Hair & fur won't work natively in some plugins...

[Seekerfinder]

It's my understanding that Octane for Revit, Archicad (and possibly SketchUp & others(?)) won't be able to natively access the new Hair & Fur function in release 2.0. This means that we can't use this function in these plugins for grass in Archviz......

I understand the limitation of the requirement of having to generate the strand, which is apparently harder in these plugings.

So, until the plugin devs are able to find a solution I would like to request that Otoy develop a "proper" (displaced, multi-coloured, procedural(!?)) grass material that could easily be dragged onto a surface [edit: like Maxwell Grass]. That would compensate somewhat for not having a core Standalone feature in these plugins that could have been particularly useful.

Some support from the Otoy guys in this respect would be much appreciated!

Who's with me?

Seeker

[kavorka]

Is there a grass system in those programs?

[ROUBAL]

Why not using instances ? It is the most used way, and allows realistic results at low memory cost.

[Seekerfinder]

Kavorka,
No grass system in Revit or SketchUp (don't know about Archicad).

Roubal,
You're thinking old school. The point is that the scatter node functionality in some of these plugins are limited or simply not accessible. There are solutions with 3rd party apps but for grass this becomes cumbersome.

The issue is that we're losing one of the key new features of version 2.0 and I believe we really should have access to it in all plugins. If not, I'm asking for a viable alternative which I thought might be a good shader until a solution could be found.

Seeker

[riggles]

Kavorka,
No grass system in Revit or SketchUp (don't know about Archicad).

Roubal,
You're thinking old school. The point is that the scatter node functionality in some of these plugins are limited or simply not accessible. There are solutions with 3rd party apps but for grass this becomes cumbersome.

The issue is that we're losing one of the key new features of version 2.0 and I believe we really should have access to it in all plugins. If not, I'm asking for a viable alternative which I thought might be a good shader until a solution could be found.

Seeker

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but if the host app doesn't have a system for generating the vertex strands that Octane needs, what are the Octane plugin devs supposed to do about it? Seems like a job for SketchUp and Revit devs. Just like I want MODO developers to add their fur shader to the API so Octane can access that data.

[Rikk The Gaijin]

Octane won't generate any new geometry, you must export the splines/curves from your host application in Alembic format.

[ROUBAL]

I agree with Rikk The Gaijin. Octane is only a render engine. In term of geometry, it can't do more than your 3D application is able to do.

Instances may not be usable for hair, but for fur they often do the trick.

If your 3D software, as well as your plugin don't generate scatter files for instances, a third party tool could help you :

http://www.guusthissen.nl/scatter/

In this example, the fur of the jacket is made of small instanced pompoms :

[Seekerfinder]

Hi guys,
I realise that Octane does not generate geometry, but this statement from the Otoy annoyncement threw me a bit: "Hair and fur – An optimized hair render primitive is now available to allow rendering of hair or fur". Where is the 'primitive' available from? There are other renderers that seem to have a hair/fur 'shader' (perhaps created with advanced displacement?)

So if Octane 2.0's hair & fur function does not 'create' hair & fur, what does it do?? Is it only more control in the scatter node?

@Riggles,
We've been told all kinds of things are 'impossible'. Specifically, one of the Octane dev team advised some time ago that rounded edges were impossible in Octane because it's a geometry function... Even though other render engines (only CPU based at the time) could do this.... Now we're getting it. So these 'limitations' are often not limitations, merely problems to solve.

Also, for grass specifically, I am sure it's possible for the Octane team to include a few very small OBJ files that might represent short grass blades which could be referenced from a 'grass' node. Why not? I know not all grass is alike but 'lawn' grass (with a colour mix node) would address a large proportion of archviz work.

WE NEED EASY GRASS!!

Seeker

PS: Roubal, great work! Thanks for sharing.

[Seekerfinder]

So if Octane 2.0's hair & fur function does not 'create' hair & fur, what does it do?? Is it only more control in the scatter node?

Any thoughts on this?

Seeker

[face_off]

Seeker, Octane 2.0 is converting vertex splines (ie. a line of vertices rather than a polygon) into thing cylinder geometry for each strand.

Paul