ForestPack IVY objects can be rendered directly with Octane, without converting materials.
Just make sure that 'On-the-fly Material Conversion' is enabled in Octane Preferences, Material tab.
Here are a few samples:
fp_ivyA_01_mx18.max
Forest IVY create instances of geometry (leaves, flowers,..), to reduce memory usage and increase performance.
Those instances are directly used as Octane 'Scatter' nodes.
The branches are generally created as a single mesh.
Early support
Note that we tested samples using the Forest Ivy library, keeping the default parameters.
Those samples use a Multi Material assigned to the main IVY object, with several Physical materials.
Leaves use opacity maps, and Double sided materials, that are now correctly handled by Octane.
There may be some other cases that we do not support correctly yet.
Please let us know, and post samples if you encounter such issues.
Animation and Motion blur
ForestIVY objects can be animated, by using 'Wind animation' in the Growth / Branches / Leaves & Flower rollups.
Animation is fully supported when no motion blur is used.
To enable motion blur, turn on Motion blur for the current camera, and in Octane Object property, turn on Object motion blur.
For motion blur of the branches, turn on Vertex motion blur.
When using motion blur, there are several kind of issues that can happen, especially for complex objects.
-The order of some instances can change between 2 frames, resulting in wrong velocity.
-The mesh generated for the branches can also have parts of the vertices re-ordered, witch also results in wrong velocity.
This seems to be caused by Forest pack re-generating the objects every frame, using some randomness without refering to the previous frame.
We added options in Octane Preferences / Phoenix, FP.. tab to try to fix those issues.
It's not guarantied to work for every case, but it could help for medium complexity objects..
You could also try to use several simpler IVY objects instead of a single big one.
IVY Options in Preferences:
"Ivy Motion blur instance re-ordering"
"Select Re-ordering type. Between 2 frames used for motion blur, instances may be ordered differently. Octane needs to match each instance for correct motion blur."
"'Evaluate and fix' will detect and fix only potential mismatch, using a threshold value."
"'Search and fix all' will test all instances (slow process).");
"Ivy Motion blur variance Threshold"
"Position variation scale to trigger extended instance matching. Default is 1.0. Decrease value if incorrect motion blur effect seems to occur."
"Ivy Motion Blur issue detection"
"Select action when Ivy motion blur issue is detected. 'Cancel' will disable motion blur for current frame. 'Search and Fix' can partially fix issues, but is a slow process."