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Octane 2019 For Unreal Engine: First Public Beta + Free tier

PostPosted: Mon Jul 29, 2019 5:05 pm
by ChrisHekman
Octane 2019 For Unreal Engine - First Public Beta:

Dear Octane community,

We are very pleased to launch the first public beta of Octane for Unreal Engine. Read more about this release at https://home.otoy.com/unreal-engine-release/

Releases: viewforum.php?f=132

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Octane for Unreal Features Overview:


Unreal Material Conversion

Octane for Unreal automatically converts Unreal materials in the scene to Octane.
Materials are converted to OSL by extending the Unreal Material Translator, producing a high level of quality and fidelity.
At the bottom of this post is a link to a reference sheet, detailing which features are supported.
Note that in scenes with many and / or very complex Unreal Materials, changes to materials can take a long time to update.
MaterialConversion2.png


Octane RenderTarget Actor

Octane for Unreal Engine has in-editor support for Octane Render Targets.
A Render Target is automatically created once Octane is initially loaded in a scene, and multiple Render Targets are supported.
Render Targets allows users to tweak Octane’s rendering, camera, post processing and many other settings.
They are created via the Modes-window, just like any other actor.
Once created, the rendering process is initiated with the “Render” button at the top of the Render Target’s details.

RTCreate.png

RTRender.png



Octane Viewport

Octane comes with its own viewport window. This can be docked like any other window in Unreal.
An overview of these features:

Top section:
  • Render pass selection
  • Auto-resize render to viewport toggle, note that this overrides settings in the active render target’s “Film settings” panel
  • Stop, restart, pause, start rendering buttons
  • Auto focus picker, note that this overrides settings in the active render target’s “Camera” panel
  • White balance picker, note that this overrides settings in the active render target’s “Imager” panel
  • Material picker, this reveals the target material in the Content Browser
  • Object picker, this reveals the target object in the World Outliner
  • Render mode override (normal / clay / colored clay)
  • Sub-sampling settings, to increase viewport performance
  • Render priority setting
  • Save the current render pass to disk
  • Save all render passes to disk
  • Set the currently active render target
  • Open the Octane node graph (unsafe)
  • Set update flags, these control Octane’s link with Unreal

Bottom section
  • Render statistics overview
  • Buttons to quickly navigate to various elements of the active render target in the Details view


Interactive Viewport Rendering:




Unreal Lighting

The plugin supports the following Unreal light types:
  • Rect
  • Point
  • Spot
  • IES
  • Directional*
Additionally, the plugin supports emissive materials and components.
*At the moment only one directional light at a time is supported: this acts as the scene’s sun direction.
Lights.png



Geometry

Octane for Unreal Engine supports Unreals Static Mesh components, Instanced Mesh components, Foliage and Skeletal Mesh components.
Skinnend geometry is supported using Octane's built-in bone animation system.
Instanced geometry and foliage are implemented using Octane Scatter Nodes.


ORBX Import and Export

Octane for Unreal can export any Unreal Scene to ORBX files for use in Octane standalone and other Octane DCC tools.
Octane for Unreal can also import ORBX files and use ORBX assets and proxies as Unreal scene components.
This feature allows users to mix their Unreal assets with ORBX assets from other Octane Plugins.
Simply drag an .orbx file onto the Unreal Editor content browser to start using ORBX assets.


Octane Materials

Octane for Unreal provides a way to override an Unreal material on the Octane side, without affecting the original scene.
This can be done in an Octane Material, available in Content Browser → Octane. This material has an option to specify a parent
in the Details tab, which exposes its parameters for use in the Octane node graph via the Parent Material node.
That way, changes made to the original material are reflected in the Octane material.
OctaneMaterials.png


Resources

Material Support Reference Sheet
Material Support Reference Sheet - Expressions.pdf
(105.58 KiB) Downloaded 1751 times




Limitations and unsupported features


Limitations:
- In-editor Octane node editor does not support all octane nodes and UI yet
- Only one single directional supported. The most dominant light is chosen.
- Hair, Skin, Eye materials are only partially supported and appear different. Eye materials frequently get converted to black when they contain custom code nodes.

Unsupported Features:
- Terrain
- Particles
- Geometry Brushes (Box Brush, Cone Brush, Stair Brush etc)
- Spline Meshes
- Decals
- Lightmapping
- Sequencer


Minimal System Requirements:
- Active Octane Studio or Enterprise licence
- CUDA GPU supported by Octane 2019.1 or later
- Unreal 4.22
- Windows 10
- Latest NVIDIA Driver (419.67 or newer)

Supported Unreal Features:
- Unreal material conversion
- Static geometry (StaticMeshComponent)
- Instanced geometry and Foliage (InstancedMeshComponent)
- Bone animated geometry (SkinnedMeshComponent)
- Lights: Point, Rect, Spot, Directional
- Emissive material lighting

Unreal Extensions:
- ORBX asset importing and compositing
- Octane Materials
- Unreal node editor for Octane Materials and ORBX assets
- Octane Render Target Actor
- Export/Save Renders and Render Passes

Octane For Unreal Installer Links and Video:

Please reference the following video for install instructions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVBpN9N7Afc

For the latest releases check the releases subforum of the unreal forum: viewforum.php?f=132

If you are not on a commercial Studio or Enterprise Octane subscription, please sign up for an Octane Free Tier account here: https://render.otoy.com/shop/prime.php

Re: Octane 2019 For Unreal Engine: First Public Beta + Free tier

PostPosted: Mon Jul 29, 2019 9:08 pm
by villagefeatures
Very excited to try this out however I'm getting this message every time I try to run Octane in Unreal. I'm on the Enterprise subscription and signing in and out does no good, neither does quitting Modo and Octane standalone.

Re: Octane 2019 For Unreal Engine: First Public Beta + Free tier

PostPosted: Mon Jul 29, 2019 9:35 pm
by ChrisHekman
villagefeatures wrote:Very excited to try this out however I'm getting this message every time I try to run Octane in Unreal. I'm on the Enterprise subscription and signing in and out does no good, neither does quitting Modo and Octane standalone.


The error says your account is linked to another PC. You can unlock your enterprise license by going to
https://account.otoy.com/sign_in
Go to licenses (or subscriptions) and see if you can unlock your enterprise licence.

Re: Octane 2019 For Unreal Engine: First Public Beta + Free tier

PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2019 12:32 am
by villagefeatures
ChrisHekman wrote:
villagefeatures wrote:Very excited to try this out however I'm getting this message every time I try to run Octane in Unreal. I'm on the Enterprise subscription and signing in and out does no good, neither does quitting Modo and Octane standalone.


The error says your account is linked to another PC. You can unlock your enterprise license by going to
https://account.otoy.com/sign_in
Go to licenses (or subscriptions) and see if you can unlock your enterprise licence.

Thanks! that did the trick.

Re: Octane 2019 For Unreal Engine: First Public Beta + Free tier

PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:17 pm
by Notiusweb
Doesn't like Scalar Parameters too much, crashed UE4 while using.
And then, Plugin's Reload Button in the Editor doesn't assign changes made by a Scalar parameter.
You have to 1st Update the material in the Editor, as if it was Constant, and then it will update in the Plugin, but without having needed to Refresh the Material using the Plugin's Material Editor Reload Button.
Does it just update automatically as it goes, or are there certain situations where material update has to be run with the Reload Button.

Do you think Sequencer is possible?
Please tell us yes!!!!!

Re: Octane 2019 For Unreal Engine: First Public Beta + Free tier

PostPosted: Tue Jul 30, 2019 11:16 pm
by Notiusweb
Hi, I exported an ORBX to 2019.2 XB1, but when I selected the Render target I got the Orange, and then Red, "All GPU failed".
It does work in 2019.1 RC3.
I tested a couple times with same results.


Are the ORBXs only compatible up to certain versions of Octane, or should they work for all?

THX!

Re: Octane 2019 For Unreal Engine: First Public Beta + Free tier

PostPosted: Wed Jul 31, 2019 1:23 am
by Notiusweb
Hi, Looks very good!

I came across a material that wasn't converting (eyes), and I don't know yet enough how to navigate the plugin so I just exported to ORBX and looked in standalone.
And in there, it looks just like the actual texture for the eye ball did not make it over to a diffuse channel of some type. And, for the eye mesh there are in fact no textures for any channels that converted over (normal, albedo, specular, etc)

EyeMaterial_1.jpg



Are some materials known to not be available yet?
This one in Unreal is a Surface > Opaque > Shading Model "EYE"



THX!

Re: Octane 2019 For Unreal Engine: First Public Beta + Free tier

PostPosted: Wed Jul 31, 2019 9:20 am
by ChrisHekman
Thanks for the replies Notius

I came across a material that wasn't converting (eyes), and I don't know yet enough how to navigate the plugin so I just exported to ORBX and looked in standalone.
And in there, it looks just like the actual texture for the eye ball did not make it over to a diffuse channel of some type. And, for the eye mesh there are in fact no textures for any channels that converted over (normal, albedo, specular, etc)

Are some materials known to not be available yet?
This one in Unreal is a Surface > Opaque > Shading Model "EYE"

Eye materials are semi-supported. The problem with most eye materials in unreal is that they use custom nodes. These nodes contains native HLSL code which we cannot convert to OSL.
These: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Eng ... index.html
We are going to add a material warning/error system that specifies why certain materials do not work.


Hi, I exported an ORBX to 2019.2 XB1, but when I selected the Render target I got the Orange, and then Red, "All GPU failed".
It does work in 2019.1 RC3.
I tested a couple times with same results.

Are the ORBXs only compatible up to certain versions of Octane, or should they work for all?

I suspect this is because of osl. The unreal plugin relies heavily on it, and a couple of fixes that are in 2019.1.RC2 are not in 2019.2.XB1 yet.


Doesn't like Scalar Parameters too much, crashed UE4 while using.

Fixed

And then, Plugin's Reload Button in the Editor doesn't assign changes made by a Scalar parameter.
You have to 1st Update the material in the Editor, as if it was Constant, and then it will update in the Plugin, but without having needed to Refresh the Material using the Plugin's Material Editor Reload Button.
Does it just update automatically as it goes, or are there certain situations where material update has to be run with the Reload Button.

For instanced materials dragging the scalar parameter should just update in real time.
For normal materials, when you press apply it should also update the material in octane. The reload was an older feature that we should probebly remove.


Do you think Sequencer is possible?
Please tell us yes!!!!!

We think it is, and its at the top of our schedule.

Re: Octane 2019 For Unreal Engine: First Public Beta + Free tier

PostPosted: Thu Aug 01, 2019 10:22 am
by GIOLETS
Sorry for my super-ingenuous question: could be possible, having a scene made in Octane StandAlone, to export in Unreal+Octane without loosing all the materials?

Thanks to all.

Luca

Re: Octane 2019 For Unreal Engine: First Public Beta + Free tier

PostPosted: Thu Aug 01, 2019 11:21 am
by ChrisHekman
GIOLETS wrote:Sorry for my super-ingenuous question: could be possible, having a scene made in Octane StandAlone, to export in Unreal+Octane without loosing all the materials?

Thanks to all.

Luca


Yes, we support imporing and exporting orbx files.
Import Orbx.png


You can export your scene from octane standalone as an ORBX.
Then import that ORBX file in unreal by either dragging the file in from explorer, or by using the import orbx option shown above.
This action will create an orbx asset that you can drag into your scene.
The ORBX scene will then be shown in the octane viewport as an ORBX Proxy.

In upcomming builds there will also be a way to convert an ORBX file to a set of unreal assets (textures, meshes, materials, levels, etc)