Is there a free (or cheap) addon to scatter objects (manually) onto surface of other objects?

Question

I want to scatter a lot of small objects onto other meshes, with a brush, the best would be using tablet, using its pressure sensitivity to modify brush size/scattering intensity or other parameters. For example spikes on an animal skin, crystals in a cave, craters on planet, etc... Is there a good script for this?

I know there are automatic scattering techniques, like particles, geometry nodes and others, but sometimes it is better to precisely paint manually for finer artistic control. The surface snap + copy method is too slow for larger number of objects, and it doesn't support rotation and scale jittering of the distributed meshes, nor selecting them randomly from a pool of meshes.

Answer 1

I think Blender already has all the needed functionality.

You can have your objects in a collection for easy selection and use Random Select operator in deselect mode to randomly deselect once you have all collection objects selected:

There is also Randomize Transform operator that can randomize location, rotation and scale of selected objects:

Snapping supports "Project Individual Elements" and works well with multiple objects:

You can also use Duplicate Linked (alt+d) to reuse object data and save memory.