How do I render grass from Modo?

[PAQUITO]

So, I upgraded to Octane 2.0 and I want to test the hair/fur rendering. I have no idea how to make it and can´t find any info on that, not even in the online manual. How can this be done?

[riggles]

Unfortunately, the MODO API doesn't expose the vertex strand data from the fur system to plugins. So Octane can't get at that data. It's a bummer. The way around it is to convert fur to curves. Once it's a curve, it's visible to Octane. Not a fun solution, obviously, because if you're using it for grass, now you've got a bazillion individual curve strands all over and they're static so you have to re-bake after you make a change to the fur. For grass, I'm still going to rely on scattering a mesh grass clump.

[PAQUITO]

mmm... yes, that´s really bad. Anyways I guess I can scatter some grass patches. Can you point me to anywhere explaining about scattering objects in Octane? That would be very helpful.

[riggles]

mmm... yes, that´s really bad. Anyways I guess I can scatter some grass patches. Can you point me to anywhere explaining about scattering objects in Octane? That would be very helpful.

That I don't know. I use the MODO plugin for Octane, so I just use a surface particle generator and a replicator (surface particle as point source, grass clump as mesh source). I'm not sure how to export that point data for use in Octane Standalone if you aren't using the plugin. Hmm. There's the Phantom Scatter plugin, but at 20EUR/year, you might as well just invest in the MODO plugin.

[face_off]

If you are using the Modo plugin, follow the instructions at http://render.otoy.com/manuals/Modo/?page_id=977. If not using the plugin, you will need to apply the grass with the Fur Shader, convert to geometry (as per the above link), and export as Alembic ABC. I'm unsure if Modo's ABC exporter fully supports export of vertex strands or not.

Paul