You should also read the Octane license very carefully:

And I quote:

"This license does not grant you the right to receive updates or bug fixes for the Software, Documentation or Examples."

No right to recieve updates?

Sort of negates all this:

" It's clarified on the Beta program page:  "Your beta license will also be valid for the final v1.0 Edition release, and subsequent dot releases such as v1.1, v1.2, etc, and will allow a reduced upgrade cost to future v2.0 releases. "

Doesn't it?  yeah....

Quote - If you are using the Octane Standalone app, IMO the best workflow is NOT click the obj mesh and tweak the materials.  Instead, create new glossy, diffuse, specular materials and plug them into the material connection on the mesh (even for the emitter lights).  Then if you tweak the mesh in Poser, simply reimport and replug the material nodes into the right inputs on the mesh.  They way you don't "forget" what settings you had.

Is there a way to grab the material from the OBJ and drop it as a new material node?  Like a copy paste?  Sure would be easier to start that way.

"I think the term "beta" has a different meaning there. As far as i can remember the beta started somewhere in 2010. Since then the requirements for the hardware as well as the pricing have changed multiple times, the company was sold to another owner, etc. With this in mind, they probably simply cannot make any price commitment, because they do not know themselves what they will have in 2015, what the Euro will be worth then, and what  kind of graphics cards the users will have when the final is released (if a final is released).........."

Hi not to be a Doomsayer but there was quite a bit of "Drama" over at Cgtalk regarding the way the licenses of the "beta Purchasers" were handled when the company was sold from refractive software to Otoy
perhaps its all settled now but it does make an interesting read.

THE THREAD

Cheers

Its a long beta but I think its worth it.

Quote - > Quote - If you are using the Octane Standalone app, IMO the best workflow is NOT click the obj mesh and tweak the materials.  Instead, create new glossy, diffuse, specular materials and plug them into the material connection on the mesh (even for the emitter lights).  Then if you tweak the mesh in Poser, simply reimport and replug the material nodes into the right inputs on the mesh.  They way you don't "forget" what settings you had.

Is there a way to grab the material from the OBJ and drop it as a new material node?  Like a copy paste?  Sure would be easier to start that way.

Well, I am not sure if they will ever approve my forum post asking about this, but based on what I could find via Google search of their forums...there is not.  (at least since April)

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=89023#p89023

So, to be honest I am not going to manually recreate every material in a scene, just for a speedier GPU render.  I'd rather use the CPU and go off and do something else.  (especially when a complex scene could have hundreds of materials)  As a result, I can't really give it a fair enough shake.  I'm out for now.

Cool idea!  Nice renderer!  Good luck with it!

Quote - Is there a way to grab the material from the OBJ and drop it as a new material node?  Like a copy paste?  Sure would be easier to start that way.

yes, you can do that.

i use Octane pretty much from the start, and i have to say - it rocks.

things that take hours in luxrender are done in minutes and in a quality i've seen in hardly any other render engine. 

Quote - > Quote - Is there a way to grab the material from the OBJ and drop it as a new material node?  Like a copy paste?  Sure would be easier to start that way.

yes, you can do that.

 

How? :tongue1:

right-click on the 'knob' of the material node of the mesh. in the context menu you can copy the material node. right-click in the node editor area to paste the shader.

you can copy/paste all nodes. 

requires version beta2.58 and up.

Ah...the demo is 2.57 :sad:

Is there a way to grab the material from the OBJ and drop it as a new material node?  Like a copy paste?  Sure would be easier to start that way.

I'm not sure I understand this question.  Using the OctaneRender for Poser plugin, all your scene material in Poser get transferred to Octane.

Even with OctaneRender standalone, you can import an OBJ and it will load the texturemaps for you.

This is my typical scene setup.  I actually load my previous octane scene, load the new OBJ, and this use the previous scene nodes to plug into the new mesh.  All this is redundant with the Poser plugin, which does all this for you.

Oh, and the render you see at the top of the scene....that was the result after rendering for 20 seconds!

Regarding price, Lux, etc......

I think Posers best attributes are 1) You can setup a scene very very quickly, and 2) There is a massive amount of loadable content available.  So Poser focus's the artist on the creative side of the render, rather than the technical side of constructing the scene.

With this in mind, it is important to be able to make an artistic changes, and then se the result....QUICKLY.  Waiting an hour (or far longer) to see if a small mesh tweak improves a production quality image is not on for me.  I want to know immediately.  And that where Octane truely shines (and is worth ever dollar).

im guessing im right that when octane version 1.0 is released if purchasers of the beta dont want to upgrade they will still be able to use the poser to octane plugin,and not cut off?

im guessing im right that when octane version 1.0 is released if purchasers of the beta dont want to upgrade they will still be able to use the poser to octane plugin,and not cut off?

You would need to ask Otoy about that.  Have a read through the 3dsMax plugin purchase page - it may give you a clearer understanding of how the licensing works.  I will make myself more familiar with the licensing once I finishing coding!

now where is poser for android?

Don't laugh, but I have done a prototypes of this!  It is a huge topic needing a thread of it's own.  In summary, performance it a big issue!

i think the daz plugin might be available before the poser plugin so we should get an idea of how much that will cost.

are you working on the team making the poser octane plugin face_off?

i only put about the android poser as a joke, i didnt realise someone had put time into it, im guessing we may have to wait a few more years till the hardware tech catches up a little,especially for phones lol

are you working on the team making the poser octane plugin face_off?

I am doing the development, yes.

now i know its gonna be good,please keep us updated.

just plodded around the octane forum, karba has done a couple of renders with 3,000,000 trees each with 500,000 polys.... my pc would explode

Quote - just plodded around the octane forum, karba has done a couple of renders with 3,000,000 trees each with 500,000 polys.... my pc would explode

not necessarily. 

the miracle is known as 'instancing' 

Been using Octane since 2010 for Poser scenes and it is awesome! But also limited.

Some important info I would like to share before people run out to buy new graphic cards to use with Octane!

Octane uses your graphic card for rendering - not the CPU! It must be a CUDA (Nivida) card. That also means it can only use the amount of RAM available on your graphic card. Just remember that your desktop use RAM and so does every program you run. So if you have a 1GB graphic card, you do not have 1GB available for rendering. It all depends on have much RAM your other running programs use. Just loading my Desktop and have Poser running will eat about 200-300MB leaving about 700MB for Octane to use. And that is not much for me. Octane will just show a black screen of you do not have enough RAM.

Another important thing is that the GTX500 series can only load 64 textures. The new GTX600 series can load 128 textures. It's a CUDA limtation problem. It would seem a GTX600 would be better. Well, yes and no.

The GTX500 series cuda cores are much stronger than on the GTX600 series. A GTX580 is in Octane faster than a GTX680 even though the GTX680 have 3 times more cuda cores. But on the other hand the GTX6xx can take twice the amount of textures than a GTX5xx. So I will leave up to you what is best for you.
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=23225

If we take Stonemason's Courtyard prop. That scene has over 100 textures. So it will not load every texture on a GTX5xx card but it will on a GTX6xx. But adding a figure with clothes might get over the 128 textures anyway. You see the problem?

Just remember you're limited to what the craphic card can offer you. But there are workarounds but some of them are not easy to do.

Normally a figure texture is about 4096x4096 in pixel size. Octane will convert the textures to RGB and that takes up some RAM. If you reduce the texture size it will also lower the amount of ram used. And that can really help alot to fit big scenes into the RAM on the GFX card.

I also noticed some hair products can use 10 textures just for the hair. That's alot! Might be better to find a product that doesn't use that many textures to keep the texture count low. In some cases you can even reuse some textures for other objects and reusing textures will not count is an extra texture.

Very informative Post!!!

Cheers

Quote - Is there a way to grab the material from the OBJ and drop it as a new material node?  Like a copy paste?  Sure would be easier to start that way.

I'm not sure I understand this question.  Using the OctaneRender for Poser plugin, all your scene material in Poser get transferred to Octane.

Even with OctaneRender standalone, you can import an OBJ and it will load the texturemaps for you.

NP, ehliasys answered it for me, and I got an answer back on the Octane forums, as well.

Quote - Another important thing is that the GTX500 series can only load 64 textures. The new GTX600 series can load 128 textures. It's a CUDA limtation problem. It would seem a GTX600 would be better. Well, yes and no.

...

If we take Stonemason's Courtyard prop. That scene has over 100 textures. So it will not load every texture on a GTX5xx card but it will on a GTX6xx. But adding a figure with clothes might get over the 128 textures anyway. You see the problem?

Thanks for this...this was important to know.   I guess this applies to any GPU renderer using CUDA?

i currently have a 1.8gb nvidia geforce 260 that has 216 cuda cores, i have no idea how many textures that will allow me to use, we will see when i test with the demo,lol

Zaycrow - good post

To save some video card space, you can use your onboard graphics card to be the normal display adapter, and then your cuda card can be used 100% for rendering memory.

The texturemap number limit is important too.  I'm a big big fan of combining all the skin textures into a single uv group and using one texture.  This resolves a bunch of issues, including some ZBrush ones!  I posted elsewhere about a script to do this (basically puts the head in the top left quadrant, torso top right, arms bottom left, etc.  There is a script on sharecg for V4 and I have written one for Alyson and Antonia.

3m trees: This is done with "instancing" and handled within Octane on the card rather than in the Poser scene, so will hopefully be implemented in the plugin.

Paul, Zaycrow - is there any indication that there will be a solution for the maximum number of texture slots in the not too far future?

And does this limitation also apply to gpu rendering for Lux?

I now have a GTX580, but even with a GTC 600 series I would not be able to render 90% of my scenes. Most will well run over 200 textures. So even with texture combining, it will be difficult to get that into 128 texture slots

All GPU renderers are limited by the amount of ram on the card that I'm aware, including the Lux GPU renderer and Blender Cycles. Lux and Cycles however, have a cpu rendering option and Luxrender has a hybrid mode which uses both.

Laurie

Paul, Zaycrow - is there any indication that there will be a solution for the maximum number of texture slots in the not too far future?

This is a cuda/video card limitiation, not the renderer.  The one certainty is that the hardware technology is moving at a rapid pace, so the specs of the cards will increase over time.

The plugin for Poser will tell you how many different texturemaps are in the scene.  With OctaneRender, I've generally been getting better renders using procedural bumps rather than image based bump, and haven't needed to use spec maps or sss maps (yet).  Plus, there are a bunch of materials in some figures with have un-needed maps (Alyson, or is it Antonia has a transmap on the cornea which is not needed).

I mainly do human figure renders, and haven't had a scene which comes close to the texture number limit.  But then, most of my figures are not wearing clothes :-)

I am doing scenes with multiple figures (5-10) in a rich environment, so it is an issue for me. I also use a lot of props which each usually have a texture and bump map attached.

In p7 there was a limit of 256 texture maps and I ran into that problem on a regular basis. Nowadays my scenery is much larger because I can load a lot more thanks to the 64bit adress space.

I know the hardware can solve this issue in time, but somehow it seems like the wrong approach. If you could offload used textures and load new ones into the videocard memory that would be more future proof. But I have not studied the CUDA specs, so I am just speculating and have no idea if that could be done.

It's a pity for now, because I would love an "almost' real time rendered

Don't be to sure about time solving the hardware issue, it usually just complicates it further.

Nothing from Nvidia will stick around forever and history shows that CUDA will be replaced by whatever is next.

On the other side of the spectrum, AMD announced that ATI chips days are numbered about 2~3 years ago...

Once the next wave of GPU's goes public, things like CUDA and OpenCl will be things of the past. It may not happen soon, or the next release wave, but it will happen.

Once truley parallel GPUs are released, there will be a much faster way to do just about eveything 3D, and it most likely will not involve CUDA, OpenCl, or any other standard out there now.

On another note:

Wim, it would be interesting to know if using multiple video cards can get around the texture count problem. I was reading thru the Octane site, and there is not a lot of info on SLI setups. And I would think that SLI could/should increase the total texture count. That is part of the reason to gang cards together in the first place.

I know the hardware can solve this issue in time, but somehow it seems like the wrong approach.

You are right - the correct approach would be for prop makers to rationalise the number of texturemaps they use :-)

Quote - I am doing scenes with multiple figures (5-10) in a rich environment, so it is an issue for me. I also use a lot of props which each usually have a texture and bump map attached.

You can have unlimited procedural materiels. Octane already have a library you can use and it will not count as a texture. Many Poser textures are not needed in Octane so it's a good idea to delete them before exporting the scene.

You can also make new textures. The Stonemason prop I talked about before I have reduced to 1 texture at 8000x8000 pixels by loading it in my modeling program and baked a new texture of the entire prop. The down side is that all those 100's of textures have to be downsized to fit into the new 8000x8000 texture map. Also the amount of ram used on a 8000x8000 pixel map is very high!
I did the same thing to a couple of V4 figures with clothes. Baked 1 texture map and 1 transparency map. Everytime I do that I save them as props in Poser in a special Octane folder I have with optimized props.

Of course this would be a great help if that somehow could be done automatically in Poser before exporting. I think I heard Daz Studio has a plugin that can do something like that.

But time will fix this as new hardware will be made or maybe Octane will find a solution for it - it's still in beta.

Quote - You are right - the correct approach would be for prop makers to rationalise the number of texturemaps they use :-)

You're so right :) I have a hair prop that uses 7 different textures and 7 bump maps (14 textures) . It was fixed with procedural materials and 1 bump map.

But I don't think they think of that when making their props. Also the majority of hair has painted shaders on them. Not a good thing in an unbiased rendering engine.

I just tried the demo on one of my simple scenes. And I am very impressed, so much so, I bought the beta and I am already thinking of putting an additional GTX600 series in the machine.

If Pauls exporter can handle the most common conversions/translations, it would make using it a breeze. Then you can tweak the materials and lights to your liking (which you now don't have to do in firefly)

I have few questions though (with the obj import method).

• Is there a simple way Octane can read the textures from its original (poser) path?
• Can you get octane to read the gamma setting (for trans and bump maps)?

I would love to participate in the beta for the exporter.

I found the if you put your scene (pz3) into a folder, then use the CollectSceneInventory script, (comes with Poser), that bring all the textures to the same place.  Then Export OBJ into the same directory...thats it.

Holy Cow!  A quick test and buy?!!  Takes me forever to come to a decision like this...but I'm a miser.

EDIT:  I say that mainly because I have yet to get V4 looking good.  Objects look fine, but V4...not so much.  I'd love to see a, "load V4, this texture, export to obj, import into Octane, then do this, this and this to the materials and render, and it should come out looking like this"  type of thing.  I've been piecing together Paul's tips here, but my results are less than stellar....

I have no problems getting V4 looking good (in my opinion of course). The trick is in the lighting. Octane does seem to do a very good job with that. I played a little with the single light, changed the transparency to gamma 1.0 and linearized them. No further tweaks and no preparation in Poser. Then I got this with the demo version

 I was impressed I got this far while still figuring out where the save image button is

I was impressed I got this far while still figuring out where the save image button is

The little down-pointing arrow on the renderview buttonbar. 

The trick is in the lighting.

I'm tending to use emitters less and environment more.  The IBL using environment is very good.  Load a Poser IBL and set the power in the 3-5 range.   Also, from memory, OctaneRender will load skin materials in as diffuse - change them to glossy (settings posted earlier in this thread).

I say that mainly because I have yet to get V4 looking good.  Objects look fine, but V4...not so much.  I'd love to see a, "load V4, this texture, export to obj, import into Octane, then do this, this and this to the materials and render, and it should come out looking like this"  type of thing.  I've been piecing together Paul's tips here, but my results are less than stellar....

Start will no SSS, so just use a glossy material with very very small specular.  That should get you 90% there!  Make sure kernel is set to pathtracing (direct light is preview mode).

I would love to participate in the beta for the exporter.

There is a link on www.refractivesoftware.com calling for beta testers.

Quote - I would love to participate in the beta for the exporter.

There is a link on www.refractivesoftware.com calling for beta testers.

I already posted on that link, so I'll see what comes of it

I want to wait for the actual software, before I continue trying it because of the missing save feature in the demo.

I bought it, but have no download information yet. The account info gives an activation code, but no actual link to the software

Wimvdb, you download the software in the "Licensed Customer Forums". Look for the recent 3.01beta in the "Release Candidate Forum". Run the program and activate it.

I don't see those forums, just the public ones. I registered both as a customer and as a forum user with the same name.

Where are the forums lopcated, or should they just appear after you login?

wimvdb:

here's the link to the "Commercial Product News & Releases (Download here) "

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=24&sid=747bbf94d19a22bdf1d8796ba1b14ed3

I waited for 2 days, in order to receive an email or something, for further instructions on where to download the software and/or how to activate it ... until I read that you need to log in into their "Customer Area", where the activate. and ID $ is put in for you LOL ...

You should see new forums when you become a licensed customer.

Your forum name should change color and under it, it should say Licensed Customer. Maybe they manually process the license.

That must be the case.

If I use that link I get "unauthorized"

I can login into the customer account, and see that everything is all set.

It is just the forums which probably have not been authorized yet

 Edit: My post in the poser plugin has not been approved either (first time user)

Quote - shedofjoy wrote: my thoughts exactly 99 euros now and who knows how much later? how can they expect a group of customers who are largly hobbiests to commit 99euros  when they dont know the final price,i like many poser users am of a limited budget and am very wary of spending money on the beta when the total cost could end up being anything out of reach of my kind. if they want us to go for their software tell us whilst the beta is out how much it will be on final release.or is that just too logical?

Hobbyists were not the initial target market and I don't think they are now. Architects/product designers wanting fast unbiased renders were/are the target market according to a few old posts from the developers. Hobbyists just are "really interested" so now DAZ and Poser plugins are being worked on by a couple of DAZ and Poser users (specifically Paul for Poser) - not the developers of Octane - though I believe they are helping when  needed. But if you spend time in their forum, you will find most renders (the really good ones) are architect or product related, many pros posting with a hobbyist here and there. The appeal for the hobbyist has been the low beta price and the use of more affordable Nvidia cards. It does read in the new FAQ like the purchase of Refractive Software by OTOY changed the original beta plan. I bet they forgot to update the original Beta info page as there is no mention of OTOY in the text on it like the FAQ has.

It's been in beta much, much longer than anyone thought it would be early on, so they probably don't know when all the v1.0 features will be working or even be willing to lock in a price as that could be a vastly different economic climate if and when they ever come out of beta.

The important thing, though, is that it does work and will get much of what you want to do in an unbiased render using full spectrum light without the cheats biased render engines use very quickly (relative to CPU unbiased render engines). But also remember, that it can't do everything a CPU biased or unbiased render engine can do (like regular LuxRender), including, I believe motion blur for imported animation. Internal camera motion blur or platter style animations computed completely in the card however can be done with motion blur. To get motion blur with rendered frames from imported animation using a plugin, you will have to post process them with  something like ReelSmart Motion Blur for After Effects.

Besides having to reduce your texture count and size, (if nobody already mentioned this) you have to remember that all the calculations including the final render are done in the graphics card video RAM. If you do a really large size render, you better have the memory to hold that image until it's ready to be saved. One of the good things about Octane, though, is the ability of its shader system to approximate photo real textures using colors, specular, IOR, etc. settings with maybe some smaller sized bump maps much more efficiently than with full resolution, full color image maps. (Use Float Texture for greyscale bump maps to save VRAM - use Float Image for larger resolution diffuse (color) or normal maps.)

Kevin

Quote - wimvdbwrote: That must be the case.

If I use that link I get "unauthorized"

I can login into the customer account, and see that everything is all set.

It is just the forums which probably have not been authorized yet

 Edit: My post in the poser plugin has not been approved either (first time user)

 

They now have a waiting period - "After your order is successfully completed, you will receive your license information via the email address you used during the purchase process.
Due to previous instances of abuse we manually review and activate all new purchases, and due to timezone differences, it can take up to 24 hours to process your license purchase."

I bought it, but have no download information yet. The account info gives an activation code, but no actual link to the software

You download via the Commerical Product News & Releases forum.

[Edit] Ooops, ppl go tin b4 me!

Kevin - great (and well informed) post.

Are adoptions to skin shaders in octane save- and reusable?

E.g. When you apply another skin in poser, so not all breaks in octane

Are adoptions to skin shaders in octane save- and reusable?

E.g. When you apply another skin in poser, so not all breaks in octane

In Octane standalone you setup the material in Octane, not Poser, so if you want to use a different texturemap set, you do it by hand, or do it in Poser and export and replug everything in.

In OctaneRender for Poser, when you run the plugin it will bring across all the textures, and you can apply presets to the skin materials, retaining the texturemaps.  If you re-assign the texturemaps in the Poser Material Room, you can bring those new maps across to your existing Octane material setup.