Note that I make no attempt to play with the shaders this is simply an exercise in loading the scene, not in making it beautiful.
Snow Scene (comes free with Carrara in the Scenes -> Misc. category)
The problem with loading Howie's Snow Scene into Octane is the snow covered leaves used on the Spruce trees. The spruce trees are replicated 49 times on the road, 1401 times in hills 1, and 1751 times in hills 2. You cannot render this scene without flattening the spruce trees. However, the leaves on these trees have large polygon counts and you will run into the Octane poly count limit if you try to flatten the tree. The solution for this scene is to reduce the poly count on the leaves, which will allow us to flatten the tree.
Here are the steps I took to render the scene:
- Locate and load the SpruceWinter leaf: Carrara8.5\Data\Plants\Misc\SpruceWinter.car
- Edit -> Convert To Other Modeller. Select 'Primitive Modeller'.
- Edit -> Convert To Other Modeller. Select 'Vertex Modeller'.
- Edit -> Select All
- Model -> Decimate [98%]
- File -> Save As [SpruceWinter2]
- Open Howie's Snow Scene
- In the instance tree, select: Trees -> Near Spruce Trees -> Group -> Spruce Tree
- Switch to the Model room and select 'Edit the master'.
- Select the leaf Tab.
- Delete SpruceWinter and Add Misc -> SpruceWinter2 [Import Shader - No]
- Switch to the Shader Room and select 'Edit the master'
- Locate Leaf: SpruceWinter2 in the Shading Domain and click on the button on the far right (with two down arrows) then select the 'Snow' shader.
- Switch back to the Assembly Room and select: Trees -> Trees on Hills 1 -> Group -> SpruceTree.
- Repeat steps 12 and 13
- Switch back to the Assembly Room and select: Trees -> Trees on Hills 2 -> Group -> SpruceTree.
- Repeat steps 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13.
- Go back to the Assembly Room
- Select the Effects tab
- Enable Octane Tree -> Flatten for each of the 3 Spruce Trees.
Country Lane
Country Lane is a perfect example of the 'tree' problem. An Alder Tree has 43,671 leaves and in the background it is replicated 333 times. That creates a scatter list of 14,542,443 entries which is more than Octane can support.
- Open an empty scene, Click on Scene then Edit in Octane Render Target to open the Octane Render for Carrara Settings window.
- Select Preferences and turn off High Res Trees.
- Load up Country Lane
- In the instance list select: Background Trees -> Background Alders -> Alder Tree
- Select the Effects tab and enable: Octane Tree -> Flatten
WARNING: Do not attempt to Flatten a Fir Tree. The pine needle model is too big and you will run out of memory if you try.
Hedgerow
Similar to country lane you want to flatten all replicated trees except the firs.
- Load up Hedgerow
- Flatten the following trees:
Hedgerow->Hedge->Hedge Replicator 1->Hedge Plant 1
Hedgerow->Hedge->Hedge Replicator 1->Hedge Plant 2
Hedgerow->Hedge->Hedge Replicator 2->Hedge Plant 3
Hedgerow->Hedge->Hedge Replicator 2->Hedge Plant 4
Hedgerow->Hedge->Hedge Replicator 3->Hedge Plant 5
Hedgerow->Hedge->Hedge Replicator 3->Hedge Plant 6
Hedgerow->Hedge 2->Hedge Replicator 4->Hedge Plant 7
Hedgerow->Hedge 2->Hedge Replicator 4->Hedge Plant 8
Hedgerow->Hedge 3->Hedge Replicator 5->Hedge Plant 9
Hedgerow->Hedge 3->Hedge Replicator 5->Hedge Plant 10
Trees->Mature Trees->Birch 3
Trees->Mature Trees->Alder 3
Trees->Mature Trees->Alder 4
Trees->Mature Trees->Birch 4
Trees->Young Birch Trees->Birch Sapling
Background->Background Trees->Birch 1
Background->Background Trees->Alder 1
Background->Background Trees->Alder 2
Background->Background Trees->Birch 2