OctaneRender® for Maya® beta 2.58f [OBSOLETE]

[JimStar]

Refractive Software®/Otoy® is proud to announce the availability of a first version of OctaneRender™ for Maya®
The world's fastest and most feature-rich unbiased render engine that integrates completely into Autodesk® Maya®.


Maya® Version Requirements

This release will work with Maya® Versions 2011, 2012 and 2013 / 32-bit & 64-bit on MS Windows operating systems.

Notes regarding features/functionality

OctaneRender™ for Maya® implements almost full functionality of OctaneRender™ standalone inside Maya®. Materials from the Live DB are currently not available.

COMPATIBILITY AND OCTANERENDER STANDALONE REQUIREMENT

To run OctaneRender™ for Maya®, you need to also have an activated OctaneRender™ Standalone copy activated on the machine you wish to install the plugin onto.
You cannot purchase and use only the Maya plugin and use it without also owning an activated copy of OctaneRender™ Standalone on your machine.


HOW TO PURCHASE LICENSES

Go to our online shop here: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/shop/

If you do not own an OctaneRender™ Standalone Edition License yet:
You can purchase both the OctaneRender™ Standalone Edition and the OctaneRender™ for Maya® Edition as a reduced price bundle, purchase the bundle priced at 179€

If you already own one or more OctaneRender™ Standalone Edition licenses you want to pair the plugin with:
Purchase an "OctaneRender™ for Maya® Beta License" priced at 99€

You can also purchase a 3, 5 or 10 pack of OctaneRender™ for Maya® licenses,
just like OctaneRender™ Standalone Edition packs.


OCTANELIVE

Just like OctaneRender™ Standalone, the Maya® plugin product also needs an additional OctaneLive license and be activated on a machine.
This has to be done in the plugin interface panel in Maya, and is covered in the included PDF manual.
It can only be done after an OctaneRender™ Standalone license is already activated on the machine in question.


BUG FIXES SINCE LAST RELEASE:

• Fixed Octane Light Node bug (when IES files were used)
• Fixed issue when IPR buttons on RenderView became not active if active IPR was reloaded by "Redo previous IPR render" or "IPR render current frame" buttons.
• Minor fixes...

NEW FEATURES SINCE LAST RELEASE:

• Added Octane scene (.ocs file) export feature. It does not export .obj file though, use OBJ-exporters plugins for that purpose so far...
• Added "Create Octane light" button to Octane toolshelf.

DOWNLOAD

Next version HERE.


Yours,
The OctaneRender™ Team.

[tchoa]

Great!
Didn't manage to get the 'experimental' batchrendering working.
Has someone succeeded to get it working?
F

[JimStar]

Great!
Didn't manage to get the 'experimental' batchrendering working.
Has someone succeeded to get it working?
F

Works on my system. E.g. such a command:

Code: Select all

"c:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2013\bin\render" -verb -renderer octane -gpu1 on -of gif -cam camera1 -s 10 -e 20 -smp 10 -v on "C:\Var\ofm_test_2.mb"

And what for error do you get? Describe please, what is not working?

[tchoa]

Thanks for the sample command line.
Sorry for the post, I think I just found my issue: something was wrong with my firewall and the access to my license through the batchrendering.
It's working well
Guess now you can integrate it through the Render menu.
F

[charge]

Thanks for all the quick updates - the plugin is improving nicely

I have a scene in which I get the warning:
// Warning: Shape "polySurfaceShape123" set 2 has invalid triangulation, skipping... //

and the scene does not render at all - ie nothing seems to be skipped as the warning suggests. If I delete polySurfaceShape123 the scene renders fine.

I guess there are two questions here:
1. What is "invalid triangulation"?
2. If there is a warning saying something will be skipped, isn't that what should happen (render without that object) rather than no rendering at all?

I have attached a scene with the issue, it has 2 objects. It will not start to render until you remove or hide the complex mesh.

Thanks.

[Joss]

It's me again with ol good envColor, i've updated suggestions in old thread, not sure if you read them, and got couple new ones:
1. you can add "env Power" attribute to camera and just use it for env power along with native "backgruong color" attribute.
2. if there's no env node in the scene, you can assume the default value on Power(0.9 it is?) and let user either manipulate by envColor V component or add env node for more controls.

One more question(i already asked it once, not sure it was answered): is it possible somehow to support maya display subdivision objects?
It's when you press "3"(or "6", dont remember correctly), object turns into kind of subdiv with creases without changing it underlying structure.
Would be very handy. I think Maya API shoulde provide some access to resulting mesh, not sure though.

[JimStar]

charge
Thanks! I will check it.

1. What is "invalid triangulation"?

It is the standard Maya's check, the explanation from the Maya's API: The face was bad geometry: it may gave degenerate points or cross over itself.

[JimStar]

One more question(i already asked it once, not sure it was answered): is it possible somehow to support maya display subdivision objects?
It's when you press "3"(or "6", dont remember correctly), object turns into kind of subdiv with creases without changing it underlying structure.
Would be very handy. I think Maya API shoulde provide some access to resulting mesh, not sure though.

No, it is Maya's problem. Maya does not have the API means to get the resulting "smoothed" geometry of existing object.
Perhaps I will write later some own code for this purpose, but not at this stage.

[tchoa]

Jim, can't you bind to the engines datas the result of MFnMesh::generateSmoothMesh(...) for meshes that have smoothMeshPreview turned on?

[JimStar]

Jim, can't you bind to the engines datas the result of MFnMesh::generateSmoothMesh(...) for meshes that have smoothMeshPreview turned on?

No. It is the ugly way, as this method is not suitable for this purpose.
I can read API specs. If it were so simple - I would have done so. Or you would have written this Maya integration without me.

Gentlemen, let's discuss what you need in the plugin. I will find the ways how to do it by myself. No need to prompt me how to write programs, I have been doing it for 25 years. I spend too much time explaining "why that is programmed that way" or "why that can't be programmed simple way"...
Just write here what you need. All things that need some hacks around Maya's API - are sitting at the end of TODO list. Mesh smoothing is there. LiveDB and textures in the viewport (and perhaps instances) - are at the first positions.