what I think Octane standalone is missing is a way of setting up a complex scatter network.. here's a mock-up screenshot of what I mean
The scatter would mostly be controlled by alembic point caches and the point attributes. In this setup I've selected 4 of the alembic point attributes that will be exposed to the node graph: transform, id, id_mat and color
The transform attribute scatters the objects using the placement node, similar to what the scatter node does in the current standalone. This places one object on every point of the point cloud, taking it's position, scaling and orientation.
The id attribute chooses the object geometry that's being instanced, using a (yet to have) "select geometry" node
The id_mat selects between two different materials for a part of the torus object using the "select material" node
The color attribute sets the color used for some of the materials
That is of course just one of many possible example setups. I think with other attribute types and networks this would open up standalone to a lot more options than what is possible right now (including animated scatter).
Let me know if this makes any sense
-ray
