Does Octane work for an animation production? Tweet

[Emcs07]

Hello everyone, I am starting to work on an animated short film. I was wondering how good is Octane in an animation production environment? I heard you need to use a plug-in to drive each separate frame into Octane for rendering, is this true, and if so, how efficient is it?

Thanks!

[kubo]

for now is limited by the obj file type, so if you want to have an idea of what an animation would mean in the current build just export with your host app your scene to obj, write down the time it took to export, test render in the demo with that same obj file one frame, add up both times, that should give you a fair average of render time pre frame. The exporters work really good, they take the hustle of thinking exporter parameters and let you export camera and sun positions, which is good for an animation. You just launch it from inside your modeling app, and select the frame range and they'll do the rest of the job provided you have already setup correctly one frame scene in octane.

[Emcs07]

Hmmm, I haven't tested it yet, but will it work with plug-ins like real-flow or maya fluids? As for the camera, you just choose your camera and it keeps it's movement and position, correct?

Thank you very much for the information.

Edit: Also, how can I handle better a rig I have in my scene? The rig I'm using has different levels of detail (polygon count) and octane is importing all the quality levels.

Edit2: Also does it keep octane materials saved? Sorry for all the questions.

[kubo]

if you convert the real-flow to a mesh thru the mesher or something the like it should work no problem, just in case, like I said, try to export a scene with those to obj, if it can be done, Octane can read it. Mostly is a limitation with the modeler app internal obj exporter. Which ever it exports, it'll show up on Octane.
I don't know much about LODs on meshes, so can't help you there.
The thing when you have everything ready in your scene in your modeler you export a single frame to octane, there you fine tune your materials, lights and camera response and such. You do a few shots till everything seems fine. You save an ocs file (octane scene) and go back to your modeler, there you run the plugin and choose "use an existing scene" you pick up the one you saved earlier, and do a render for the whole animation range.
As a tip, don't spend much time in your modeler setting up your materials, just set your uvmaps and a base image if needed, it's much easier to do that inside octane, plus you get real-time feedback on how's going to really look like since you are actually rendering and making changes all at the same time.
Above all, have fun!

[Emcs07]

Thanks for the info! I'm still a little concerned about Octane. I was reading that apparently you can't really render fluids, hair or dust/particles unless you make them polygons, which can be tricky for a raytracing renderer. Dust and smoke just seem out of the question for Octane, I am guessing you would have to use another renderer for that and then composite it in.

Thank you again, it was very useful.

[kubo]

I'm afraid that's not a limitation of Octane but the obj file type. Those things will be added to octane along with other file type that support instances, and hair and such. Meanwhile you have to find a way to do what you want with what you have. I mean, if you are planning on using octane, at modeling time there is always ways to model sutff without the need of that things that look just the same. It's just a matter of using the right tools for the job at hand.
Try it out, or try it at a friends computer, you'll see why many of us love it.

[Emcs07]

Hey thanks a lot for the information. I guess my last question is in regards to loading a scene into octane. I noticed it takes a very, very long time to load a single "frame" into octane. I was wondering if there is a way to avoid this or cut the time (Voxelization, etc)?

I am guessing loading every frame like this would make rendering a 10 minute animation hell on earth?

Thanks, hopefully there is a solution for this and I can just buy octane and use it for my purposes.