OTOY Forums

Hi. Following is some info on the grass shader I am currently developing for the plugin. It works by creating an Alembic (ABC) file containing hair strands which render in Octane a grass blades. The generation of the ABC file is similar to the generation of CSV files - however it is done instead of loading an OBJ file (ie. so instead of loading an OBJ as a proxy, you load an ABC file - and the plugin will generate the ABC for you).

This is designed only for grass blades - it is not a generic hair strand generator. Each grass blade has 4 vertices (root, tip and 2 in between), and the Randomness effects the height variance and bend in the blade. You need to refresh the Octane scene once an ABC file has been generated in order for it to be loaded into the scene. Because ABC files have a different material connection point to OBJ files inside Octane, there are some constraints with the grass material. There is no "default" grass material - so you need to Import your material each time you regenerate the ABC file. You cannot Material Pick a grass shader material - instead, select the proxy host and the grass material will appear in the Materials tab.

The render below was 500,000 blades of grass (hair strands). Even at this volume, there is quite a load on the graphics card. Over 1 million strands you will need a powerful graphics card. The plugin will generate up to 10 million strands - however I am not sure if this number of strands would actually render.

Paul

Hi Paul,
You know how to make people smile bigtime
Love to play with this feature
Greetz,

(but unfortunately absolute no time to play with it)

Greetz,
Artur

Hi Paul,

First test of grassmaker.
It takes about a minute to calculate 100.000 the calculation misses parts of the roundsahped mesh (like when calulating csv; see also image4) Looking good (happy, happy) To compare I made test with csv... feels like calculating csv takes longer then in previous versions.. could that be correct? with or without folloow mesh surface normal does not make difference.. both misses parts of round shaped mesh

Hi Paul,
I am trying to get the strands with more density (closer to each other)... how can I do that.
In the example I am trying to make a carpet
cheers,

I am trying to get the strands with more density (closer to each other)... how can I do that.

Increase the number of strands and the base width.

the calculation misses parts of the roundsahped mesh (like when calulating csv; see also image4)

Jeroen - could you pls send me a pln with just that round shape in it?

Thanks

Paul

Above issue rectified in 2.12.1.27, which I just posted in the main TEST thread.

Paul

Tutorial on generating grass.