In the image below, I show the buttons I've been using in cod4radiant to drop entities, random rotate, and place them at the angle of floor.



What is happening in codwawradiant was unexpected. When I chose for instance a bunch of grass models to plant, using the same buttons, the models get planted all over the map. They don't just drop straight down where I want them to. I'm looking for options in preferences but don't see anything that could be turned on or off. Any ideas?

You must turn off random rotation (icon that looks like a leaf)

Just another thing that doesn't work on our half finished tools.

Rasta writes...
Well that sucks!

What I did as a work around for this problem was to use my terrain as reference in COD 4 radiant. Some of the grass models are the same in both Radiant versions so you can do what you want in radiant 4 and load it up in radiant waw.

The easiest way to do that is to select the terrain you want to add grass to in radiant waw, then start a new map and copy the selected terrain into it. Save the map with a new name.
Start up radiant 4 and browse to the map you just made (it'll be in Activision\Call of Duty - World at War\map_source) and open it. Don't worry about the terrain not being visible in the 3D window because you're only using it for reference anyway. You can always make the terrain out of caulk texture so it's easier to locate if you like. Start planting the models on your terrain in the 2D grid. Remember, the model has to have the same name in both COD 4 radiant and WaW radiant. DO NOT move your terrain at all as it's being used for reference to plant your grass models. Save the map back in the original Activision\Call of Duty - World at War\map_source folder.
Start WaW radiant again and open up the terrain map your were working on. You'll see your new grass all planted and ready to use in your real map.
Select all the terrain (not the models) and press backspace to delete it. Now draw a brush over all the grass models and right click on the 2D window and choose Select > Select Complete Tall to select all the models.
Open your real map and when radiant asks you Copy selection? click yes, and your map will load up with the grass models added to your map and terrain.

The instructions are a little long but the process is relatively quick. For me the grass was too tall and dense, so in radiant WaW with all the grass models still selected, I brought up the Entity editor and added a Key/Value of modelscale/0.5. Doing that thinned out my grass and made it shorter and I got the results I was looking for.

Tridon writes...
Most excellent. Great tip. The ironic thing is I've done prefabs like this and didn't even think about it. I'd save a terrain patch selection and load up models on it that way.

You must turn off snap to grid.

Or, you can use a tool I made and which is in development right now (which is why it hasn't been publicly published here as well). But it works well and places grass at textures you specify.

http://forum.daevius.com/index.php/topic,38.0.html

Yep. Turn off snap to grid does the trick. Thanks.
Will they patch this or is this the new norm for some reason?

I agree it's a bit weird to use...I think this will be the norm, since you can set how much the models should spread. Set grid to 1 units and you have a slight spread AFAIK. Set it to 512 units and you lost your models, lol.

The effect shouldn't be so drastically.

Thanks Demon. Glad I don't have to do it my way anymore. Did you happen to stumble across this because I would never have thought of it. It would be nice if they gave us a breakdown of the changes for each new version.