Making a nozzle or tube to spray plants

Making a scene with a lot of plants can get pretty sluggish in PlantStudio because PlantStudio has to simulate each plant. But if you want a meadow scene or a wallpaper pattern, using a method that lets you spread identical plants around on a background is quicker and easier.

Both MetaCreations Painter and Paint Shop Pro have methods that allow you to "spray" bitmaps around in a picture. Painter calls this function an "image hose nozzle" and has had it since Painter 3.0; Paint Shop Pro just came out with their "picture tubes" in version 5.0. In either case you can use PlantStudio to create interesting patterns from plants you have designed.

Tasks:

Making a Painter image hose nozzle

Making a Paint Shop Pro picture tube

General tips on making and using plant nozzles or tubes
Start out with plants at a smaller magnification or lower resolution on your first try making nozzles or tubes, because you will be producing fairly large files. Once you understand how to make nozzles or tubes, you can use larger pictures.
By spraying plants at different scales you can create a meadow scene. Start with small plants in the background, then increase the scale as you get closer to the foreground. But watch out, because if you move the scale over 100%, the plants will lose resolution and start to look pixelated.
Both Painter and Paint Shop Pro allow you to manipulate the way pictures "spray" by deciding in what order the pictures appear in the file. For example, in Painter you might create a nozzle that sprays larger plants when you move the mouse down and smaller plants when you move the mouse up. At the same time you can spray darker plants when you press hard on your graphics tablet and lighter plants when you press lightly. Paint Shop Pro has similar, though less numerous, options. You can create nozzles and tubes with these variations using PlantStudio, but you have to manage the arrangement of the plants yourself. PlantStudio uses the