Hi Rappet
The first goal of the plugin is to provide a robust, stable, easy to use tool for users to access all OctaneRender functions within and on their ArchiCAD scene. However, with all plugins, there are constraints placed by the host app, which mean some features of OR Standalone cannot be done. For example, there is no visual node graph GUI facility in ArchiCAD, so the plugging of nodes into each other will be done as a tree, which means you cannot plug one node into multiple nodes, but you can copy/paste/import/export entire node trees.
Both options would be great workflows. Can you explain the first one?
Can you have a scene in Archicad with different objects, and then instance just one of the used objects in OR within the same scene? I managed to do some scattering using an excell matrix (Tried this when experimenting with the Sketchup plugin)
viewtopic.php?f=31&t=22581&p=100608&hilit=rappet#p100608
Will it be an easier or different workflow to do that or about the same?
Within the scope of the plugin described above, is "instancing" within the scope of the plugin? Absolutely. However OR Standalone simply allows you to enter (load) a sequence of transforms into a specific mesh - it does not actually generate the transforms for you. The loading of the transforms will be supported in the ArchiCAD plugin. At the moment, the geometry for each scene element is plugged into a "position" node, which is plugged into a "scatter" node (with a single unit matrix transform) which is plugged into the "geometry" node. So you will be able to move each element (via the "position" node), and load a CSV file of transforms (via the "scatter" node). I am not sure yet whether you will move the element or load the transforms from within the plugin setup dialog, or via the element Selection Settings dialog.
Within the scope of the plugin described above, is
generating the instance transforms within the scope of the plugin? It's not scope. However, with the Poser plugin it was provided (see
http://poserphysics.blogspot.com/2012/11/instancing.html and
https://vimeo.com/54438243. So it is doable in the ArchiCAD plugin - but not would not be in the first release.
The second workflow with the null object would be awsome!
That way the Archicad scene will be smoothly to work with not having the highpoly trees for instance.
My guess is a lot of Archicad users have external libraries like Artlantis users. And with this workflow it will be easy to use Artlantis (or other library objects like Google Sketchup models) trees and other objects by transforming them to obj's
and replace the null objects from the Archicad scene. Yes!
Whilst this functionality is outside the scope of the core plugin functionality, I think this will be a great feature. However OBJ will likely be the only format supported - and I wonder if Artlantis users will tire of exporting their objects to OBJ for importing into the plugin. This feature also adds an additional layer of complexity to the saving of materials in the scene....and will the imported OBJ use ArchiCAD materials, or the MTL material? There is a possibility of an imported OBJ having a material name the same as an ArchiCAD material, which will need to be handled by the plugin. So I suspect this feature will not make the initial release of the plugin but will be added shortly after.
It would so magnifique when it will be possible to export the Archicad flythrough (!) as a textfile to be able and run the cmd.
(as reference you can look at the Skectup plugin/exporter thread I was trying to make animation possible by using Sketchup viewtopic.php?f=33&t=22508&p=100536#p100536 )
Then it will be possible to combine the Archicad scene obj within another ocs: sometimes it might be easier to make the nodestructure with scattering csv files i.e. or materialising in the OR standalone and then use the camerapath made in Archicad for rendering animation.
I hope this makes sense.
I think this is going to be outside the scope of the core functionality plugin. Is clicking the "Load scattering file" from ArchiCAD really going to be more difficult to do than clicking the same button in OR Standalone? Once you get used to setting up materials in the ArchiCAD plugin, I doubt you would want to go back to OR standalone.
Thanks for your feedback - keep it coming - the more I hear from people, the closer the plugin will be to meeting their expectations.
Paul