OctaneRender for Modo Update

It has been a busy couple of weeks, with the Octane node based materials system being implemented into the Modo plugin.  This means that all the material/texture/emission/medium nodes available in Octane Standalone can be used within the Modo plugin.  And importantly - this means that the Octane LiveDb material database can be supported.  For the LiveDb, the user will download all LiveDb materials via the plugin into a Preset format.  These Presets can then be drag and dropped into you Modo scenes to apply the LiveDb material to that Modo material.  I will post screenshots of this shortly.  

In the meantime, here are some screenshots of the node based Material editing system.  Every Modo material now has an "Octane Material" tab, and this tab contains buttons to override the Modo material with an Octane material, and to open the Schematic panel with the nodes for that material.

 

Once a Modo material has be overridden, the schematic is opened where the node contents can be edited, and new nodes added.  Each overridden Modo material has it's own Schematic view, so you can Material Pick from the Octane Viewport to rapidly access the Octane nodes for that material.

 

If you select a channel (ie. the bump pin on the material node), then click the 'Create Node' button, only the nodes which can be plugged into that pin are available.  And once the node is created, it is automatically connected to the selected pin.  So the workflow is very fast, and intuitive.

As you edit/update Octane materials in the Schematic, the OctaneRender Viewport is immediately updated to reflect the change in the material.

Rendering of animations is now also implemented, as is support for rigged characters.  So the plugin a rapidly approaching the close beta-test phase.

Iceglance has posted an excellent quickstart tutorial for the OctaneRender for Rhine plugin.

http://youtu.be/ZXBhiOqRHwc

OctaneRender for Modo Announced

The latest plugin I have been working on has been announced.

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=35962

The video has been viewed here....http://vimeo.com/77105037.

It's been a big few weeks, with both OctaneRender for Revit (http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=34039), and OctaneRender for Rhino (http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=34613) being released.  Pls see the above announcements for more details.

OctaneRender for Inventor

We are looking for beta testers for OctaneRender for Inventor.  The announcement is at http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=33490.  This plugin has a similar user interface to the Poser, ArchiCAD and Revit plugins, and provides effortless high-quality rendering of Inventor parts, assemblies and animations.

OctaneRender for Poser Plugin 1.14 Released - Mac and Windows

I have just posted a very big update to the OctaneRender for Poser plugin (now at version 1.14a).  Pls see http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=32641 for details.  

I have also posted an experimental Mac build of the plugin.

Paul

OctaneRender for ArchiCAD released - and tutorial video

Jeroen Tapper from Tapperworks has put together an amazing video on the process he used to render his ferrriswheel project.  The 3 part series can be viewed here....

 

Many thanks to Jeroen for taking the time a effort to put these videos together.

OctaneRender for ArchiCAD nearing the end of beta testing

All is going well with beta testing.  

I thought this was a good example of the intent of the plugin. The scene was from one of our beta testers (thank you Flavius). The workflow was 1) Run ArchiCAD, 2) Load the scene 3) Click the OctaneRender toolbar button 4) Click the Open Viewport button on the plugin. You can see all the materials, geometry and environment has transferred from ArchiCAD into Octane very accurately and the workflow is very quick and simple. From there the user can tweak the rendertarget settings and Octane materials, load materials from the LiveDB, etc to improve the render, but it looks great immediately.

Progress on OctaneRender for ArchiCAD

I have posted a new video showing progress to date.  https://vimeo.com/57255594

Smith Micro Blog Article

OctaneRender for Poser made the Smith Micro blog!  Have a read at http://blog.smithmicro.com/2013/01/07/poser-3d/octanerender-for-poser/.

OctaneRender for ArchiCAD

A new plugin I am working....OctaneRender for ArchiCAD.  Announcement and initial video is available here....http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=26793

New OctaneRender for Poser TEST build available

A new test build has been posted at http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=26624 which contains a huge number of enhancements, including:

- Post processing settings are now saved and re-loaded correctly
- New toggle button added (left of the auto refresh button), which when activated, disabled ALL updates to Octane, meaning the current Octane render will continue with restarting.  NOTE: Activating this button will block Imager and Postproc changes too.
- Updated splash screen and header to reflect compilation against Octane 1.02
- Focus pick clicking no longer highlights the camera->focalDepth parameter, meaning scrolling after clicking the focus point will not incorrectly move the slider
- The material tab window now displays a preview of the selected material.  This adds a slight delay to item clicking (since the bitmap needs to be generated).  The preview appears to be of limited use - so it has only been included for feedback and suggestion as this stage.  Set MATERIAL_PREVIEW_SAMPLES in OctaneDefaults.py to disable material previews.  This is DISABLED BY DEFAULT (since it adds a delay when selected tree items).
- Create Emitter From Lights no longer converts infinite lights (since they now feed the Octane sunlight angle)
- Default daylight model set to 1.  Can be changed but to 0 via the DEFAULT_DAYLIGHT_MODEL parameter in OctaneDefaults.py
- The first infinite light in the Poser scene will now be remained to "Daylight", and if the "environment" pin of the rendertarget is set to the "daylight" node, the sun direction will be picked up from that Poser infinite light
- The imager, kernel, resolution, environment, postprocessing and camera setting can now be individually reset.  Rightclick over these node for the reset to defaults option
- The main setup dialog can now be stretched lengthwise - drag the dialog border to increase it's size
- Copy/Paste are now the first items on the rightclick menu
- If you have progressive save ON, you can now RIGHTCLICK the viewport to instantly display the previous progressively saved render.  This will only work if you have progressively saved a render whilst the viewport is open.
- Fixed issue where sometime the render would not start after opening the viewport
- Moving a light which has an emitter attached (from the Create Emitters For Lights script) now trigger a refresh of the emitter prop position if Auto Refresh is ON
- You can now save all material for a given figure back to the Poser Material nodes.  Rightclick the mesh, and select "Save all Materials for this Figure/Prop as Poser Materials"
- "No Handler" warning msg is now suppressed when clicking the "Image File Statistics" button when there are HDR images in the scene.  Also suppressed from the Scene Texture Counter script
- You can now delete all Octane nodes that reference a ceratin file.  Rightclick the image, alphaimage or floatimage node in Material Tab containing the file to be removed, and select "Delete all nodes referencing [filename]"
- Color picker - now includes HSV sliders.
- A cuda error will no longer shutdown the plugin. If it's error 999 (your card didn't start rendering), you can then Reset the card through the Cuda Devices tab. If you run out of memory (error 2), you can still continue the render (at your own risk!), or can at least tweak the nodes in the Materials tab to save some memory. If you get a geometry error (error 1).
- If there is a cuda error raised whilst loading the geometry, the plugin will now display the prop or figure which caused the issue
- Resolved issues where rightclicking on the Materials tab selected the wrong tree item on large node setups
- Deleting a figure/prop with child props will no longer trigger multiple scene reloads
- Pasting "Retaining Texturemaps" now retains any maps plugged into the transmission and specular pins
- The image file selection dialog now no longer displays the folder name (only displays the filename)
- Scene Texture Counter script no longer fails if there is a null figure with attached figures/props
- Non-standard geometry containing polygons with only 2 vertices will now load into the plugin
- Fixed issue where material picker was not working correctly with props parented to a figure
- There is a new rightclick option on the Material tab to copy the currently pasted material to all materials with teh same name as the material you have rightclicked.  You must have copied a material into the clipboard and have rightclicked a material to make this option available in the rightclick menu
- When File->Import->Poser Document is used, the Octane settings of the imported scene will not be loaded into the scene (since the importing process will rename all the figures and props).  The existing Octane settings will remain untouched.
- There is a new parameter SPECULAR_RATIO in the OctaneDefaults.  If a Poser Material has a transparency greater than this figure, it will be converted to an specular Octane material.  Default value is 0.5
- You can now specify the default image save location in OctaneDefaults via the DEFAULT_SAVE_FOLDER parameter