Free Plugin Upgrade to Octane 2.0 Promotion Ends on 11th August

See http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=41497 for details.

OctaneRender for Poser integration with HDR Light Studio

Integration of OctaneRender for Poser with HDR Light Studio.

HDR LightStudio integration with OctaneRender for Poser from Paul Kinnane on Vimeo.

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

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/.

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

New Daylight system controller

Release 1.02q of OctaneRender for Poser will feature a new sunlight controller - which I think is pretty amazing.  The video below gives a rundown on it's operation.

OctaneRender for Poser Has Been Released

Version 1.0 of the plugin was released today.  There is a video of all the features in action at https://vimeo.com/53821805.  The feedback so far from the beta testers has been incredibly positive, so I think everyone will love this plugin!

See http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=25193 for more details.

OctaneRender SSS Skin Shader

Poser Skin materials are converted to an OctaneRender glossy material by the OctaneRender for Poser plugin.  This will get you 90% of the way to a realistic human skin render.  If you want to push the envelope, the you can build your own OctaneRender SSS shader, and save it (rightclick the material in the Material tab of the plugin and select Export) using the plugin for use on all your human figures.

This is the SSS shader I have been using for the Victoria 4 figures.  It should work fine on other figures.  The shader is made up of a diffuse and a glossy material, mixed together with more (0.7) diffuse than glossy.  The diffuse will provide the SSS, whilst the glossy will provide the highlights.

NOTE: The only need to do the following ONCE!  Create the shader once, then save it as a material (rightclick -> "Export Material"), then copy and paste the material it to all the skin materials of your figure and rightclick the mesh -> "Export all Materials for this Figure/Prop".  Then you can reload all the skin materials with the SSS shader at any point, and keep or replace the texturemaps that are currently assigned to the figure.

To create this shader, pick a skin material on you figure.  Then change the material type from "glossy" to a "material mix" (change the node type in the bottom box of the plugin window).  Set the "amount" to 0.7, leave "material1" as a "diffuse" material and set "material2" to "glossy".

Expanding "material1" (the diffuse material) above shows...

The important parts are:

• diffuse is a multiply node. So copy the existing texturemap (rightclick-> copy image node), change the diffuse node from image to multiple.  Then rightclick texture1 and "paste image node"
• texture2 - this removes some red from the image map (to compensate for the red being added by the scattering medium.  Start with red=150, green=200, blue=255, and adjust to get the right skin tones.
• transmission - set to red=255, green=0, blue=0.  So change it from the default "floattexture" to "RGBspectrum". IMPORTANT: You can also copy and paste the image node from above into this node, which nicely stops SSS appears on dark areas of the map (like hair).  If you do this, lower (halve) the "scale" below.
• medium - change from "absorption" to "scattering".  
• absorption/scattering.  The ratio of these two multiplied by the scale seem to control the amount of SSS (and how far it travels).  The settings above seems to give a good starting point for human figures.  NOTE: The plugin rescales to figures to OctaneRender units, so these settings will be too high if you setting this shader up in OctaneRender Standalone.
• scale - IMPORTANT - this number effects the amount of the SSS effort.  Small number like 2-5 will give lots of SSS, large numbers like 20-50 will give a very subtle SSS effect.  Adjust the scale to get the effect you want for the lighting in the scene.

Expanding "material2" (the glossy material) shows...

The important parts are:

• texture1 - this is the image map for the material, and can be copies (rigthclick -> copy image node) from the diffuse material above.
• texture2 - this is currently set to 255/255/255, but can be used to fine tune the skin tone.
• specular - change from the default "floattexture" to "RGBspectrum".  Set the color to red=10, green=20, blue=30
• roughness - Increasing from 0.3 will result in drier looking skin.  Reducing results in very oily skin.
• Remember to set filmwidth to 1.0

Render Settings

IMPORTANT - you need to use the "pathtracing" kernel in order for the "scattering" node to work.  Also, I recommend reducing the scene "gamma" in the imager settings (try around 0.8).

 
Good luck!

OctaneRender for Poser Features

OctaneRender for Poser is a fully integrated OctaneRender solution for Poser 9 and Poser Pro 2012.  OctaneRender is the world's fastest and most feature rich unbiased render engine.  This plugin provides access to all OctaneRender functions from the Poser user interface.

The plugin has been specifically designed to suit the workflow of Poser users.  So all the OctaneRender options are available in the one setup screen, activated from the Poser Render menu.

The plugin automatically converts your Poser scene geometry and materials into the Octane scene, so you get a quality render with just the default settings.  From the Octane settings window you can specify camera and image parameters, select from 4 available OctaneRender rendering modes, and choose between image based lighting, sunlight, or geometry emitters to illuminate your scene.  The plugin will even convert any Poser IBL images and assign them to the environment map lighting in Octane.  All Poser Materials will be converted to Octane materials, and you can edit these materials in the Material tab (see below).  Righclicking the props, figures or materials in the tree allows you to do various macro functions, including loading and saving individual materials or entire material collections.

Once you open the Octane Render Viewport, the render starts immediately, and is instantly refreshed when you change the Poser camera direction, or change any of the Octane materials.

The viewport (shown above) allows you to start and stop the render, lock/unlock the resolution, save the image, drag the viewport to resize the render and get vital rendering statistics (the bottom status bar).  If you click anywhere in the image, the focal distance will be set to that point.

The viewport is immediately updated with any new material or OctaneRender settings that you change.  The "imager" settings can be changed at any time without causing the render to restart.

There is an on-line material database, containing hundreds of materials, which can be loading into your scene.

Animations can be rendered via the Animation tab.  This contains controls for start and end frame, camera focus behavior, and even allows the keyframe animation of light emitter intensities.

The first update for OctaneRender for Poser will include the new Instancing features of Octane, allowing a single prop to be duplicated in the scene many times.

OctaneRender for Poser will be available from render.otoy.com from mid-late November 2012.