smicha,
0. My tool does not export OBJs. I exports scatter data. Exporting OBJs would be way too taxing too process as it will create huge filesize and cost a ton of VRAM while rendering! The entire concept of instancing is that you load up models once, and them scatter them around at super low VRAM cost
. You have to create the OBJs used for scattering yourself. So one OBJ for a piece of grass, one OBJ for a tree, one OBJ for a person. This is entirely up to you so you can make whatever you desire.
Say you would want to scatter grass on your lawn. It will work as follows:
- Inside your model, create a material for the grass: let's use "material_grass" as an example
- You export your model as OBJ
- My software scans your OBJ for the material "material_grass" (as defined in the material list), and generate scattering data. It will export this data.
- Inside Octane, you import your OBJ model
- Inside Octane, import a grass OBJ model
- Inside Octane, create an scattering node for the grass and import my software's exported instancing data
- Combine the two with a Geometry Node and you're done! You'll see the instanced grass as well as your own model.
- Render!!
I will provide images to clear this up visually as soon as I have everything functional but I'll need time to figure everything out and code the scripts.
Benefits: fast production pipeline, low VRAM cost, and you can just import your OBJ in my software again to generate new instancing data!
1. See answer 0.
2. Yes, it will be possible to generate grass
scatter data. This tool is to create scattering data not OBJ models! See answer 0.
3. I'm sorry, I do not know how to program in ruby (programming language SketchUp uses) so I can't make a plugin. But by keeping it standalone I have full control over the software and people with other modeling programs can use it too!
If this didn't answer your questions please let me know.