; may cause branches to intersect with meshes or hover above surfaces.

• Max Branch Length: Max Length of a Branch. Length is relative to the surface size.

• Branch Min: The minimum iteration count at which a new branch can spawn. Resets when a branch is spawned.

• Branch Max: The maximum iteration count at which a new branch can spawn. Resets when a branch is spawned.

• Branch Step: After every branch spawn, this value is added to Branch Min/Max to increase sparsity.

Leaves

• Leaf Meshes: Leaf meshes to be used in the ivy.

• Leaf Probability: Sets the chance of leaves appearing on the ivy.

• Leaf Scale: Size of ivy leaves.

• Leaf Density: Leaf density.

• Leaf Sway: Applies a slight random rotation to leaves, adding natural variation.

• Push: Push along forward vector.

• Ignore Default Mesh: If set to true, the vines will be created without the default leaf mesh.

• Forward Axis: Forward Axis of the plane, most are +X, but AlphaCut results are +Y.

Properties

Base Properties

• Grading Presets: Select a color grading preset

• Grading Intensity: Adjust the intensity of color grading

• Aspect Ratio: Adjust the aspect ratio of the camera

• Focal Length: Adjust the focal length of the camera

• Aperture: Adjust the aperture of the camera

• Focus Distance: Adjust the focus distance of the camera

• Exposure: Adjust the exposure of the camera

• Lens Distortion: Adjust the lens distortion of the camera

• Invert Distortion: Inverts the lens distortion effect

• Squeeze Factor: Adjust the squeeze factor of the camera

• Sensor Width: Adjust the sensor width of the camera

• Sensor Height: Adjust the sensor height of the camera

Post Processing

• Bloom: Adjust the bloom of the camera

• Vignette: Adjust the vignette of the camera

• Film Grain: Adjust the film grain of the camera

• Film Grain Scale: Adjust the scale of the film grain

• Detail Strength: Adjust the detail strength of the camera

• Sharpen: Adjust the sharpening of the camera

• Fringe: Adjust the fringe of the camera

Color Correction

• Hue: Adjust the hue of the color correction

• Saturation: Adjust the saturation of the color correction

• Brightness: Adjust the brightness of the color correction

• Contrast: Adjust the contrast of the color correction

• Temperature: Adjust the temperature of the color correction

Extras

• Outline Intensity: Adjust the intensity of the outline effect

• Outline Thickness: Adjust the thickness of the outline effect

• Outline Distance: Adjust the distance fade of the outline effect

Properties

Base Properties

• Offset: Offsets the curve from the surface.

• Projection Curves: Curves to project on the input projection meshes.

• Projection Meshes: Meshes to project the curves to.

• Resample: Enable/Disable resampling of the curve.

• Resolution: The higher the value, the more accurately the curve gets reconstructed.

• Resample Distance: Resamples the projected curve to give it more points.

Properties

Base Properties

• Density: Controls the density of the fog.

• Distance: Controls the distance visibility of the fog.

• Height: Controls the height falloff of the fog.

• God Rays: Controls light scattering in the fog, which can be used to simulate god rays.

• Hue: Adjusts the hue of the particles.

• Saturation: Adjusts color saturation.

• Brightness: Controls brightness levels.

Properties

Base Properties

• Draw Mode: Choose the way you draw curves

• Filter Objects: Provide scene objects to use as filter. Use the filter type below to define how to treat those objects.

• Filter Mode: You can decide to 'draw only' on certain objects, or to 'draw everywhere except' some specific objects by changing the filter type.

• Curve Degree: Select the curve degree for the next or the active curve

• Initial Smooth: Default smooth value for the created freeform curves

• Min Spacing: Minimum pixel distance used for creating the curve

• Hit Offset: Set a default offset to move the curves from the hit meshes

• Create Mesh: A boolean indicating whether to create a mesh from the curves

• Start Drawing: Click here to enter the draw context

Editing

• Edit Strength: Multiplier used with MMB actions to influence the curves more significantly.

• Avoid Smooth Intersections: When curves are drawn on mesh, smoothing might generate intersections. With this option on, the smoothed curves will avoid going inside meshes.

Mesh Options

• Mesh Initial Radius: Initial radius used for the pipe mesh

• Mesh Initial Max Radius: Initial max radius used for the mesh, to create random variations if different from the other one.

• Radius Affects Offset: A boolean indicating whether the radius affects the offset of the mesh.

• Mesh On Exit: Pick the behavior for the created meshes after you exit the drawing context.

Properties

Base Properties

• Objects: Objects to work on.

• Base Color Tint: Sets the base color tint of the fog card.

• Cloud Density: Adjusts the density of the clouds.

• Cloud Brightness: Adjusts the brightness of the clouds.

• Cloud Contrast: Sets the contrast of the clouds.

• Edge Fading Distance: Controls the distance for edge fading of the fog.

• Camera Fading Distance: Controls the camera fading distance to fog.

• Wind Speed: Adjusts the wind speed affecting clouds.

• Wind Direction: Sets the wind direction affecting clouds.

• Cloud Wind Tilling: Adjusts the tiling of cloud wind patterns.

Properties

Base Properties

• Meshes: Meshes to use as a volume.

• Scatter: Objects to scatter inside the volume meshes/curves.

• Density: Density of your scatter. The higher the value, the more scattered meshes you'll have.

• Randomness: Randomness of the scatter. The higher the value, the more random the scatter will be.

• Randomness Multiplier: Multiplier for the randomness of the scatter. The higher the value, the more random the scatter will be.

• Min Scale: Minimum scale of your scattered meshes.

• Max Scale: Maximum scale of your scattered meshes.

• Seed: Randomizes the result of the scatter.

Rotation Properties

• Override Rotation: If set to True, the rotation will be overridden by the values below.

• X Override: Overrides the rotation along the X axis.

• Y Override: Overrides the rotation along the Y axis.

• Z Override: Overrides the rotation along the Z axis.

• Random Spin: This ensures that all instances have a random angle/spin to them, which ensures great rotation variation.

• Uniform Angle: Adjust the angle/spin of your instances. By default, they all have a random spin.

• X Jitter: Randomizes the rotation along the X axis.

• Y Jitter: Randomizes the rotation along the Y axis.

• Z Jitter: Randomizes the rotation along the Z axis.

Proximity Mask

• Objects: You can pass meshes, curves and even instancers to use them as masks.

• Distance: Distance of the objects' proximity mask.

• Sampling: A higher value results in more precise proximity masking, but at a heavier cost (especially if your proximity objects are scatter instances).

Properties

Base Properties

• Objects: Objects to manipulate

• Seed: Randomizes the result of the scatter

Position Properties

• Sink: Pushes the positions downwards

• X Override: Overrides the positions along the X axis

• Y Override: Overrides the positions along the Y axis

• Z Override: Overrides the positions along the Z axis

• X Jitter: Randomizes the positions along the X axis

• Y Jitter: Randomizes the positions along the Y axis

• Z Jitter: Randomizes the positions along the Z axis

Rotation Properties

• Override Rotation: If set to True, the rotation will be overridden by the values below

• X Override: Overrides the rotation along the X axis

• Y Override: Overrides the rotation along the Y axis

• Z Override: Overrides the rotation along the Z axis

• Randomize Angles: This ensures that all instances have a random angle/spin to them, which ensures great rotation variation

• Uniform Angle: Adjust the angle/spin of your instances. By default, they all have a random spin

• X Jitter: Randomizes the rotation along the X axis

• Y Jitter: Randomizes the rotation along the Y axis

• Z Jitter: Randomizes the rotation along the Z axis

Scale Properties

• Min Scale: Minimum scale of your scattered meshes

• Max Scale: Maximum scale of your scattered meshes

• Scale Mode: When scattering multiple meshes, you can choose how the scale should be handled

Base Properties

• Scale: Controls the scaling of the terrain mesh.

• Material: Defines the material used for the terrain.

• Curved: Adjusts the curvature of the terrain mesh.

• Sink: Determines the sinking effect within the terrain.

• Relax Weight: Sets the weight for relaxation of terrain features.

• Subdivision: Controls the subdivision level of the terrain mesh.

• Height: Sets the height range for the terrain mesh.

• Uv Scale: Controls the UV scaling of the terrain texture.

• Seed: Sets the seed value for procedural generation.

Noise Properties

• Turbulence: Controls the turbulence effect on the terrain.

• Mid Turbulance: Adjusts the middle turbulence level of the terrain.

Curve Properties

• Curves: Contains the falloff curves used to shape the terrain.

• Sampling: Adjusts the distance between points on the curves.

• Falloff: Sets the falloff range for the terrain shaping.

• Interpolate: Defines the interpolation value for the falloff.

• Project Curves: Determines if curves should be projected onto the terrain.

Height Map

• Texture: Defines the texture used for height mapping.

• Multiplier: Controls the multiplier for height adjustment.

Once Physics Paint has been started, you only need to use your left mouse button to start painting assets wherever you like!

When you start the Physics Paint tool, the Dash bar shows a dedicated set of options to customize it:

• Collision - This one is important, as it could be the case that your painted objects either float above the ground or fall right through your surface. If any of these cases happen, you need to select your surface in the UE outlier and then set its collision to Complex from within the Physics Paint Collision setting. Using the other option Simple is rarely needed.

• Clear - This button deletes all the assets you have painted so far.

• Count - This controls the amount of objects being painted. You can type in a value or slide it to the right and to the left. If you hold CTRL or SHIFT when sliding, you adjust it faster.

• Brush - This controls the paintbrush size. You can type in a value or slide it to the right and to the left. If you hold CTRL or SHIFT when sliding, you adjust it faster.

• Brush Mode

  • Paint - This is the default mode and the one that lets you paint new objects.

  • Erase - This mode lets you erase your painted objects.

  • Push - This mode makes the brush push away the objects as you move the brush
• Orientation Mode

  • Realistic - This is the default mode and here the objects fall down according to their own orientation. If they collide with other objects they can change rotation.

  • Randomized - In this mode the objects fall down with random rotations.

  • Locked - In this mode the objects fall down according to their own orientation. If they collide with other objects they remain in this orientation.

Physics Drop

With the Physics Drop tool in Dash, you can instead drop one or several meshes and see them fall down naturally within a physics simulation. This is perfect when you need to place one or a few objects very realistically. The result of a Physics Drop simulation is individual static meshes. But if you want to combine them together, select all of them in the Outlier and search for Merge in Dash. There exist two ways of starting the Physics Drop tool in Dash:

1. If you hold CTRL and drag and drop one or several assets from the Dash Content Browser you will see an option Physics Drop. This will start the Physics Drop simulation for these selected assets.

2. Select any meshes in your viewport and then in the Place menu in the Dash bar you can also find Physics Drop.

Once Physics Drop starts you will see your meshes drop down to the surface realistically.

As with Physics Paint, this tool also has its own settings that show up on the Dash bar while it's running:

• Collision - This one is important, as it could be the case that your dropped objects either float above the ground or fall right through your surface. If any of these cases happen, you need to select your surface in the UE outlier and then set its collision to Complex from within the Physics Drop Collision setting. Using the other option Simple is rarely needed. If some objects have already started falling beneath the surface, you can use the Select button and then press Reset to get them all back to their initial position.

• State

  • Static - If you select any object in the Outlier and then set it to static in the Physics Drop settings you will make sure this object is not part of the physics simulation and will thus not drop down.

  • Dynamic - If you select any object in the Outlier and then set it to dynamic in the Physics Drop settings you will make sure this object is part of the physics simulation and will thus drop down.

• Duplicate - Clicking the Duplicate button will duplicate all your selected assets.

• Select - This button selects your originally dropped objects and your duplicates.

• Jitter - This button will jitter around all your selected objects in the physics simulation.

• Reset - This button resets the position of all selected objects in your Physics Simulation.

Properties

Base Properties

• Objects: Objects to work on

• Hue: Adjusts the hue of the material

• Saturation: Adjusts color saturation

• Brightness: Controls brightness levels

• Contrast: Sets the contrast ratio

• Tint: Tint of the albedo

• Tint Intensity: Controls the intensity of the tint

• Roughness: Modifies the surface roughness

• Normal: Controls normal map intensity

• Tiling: Adjusts the tiling of textures

• Opacity: Controls the visibility of the material

• Displacement: Sets the displacement level

Triplanar

• Texture Scale: Controls the scale of triplanar mapping

• Sharpness: Adjusts the sharpness in triplanar mapping

• Dither Noise: Applies noise to soften transitions

UVs

• Rotation: Adjusts texture rotation

• Tiling X: Tiling along the X-axis

• Tiling Y: Tiling along the Y-axis

Dirt

• Enable Dirt: Enables or disables dirt effects

• Dirt Intensity: Controls the intensity of dirt

• Dirt Hue: Adjusts the hue of the dirt

• Dirt Saturation: Adjusts color saturation

• Dirt Brightness: Controls brightness levels

• Dirt Roughness: Modifies the surface roughness

• Dirt Tiling: Adjusts the tiling of dirt textures

• Dirt Overlay: Controls the intensity of dirt overlay

Snow

• Enable Snow: Toggles snow effect

• Snow: Adjusts the accumulation of snow

• Snow Height Multiplier: Adjusts the global displacement

• S Height Contrast: Modifies height of snow

• S Height: Modifies sharpness of snow

• S Slope: Controls snow accumulation based on slope

• S Position X: Adjusts the position on the X axis

• S Position Y: Adjusts the position on the Y axis

• S Rotation: Rotate snow texture

• S Tiling: Adjusts tiling of snow textures

• S Brightness: Snow brightness

• S Color Contrast: Snow contrast

• S Albedo Blend: Blend snow albedo with surface

• S Subsurface Intensity: Controls subsurface value

• S Roughness Contrast: Controls roughness contrast of snow

• S Roughness Blend: Blend snow roughness with surface

• S Normal Intensity: Modifies normal intensity of snow

• S Normal Blend: Blend snow normal with surface normal

• S Noise: Amount of noise on Snow

• S Noise Sharpness: Sharpness of Snow noise

Rain

• Rain: Sets the strength of the rain

• Wetness: Sets the strength of the rain

• T Drip Tiling: Controls the size of Drips

• T Droplets Tiling: Controls the size of Droplets

• T Ripple Size: Controls the size of Ripples

• T Ripple Motion: Adjusts the wave speed on water surfaces

Wind

• Wind: Enables or disables wind effects

• Wind Intensity: Controls the intensity of wind

• Wind Speed: Adjusts the speed of wind effects

Water

• Depth: Sets the depth of water

• Distortion: Sets the distortion of water

• Underlying Hue: Adjusts the hue of the underlying water surface

• Underlying Saturation: Adjusts color saturation

• Speed: Adjusts the wave speed on water surfaces

Misc

• Translucency: Adjusts the translucency level

• Roughness Contrast: Enhances roughness contrast

Variation

• Enable Color Variation: Enables color variation

• Hue - Var 1: Adjusts the hue variation of the material

• Saturation - Var 1: Adjusts color saturation

• Brightness - Var 1: Adjusts brightness

Properties

Base Properties

• Scatter: Objects to instance on the grid

• Count: Number of instances along the ring

• Radius: Controls the radius of the scatter

• Start Angle: Start angle of the ring

• End Angle: End angle of the ring

• Keep Count: Keep the initial count after slicing the radius

• Offset All: Rotate all rings

• Height: Applies height accumulatively on every point within a ring.

• Height every Nth: Applies height every Nth object instead of every other

Concentric

• Concentric Rings: Number of concentric rings

• Concentric Distance Min: Minimum distance between 2 concentric rings

• Concentric Distance Max: Maximum distance between 2 concentric rings

• Ring Offset: Rotates rings

• Offset every Nth: Rotates every Nth ring instead of all.

• Accumulative Offset: Accumulatively offsets instead of uniformly.

• Wrap Around: If wrap around is set, ring offset won't confine objects within the Start and End angle

• Adaptive Count: Set the number of objects in a ring such that spacing between objects is uniform in all rings.

• Count Increase: Increase count every subsequent ring

• Count Every Nth: Applies count increase every Nth ring

• Ring Height: Applies a height accumulatively on every subsequent ring

• Ring Height every Nth: Applies the Ring Height every Nth ring instead of every other

Position

• Origin Meshes: Origin to scatter objects around

• Orient To Origin: If object is rotated, rotate also the scatter

• Equidistant: Objects are placed in equal distances in a radius, otherwise randomly

• Randomize Position: Randomizes position towards the center, giving it a bit of a variation.

• Sink: Pushes your instanced objects downwards

• Randomize Sink: Sink value will be randomized per object in the range of (0, Sink), instead of uniformly setting in the same for all.

• Seed: Used for modifying randomization of Positional values

Shaping

• X: Extends along X axis

• Y: Extends along Y axis

• Carve Start: Carves out in a circular pattern, percentage wise

• Carve End: Carves out in a circular pattern, percentage wise

Scaling

• Scale Mode: Scale Mode

• Min Scale: Minimum scale of the instances

• Max Scale: Maximum scale of the instances

• Noise Scale: Controls the scale of the noise

• Scale Jitter: Adds random scale value to existing scale.

Rotation

• Twist Direction: Twists around this axis

• Twist Rotation: Twists the scattered objects' rotations along the curve

• Random Spin: Rotates individual instances randomly around their axis

• Rotation Space: Rotate objects in world or object space

• X Rotation: Rotates the scattered objects along the X axis in the given space

• Y Rotation: Rotates the scattered objects along the Y axis in the given space

• Z Rotation: Rotates the scattered objects along the Z axis in the given space

Projection

• Projection Meshes: Meshes to projects the objects onto

• Align to Projection: If set, reorients objects to the surface normals

• Remove Non Projected: Anything that wasn't projected will be removed

Proximity Mask

• Objects: You can pass meshes, curves and even instancers to use them as masks

• Distance: Distance of the objects' proximity mask

• Sampling: A higher value results in more precise proximity masking, but at a heavier cost (especially if your proximity objects are scatter instances)

Object Masking

• Objects: Samples objects near the meshes.

• Distance: Controls distance of the padding we add to the inside mask

• Keep Inside: When set to true, ensures that we only keep what's inside of our meshes.

Misc

• Random Remove: Randomly removes percentage wise

• Seed: Modifies the randomization process

Properties

Base Properties

• Surface: Meshes to scatter on

• Decals: Decal assets to scatter

• Density: Scatter density

• Min Scale: Minimum scale for random scale

• Max Scale: Maximum scale for random scale

• Surface Align: Adjusts the alignment of the decals to the surface.

• Depth: Depth of decals.

• Scale: Default extent of decals in cm

• Sink: Pushes your instanced objects downwards, very practical for trees

• Max Count: Maximum count of scattered decals

• Seed: Random seed for scattering variations

Feature Masking

• Slope Mask: Masks objects by the angle of the underlying surface area under them

• Min Height Mask: Minimum height at which objects should be clamped

• Max Height Mask: Maximum height at which objects should be clamped

Proximity Mask

• Proximity: Proximity meshes ensure that only scattered objects nearby are kept

• Distance: Controls the proximity distance

• Sampling: A higher value results in more precise proximity masking, but at a heavier cost

• Width: Width of the proximity mask, allowing for strokes/slices of your scatter setup.

Rotation Properties

• Incremental Spin: Write your incremental values as ints or floats, separated by spaces.

• Sort Increments: If set to True, the incremental values will be applied in order, instead of randomly

• Uniform Angle: Adjust the spin of the decals.

• Spin: Give random spin to decals, ensuring great rotation variation

• Rotation Jitter: Additional random spin

Noise Mask

• Breakup: Controls the intensity of the noise/breakup.

• Breakup Scale: Frequency of the noise mask; controls the scale of the noise

• Smoothness Noise: Controls how sharp/soft the noise mask is

• Warp Noise: Deforms the noise mask, creating interesting mask shapes

• Noise Scale Multiplier: Multiplier for noise scale

• Noise Scale X: Scale of noise in the X direction

• Noise Scale Y: Scale of noise in the Y direction

• Noise Scale Z: Scale of noise in the Z direction

Border Masking

• Border Offset: Masks scattered objects along the surface's borders.

• Border Min: Minimum distance offset from the border mask value

• Border Max: Maximum distance offset from the border mask value

• Border Noise: Applies noise on the border mask

• Border Sampling: A higher value results in more precise border masking, but at a heavier cost

Object Masking

• Objects: Samples objects near the meshes using raytracing for mesh proximity masking.

• Distance: Controls distance of the padding we add to the inside mask

• Keep Inside: When set to true, only keeps what's inside of meshes.

• Invert: Inverts the mask

Properties

Base Properties

• Curves: Curve to create a path mesh around

• Width: Width of the path mesh

• Inside Height: Raises the inner vertices of the mesh

• Border Height: Raises the border vertices of the mesh

• Profile Flatten: Flattens the profile from the center to the edges

Profile Settings

• Profile Divisions: Number of divisions for the profile curve

• Profile Smooth: Smoothness of the profile curve

• Profile Angle: Angle of the profile curve

• Profile Alignment: Aligns the profile curve to the path curve (Not compatible if Path Width - Width is used)

• Look at points: Points to look at when using the 'Look At' profile alignment

Geometry Settings

• Projection Mask: Projects the road onto the input meshes

• Full Mesh: When on, the full road mesh will be considered, making the road follow closely the underlying mesh

• UV Scale: Scale the UVs

• Noise Scale: Controls the scale of the noise

• Noise Intensity: Controls the intensity of the noise

• Subdivision: Subdivisions of the mesh

• Normals Angle: Normals angle of the mesh

• Invert Normals: Inverts the normals of the mesh

• Receive decals: If set to true, the road mesh receives decals

Path Width

• Width: Creates two parallel meshes along the sides of the curves

• Width - Keep Center: If set to true, the mesh objects at the center will be kept when using the width parameter for parallel curve scattering

• Width - Sides: Number of parallel meshes to have on each side of the curves

Splits

• Split Mode: Split the road at the specified distance or number of splits

• Min Distance: Minimum distance between the splits

• Max Distance: Maximum distance between the splits

• Split Seed: Seed for the splits

• Num Splits: Number of splits to create the road

• Splits Offset: Offset the splits

• Splits Threshold: Ignores the splits if the section's length is smaller than the threshold

• Skip Nth: Skip every Nth split

• Skip Nth Count: Count of splits to skip

• Max Splits: Limit the maximum amount of splits per curve

Mesh Pattern

We are excited to introduce Mesh Pattern, a completely new tool for creating procedural, tileable patterns. You can use the included presets or design your own with custom assets, making it perfect for roofs, walls, floors, or any other man-made surface that needs more depth and detail than a simple material.

Mesh Pattern comes with a variety of presets, such as Brick, Basket Weave, Chevrons, Herringbone, Worn Down Floor, and Hollow Bricks. If none of these fit your project, you can easily design your own pattern, save it, and reuse it as a custom preset in the future.

As with other Dash tools, Mesh Pattern is fully procedural, giving you full control to adjust presets to your environment with settings for scale, angle, padding, and proximity mask.

Amazon Berkeley Objects (ABO) - Free 3D Models

We’ve integrated the Amazon Berkeley Objects Library directly into Dash’s Content Browser. You now have access to a huge collection of high-quality, real-world 3D models, completely free, right inside Dash.

You can easily search or scroll through these assets in any Unreal project, and when you drag and drop them into your environment, Dash automatically handles the download and importing for you.

The ABO library includes a wide variety of everyday objects, from kitchenware like mugs, plates, and bowls, to furniture such as chairs, to electronics, office supplies, and even accessories like shoes and backpacks. Since the library is natively integrated in Dash, all assets come with search tags to make them incredibly easy to find. You can also adjust their materials with the Material Edit tool, and of course scatter them or drop them with physics directly from the Content Browser, just as you are used to.

The Base Mesh Library - Free 3D Base Meshes

Alongside ABO, we are also bringing in the Base Mesh Library, now available directly inside Dash’s Content Browser. This library provides a wide range of clean, low-poly models that are ideal for blocking out scenes, testing ideas, or using as a foundation for more detailed work, all available for free.

Once inside your Unreal project, you can drag and drop any of these meshes straight into the scene, with Dash taking care of the download and import process automatically. Each model is tagged for easy searching, and, as with any other asset in Dash, you can quickly place them with scattering and physics-based placement.

Rain Fall Tool

The 1.9.2 update introduces a brand-new Rain Fall tool. With a single click, you can add a fully procedural rain effect to your scene, complete with parameters you can easily adjust to match your environment. You can find this tool either by search or in the Create menu on the Dash bar.

The video below highlights some of its features in action.

Snow Fall Tool

The 1.9.2 update also brings Snowfall, giving you a beautiful procedural snow effect with full control over its look and behavior. Whether you want a light flurry or a heavy blizzard, Snowfall adapts to your scene with just a few tweaks.

The video below gives a preview of it in action.

Draw Spline Tool (With Tangents)

We added a new Draw Spline tool to allow you to interactively draw and edit splines with tangents. Very useful for those cases where you want detailed control of your splines. When you draw, you can "project" the tangent just by pressing Shift, and edit any previous point by just clicking on it.

Slider Intensity Controls

We have now also added a uniform intensity control for all the sliders in Dash. This means when adjusting the density, for example, you can hold CTRL, SHIFT, or ALT to decrease the slider intensity. Making it much easier to get precise control of the settings without having to type in values. The logic is the following: CTRL = 0.5 speed, SHIFT = 0.25 speed, and ALT = 0.1 speed. When holding any of these keys while sliding, you will also see the intensity adjustment visible on the slider.

Multi-Asset Selection in Content Browser

We now support normal multi-select behavior in the Dash Content Browser. This means that from Dash 1.9.2, you should hold CTRL to select multiple individual assets, or hold SHIFT to select all assets between your first and second selection. You can also press CTRL+A to select all the visible assets, or use the keyboard arrows to move the selection. Batch editing tags, or adding assets to a collection in bulk, is now as intuitive as you wanted it to be.

Smaller new features and bug fixes:

• You can now adjust the tiling of each individual layer within our Blend Material tool.

• Our Advanced Water now supports Path Tracer.

• If you have your project under version control, you can tell Dash that the content initialized under Your Project / Polygonflow doesn't need to be checked automatically. Toggle off "Skip Resources Acquisition" if you have the polygonflow content managed from an external tool.

• Fixed bug with IES library sometimes not loading

• Fixed an issue on Fab library, caused by recent online changes, that prevented Dash from detecting the asset type

• Fixed visual artifacts in the Content Browser that left some item borders partially drawn when moving the mouse over

• When using the "Move Tool", you can now exit from it directly from the Dash bar, other than with the usual Enter or Esc keys

• A bug related to changing the UI scale of Dash through the preferences has now been solved

• Our is now included in the Free Dash version

• Two bugs in Decal Scatter have been fixed. One major one and one related to scaling.

• Our tri-planar material now works with Megascans surfaces from FAB as well.

• The curves from the Draw Curve tool are now named dash_curve in the outlier, and the default name can be adjusted from the Dash preferences.

• Our tiling breakup feature has been improved to avoid visible artefacts, making the results much better looking.

Besides the baking feature in the Tools panel, you can also select the component of this mesh, and it'll have a button Create Static Mesh to convert it to a static mesh.

Terrain Tool

Creates a procedural mesh to be used as a ground - This terrain can be adjusted as you see fit with the easy-to-use controls within the Terrain Tool. For example, you can control the Height, Turbulence, and UV Scale, but you can also deform it with a height map or with splines. You can find the terrain tool by searching for it in Dash or by finding it in the Create menu.

Cable Tool

Create procedural cables between splines, objects, or scattered on top of meshes - It comes with a bunch of different settings making sure you can create cables fully procedurally easier than ever before. Perfect for city environments or jungle environments in Unreal Engine 5. Of course, you get full control of the amount of cables, their size, their gravity, and much more! You can find the cable tool by searching in Dash or in the Create menu.

Vine Tool

Create vines on the specified surfaces - This is perfect for any forest or overgrown environment as it lets you create procedural vines within 2 seconds on any surface or asset. As vines tend to have leaves on them, we have made it super easy to just CTRL drag and drop a leaf atlas from Dash's Content Library onto a surface and in 1 second you have vines with leaves attached spread throughout the asset/surface. You can then control the amount of growth, the sizes of the branches and the leaves, and much more. As easy as it can get!

You can of course also open the Vine tool by searching in Dash. Then you can assign an origin (it can be an empty actor or a curve) and a surface you want the vines to grow on. The third way of opening it is by searching for Draw Vines in Dash, this opens our Draw Mode and once you draw a curve you will see we automatically create vines along this curve for you! You can exit this Draw Mode by clicking ESC or the STOP button.

Road Tool

Creates a road/path mesh along the input curve/spline - If you ever have felt the need to have a procedural road in UE5, you will be happy to use this! Just draw a spline with Dash, assign it to the road tool, and voila, you have a road perfectly matching the shape of your spline. If you need it to align even more to your surface, you can find a Projection Mask under the Geometry section. Then, if you change the spline or the underlying surface, the road auto-adjusts. You can find the Road Tool by searching in Dash.

And as always you can customize the road with the normal sliders and toggles, getting the perfect result for your environment. Pro-tip, after you have created a road, you can assign it as a proximity mask in Surface Scatter, making sure there are no grass etc on the road.

Quick Pipe

Create mesh pipes along the input curves - If you think it is easy to draw splines just the way you would like to have pipes/cables, Quick Pipe is for you. Just assign one or several splines to the tool and you instantly get meshes created along the splines. These meshes are of course customizable with our normal sliders and toggles! You can find Quick Pipe by searching in Dash.

Draw Mesh

If you need a mesh in a custom shape, our Draw Mesh tool lets you draw any shape and we create a basic mesh in this shape. You can open it through the Create Menu or by searching for it. Once started you will be in our Draw Mode and once you draw any shape, we will create a matching mesh for you. You can continue and create how many you like and then just exit the Draw Mode with ESC or the STOP button and delete the ones you don't like.

FAQ

This update features a revamped UI that splits all your favorite features into distinct menus, and organizes everything in a clean and accessible way. As soon as you use a feature from the menus, a recent icon will show up, from which you can access your recent menu action calls. You can also set to favorite any action.

TOOLS PANEL

Dash has had a longstanding problem of too many floating panels for all your tools. No more! This new unified panel contains all your tools and switches anytime you select their results. You can pin tools, detach them, scroll among the active ones, rename them, etc...

REVAMPED PATH-BASED TOOLS

Road Tool, Quick Pipe, Decal Scatter, and Path Scatter have been revamped from the ground up to make it easier than ever to realistic roads, caves, beaten paths, and any other curve-based shape you can think of.

One really cool new feature in the road tool is its Noise Features which can help you to easily create more than just flat roads. Combining it with our Path Width feature you can create realistic paths like the one below.

BLEND MATERIAL

We've extended this material to add rain & snow support, and also did an overhaul on its blending behavior, making it one of (if not) the best blend material you've ever tried.

SURFACE SCATTER

• Pivot Mode is a new dropdown that allows you to use the object's top, center or bottom as the pivot.

• Directional Masking: Got a sunlight in your scene? Want to use its direction and cast shadows as a mask? We got you.

• Scale Influence: You can now use any object in your scene to drive the scale of your scatter based on a distance value.

WORLD-CLASS DOCUMENTATION

Dash now has an extensive documentation that goes above and beyond to teach you its capabilities. It's still WIP, and will be one of the best you've ever read by the time it's complete.

AI ASSISTANT

This little friend sits right on the Dash bar. You can ask it any question, from how do I scatter, to drag & dropping an image and asking it how you can use Dash to help you create it, or even giving it a WIP and asking for feedback. Like most things AI, it can occasionally make mistakes, and unlike most things AI, your questions/images are NEVER used for training!

DASH BOARD TOOL

This update features a beta of our new Dash board, which is a reference image organization tool similar to Miro and PureRef. It sits right inside UE5, allows you to organize your thoughts cleanly, and will soon also make it easy to browse assets based on what an image contains, give you a list of all the tools needed to make an image, draw, etc...

REVAMPED AI TAGGING

We've doubled all tagging quotas, made it possible to compute assets without AI tagging them, exposed the ability to use your own OpenAI API key and your own URL Proxy, and improved the quality of the tagging.

BONUS STUFF

• Compound Tool: With this new tool, you will be able to add properties from several tools, meaning it will be easier to control complex setups that consist of several Dash tools. For example a fully procedural forest road.

• Unreal Engine 5.5 Preview: Dash 1.8 supports UE 5.5 preview and as soon as UE 5.5 goes out of preview we will ship a hotfix for Dash 1.8 that gives support for official UE 5.5 as well.

• Windows Insider Preview: We might have fixed this issue, but it hasn't been tested yet, so if you are on Windows Insider Preview build, please give it a try, and let us know how it goes! :)

• Bug Fixes: We have of course also fixed a lot of bugs so Dash 1.8 should be even more stable than previous versions. If you find bugs or have any other feedback/questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us in our !

Properties

Base Properties

• Curves: Curves to scatter on

• Scatter: Meshes to scatter

• Density Mode: Changes the density mode.

• Density: Density represents a value relative to the objects you scatter, and gives you plausible results.

• Distance: Points will be scattered along the curve at this distance from each other

• Count: Controls the number of scattered objects along the curve

• Fit Axis: Set the axis of the object looking in the right direction, and the object will be fitted using that.

• Fit Mode: Specify the fit mode for the objects; Pattern allows specific indexes, while Random generates objects randomly.

• Pattern: Specify the object number as pattern, and it will be repeated, allowing for complex arrangements.

• Start Scatter: Scatter objects at the start of the curve

• End Scatter: Scatter objects at the end of the curve

• Flip Ends: Flip the start or end scatter objects

• Fit Margin: Add or remove a margin around the fitted objects to prevent them from touching each other

• Fill Stretch: Stretch the objects along the curve to fill it completely

• Min Scale: Minimum scale of the scattered objects

• Max Scale: Maximum scale of the scattered objects

• Path Smooth: Smoothness of the path curve

• Sink: Pushes your instanced objects downwards, useful for trees and similar objects.

• Tangents Jitter: Randomize position along the tangent of the curve, breaking up uniform placement.

• Binormals Jitter: Randomize position along the binormal of the curve, further breaking up uniformity.

• Resolution: Controls the sampling resolution of the curves

• Random Spin: Randomly spins the scattered objects around their axis.

• Spin Axis: Axis to spin the objects around.

• Seed: Creates random variation of the current scatter setup.

Feature Masking

• Projection Mask: Projects the objects along this input mesh(es).

• Add Mask: When masking is used, this can help you randomly restore masked objects.

• Remove Mask: Randomly mask out objects.

• Slice Start: Masks the scatter setup by slicing the internal curve at its start.

• Slice End: Masks the scatter setup by slicing the internal curve at its ends.

Rotation Properties

• Look at Mode: Control the direction of each object.

• Look at Objects: Objects to point the scattered objects at in LOOK AT mode.

• Align to Curve: If turned on, orients aligned with the curve's normal.

• Rotation Jitter: Randomly jitters the rotation of each scattered object.

• Rotation Space: Rotate objects in world or object space.

• X Rotation: Rotates the scattered objects along the X axis in the specified space.

• Y Rotation: Rotates the scattered objects along the Y axis in the specified space.

• Z Rotation: Rotates the scattered objects along the Z axis in the specified space.

• Twist Direction: Twists around the specified axis.

• Twist Rotation: Twists the scattered objects' rotations along the curve.

Scale Properties

• Scale Jitter: Randomly jitters the scale of each scattered object.

• Use Custom Scale: If checked, the Min and Max scale values in the Base properties will be ignored.

• Xmin Scale: Minimum scale on the X axis.

• Ymin Scale: Minimum scale on the Y axis.

• Zmin Scale: Minimum scale on the Z axis.

• Xmax Scale: Maximum scale on the X axis.

• Ymax Scale: Maximum scale on the Y axis.

• Zmax Scale: Maximum scale on the Z axis.

Position Override

• Randomize Override: If set to true, the override value will be used to randomize the position of the scattered objects.

• X Override: Overrides the position along the X axis.

• Y Override: Overrides the position along the Y axis.

• Z Override: Overrides the position along the Z axis.

Proximity Mask

• Proximity: Proximity meshes ensure that only scattered objects nearby are kept.

• Distance: Controls the proximity distance.

• Sampling: A higher value results in more precise proximity masking but comes at a cost.

Misc

• Receive decals: If set to true, instances receive decals.

• Enable collision: If True - collision is set to 'Enabled (Query and Physics)', if False - 'NoCollision'.

Properties

Base Properties

• Objects: Objects to work on

• R Weight: Controls the weight of the R layer

• G Weight: Controls the weight of the G layer

• B Weight: Controls the weight of the B layer

• S Weight: Controls the weight of the S layer

• T Weight: Controls the weight of the T layer

• Global Tiling: Adjusts the tiling of all layers

• Height Contrast: Enhances height contrast

• Height Intensity: Enhances height intensity

• Height Noise: Enhances height noise. This creates a nice breakup from the height map

• Height Noise Scale: Adjusts the scale of noise

• Height Noise Intensity: Adjusts the intensity of noise

• Wetness: Controls the wetness of the material

• Displacement: Sets the displacement level

Base Layer

• Base Material Instance: If you provide a material instance, we'll extract its Albedo/Normal/Roughness maps and use them in this layer.

• R Height Softness: Softens the height blending layer

• R Height Invert: Inverts the height blending layer

• Base Hue: Adjusts the hue of the material

• Base Saturation: Adjusts color saturation

• Base Brightness: Controls brightness levels

• Base Contrast: Sets the contrast ratio

• Base Roughness: Modifies the surface roughness

• Base Roughness Contrast: Modifies the surface roughness

• Base Normal: Controls normal map intensity

• Base Tiling X: Adjusts the tiling of textures

• Base Tiling Y: Adjusts the tiling of textures

R Layer

• R Material Instance: If you provide a material instance, we'll extract its Albedo/Normal/Roughness maps and use them in this layer.

• R Height Softness: Softens the height blending layer

• R Height Invert: Inverts the height blending layer

• R Hue: Adjusts the hue of the material

• R Saturation: Adjusts color saturation

• R Brightness: Controls brightness levels

• R Contrast: Sets the contrast ratio

• R Roughness: Modifies the surface roughness

• R Roughness Contrast: Modifies the surface roughness contrast

• R Normal: Controls normal map intensity

• R Tiling: Adjusts the tiling of textures

• R Albedo Blend: Adjusts the blending of the albedo layer

• R Roughness Blend: Adjusts the blending of the roughness layer

• R Normal Blend: Adjusts the blending of the normal layer

• R Slope: Adjusts the blending of the slope layer

• R Slope Softness: Softens the slope blending layer

G Layer

• G Material Instance: If you provide a material instance, we'll extract its Albedo/Normal/Roughness maps and use them in this layer.

• G Height Softness: Softens the height blending layer

• G Height Invert: Inverts the height blending layer

• G Hue: Adjusts the hue of the material

• G Saturation: Adjusts color saturation

• G Brightness: Controls brightness levels

• G Contrast: Sets the contrast ratio

• G Roughness: Modifies the surface roughness

• G Roughness Contrast: Modifies the surface roughness contrast

• G Normal: Controls normal map intensity

• G Tiling: Adjusts the tiling of textures

• G Albedo Blend: Adjusts the blending of the albedo layer

• G Roughness Blend: Adjusts the blending of the roughness layer

• G Normal Blend: Adjusts the blending of the normal layer

• G Slope: Adjusts the blending of the slope layer

• G Slope Softness: Softens the slope blending layer

Puddle (B) Layer

• B Height Softness: Softens the height blending layer

• B Height Invert: Inverts the height blending layer

• B Depth: Controls the depth of the water layer

• B Movement: Controls the movement of the water layer

• B Hue: Adjusts the hue of the material

• B Saturation: Adjusts color saturation

• B Brightness: Controls brightness levels

• B Contrast: Sets the contrast ratio

• B Roughness: Modifies the surface roughness

• B Roughness Contrast: Modifies the surface roughness contrast

• B Normal: Controls normal map intensity

• B Tiling: Adjusts the tiling of textures

• B Albedo Blend: Adjusts the blending of the albedo layer

• B Roughness Blend: Adjusts the blending of the roughness layer

• B Normal Blend: Adjusts the blending of the normal layer

• B Slope: Adjusts the blending of the slope layer

• B Slope Softness: Softens the slope blending layer

Snow (S) Layer

• S Height Multiplier: Adjusts the global displacement intensity

• S Height Contrast: Modifies height of snow

• S Height: Modifies sharpness of snow

• S Slope: Controls snow accumulation based on slope

• S Position X: Adjusts the position on the X axis

• S Position Y: Adjusts the position on the Y axis

• S Rotation: Rotate snow texture

• S Tiling: Adjusts tiling of snow textures

• S Brightness: Snow brightness

• S Color Contrast: Snow contrast

• S Albedo Blend: Blend snow albedo with surface

• S Subsurface Intensity: Controls subsurface value

• S Roughness Contrast: Controls roughness contrast of snow

• S Roughness Blend: Blend snow roughness with surface

• S Normal Intensity: Modifies normal intensity of snow

• S Normal Blend: Blend snow normal with surface normal

• S Noise: Amount of noise on Snow

• S Noise Sharpness: sharpness of Snow noise

Rain (T) Layer

• T Drip Tiling: Adjusts the tiling of the rain drip texture

• T Drips Length: Adjusts the length of the rain drip texture

• T Drips Strength: Adjusts the strength of the rain drip texture

• T Droplet Strength: Adjusts the strength of the rain droplet texture

• T Droplets: Adjusts the number of rain droplets

• T Droplets Tiling: Adjusts the tiling of the rain droplet texture

• T Ripple Motion: Adjusts the motion of the rain ripple texture

• T Ripple Size: Adjusts the size of the rain ripple texture