OTOY Forums

Hey there, I'm currently doing some tests with the Octane Plugin for UE 4.27 to evaulate if it's possible to do some high quality automotive renderings in the near future. I just created a simple scene with an old model, floor with shadowcatcher and an hdri environment. As we work with the Unreal Engine Automotive Materials Pack as base for the shaders most of the time I just applied some random materials. However most of the materials don't seem to work correctly and I'm getting this facetted look. This is not the case if I create an Octane material from scratch. Is there anything I'm not aware of and do I have to tweak these materials to work with Octane? My assumption was that Octane would translate them and they will work out of the box. Would love to get some advice.
Cheers.

You should just swap out the materials for Octane material, the clear coat conversion, then bent normals, and I assume some procedural noise that wont be converted is to much for a standard conversion tool. Also IOR has changed and isn't a real number for the longest time it's an Unreal fake. So go to LiveDB and download and add your car paint, they are free and easy to use.

Thanks a lot for your reply. Unfortunately swapping out materials won't be an option I guess as we need to find a way to quickly produce high quality renders out of a car configurator that makes use of the Unreal Engine Automotive materials. So we would have a huge amount of variations which would then have to be adapted to Octane standards.

Hi,

It is likely an opportunity for a custom in-house advanced script.

Octane has been used in Automotive Visualization and is more than capable for it. If examples are required, although Octane is known for its quality output, I could provide that.

Hey I would be more than happy to get more information about this! We have a Unreal dev in our team so this could be an option. No doubt, I'm sure that Octane can be used in Automotive Visualization, I love it and use it for private purposes but currently doing some POC for the company I'm working.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. It seems the automotive material project has changed relatively recently and is using a lot of new features.
I have fixed a few issues already, and am working on a few others.

Would it be possible for you to share the materials you are using?

Hi Chris, glad you're answering! We're more or less using all the materials (at least the master materials) of the automotive materials pack as a base for further customization. So far I have tested several carpaint and metal materials, all of them made the model look facetted. Regarding glass, I have read that it's best to create your own Octane materials? Just as a background info: We are currently trying to find a way to switch between Unreals Raytracing for a car configurator and another Renderer like Octane to render out hiqh quality images for marketing purposes. As Unreals Pathtracer is still in Beta and doesn't seem to be there yet we would like to give Octane a go and need to do some tests, so I'm glad for any kind of support I can get. I'm also not sure if Octane translates the lighting scenario from Unreal (e.g. sky light) or just works with the native Octane Daylight model?

DaInzi wrote: So far I have tested several carpaint and metal materials, all of them made the model look facetted.

I might have already fixed this for the upcomming build. Could you post an example picture of this?

DaInzi wrote: I'm also not sure if Octane translates the lighting scenario from Unreal (e.g. sky light) or just works with the native Octane Daylight model?

Octane will copy over the main directional light settings. The end result should look very similar to unreal sky light.
If you are using a skydome with a material on it, the plugin will also convert that to octane.

Hey thanks Chris, I'm already looking forward to test what you have fixed. May I ask how frequently you guys are releasing your fixes as this might also be crucial for us. Unfortunately I'm not allowed to show you the whole model of the car but I did a quick closeup of the hood where this issue is really obvious. Dumb question, but is there a way to attach an image without hosting it somewhere? I'm currently putting together a list with a bunch of more questions/bugs that came up while doing some tests. Should I just post them here in the forum or is there a way to reach out to you guys directly?

DaInzi wrote:Hey thanks Chris, I'm already looking forward to test what you have fixed. May I ask how frequently you guys are releasing your fixes as this might also be crucial for us.

I have a reasonably quick turnaround with releasing fixes. For severe bugs we can release a new build within a week.
Im aiming to release a new build this week, or start of next week.

DaInzi wrote:Unfortunately I'm not allowed to show you the whole model of the car but I did a quick closeup of the hood where this issue is really obvious.

You could place the material on a sphere to see if it has the same issues.

DaInzi wrote: Dumb question, but is there a way to attach an image without hosting it somewhere? I'm currently putting together a list with a bunch of more questions/bugs that came up while doing some tests. Should I just post them here in the forum or is there a way to reach out to you guys directly?

You can email me at [email protected] for sensitive issues.
We also have an issue subforum, for non-sensitive issues this is the best location as my collegues and other users can maybe help
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