OctaneRender® for Maya® beta 2.58d [OBSOLETE] Tweet

[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.
• Fixed bug of getting default global Octane settings when the opened scene loads OctaneRender dynamically by dependency.

DOWNLOAD

Next version HERE.


Yours,
The OctaneRender™ Team.

[charge]

How long after paying does it normally take for the licence to activate?
Thanks.

*edit* - Never mind, it seemed pretty much instant

[charge]

Any chance of being able to convert file textures to Octane Image textures and automatically attaching them to the relevant material node when using the "Convert Maya Materials To Octane" command?

Also could at least some of the mental ray nodes be converted (mib_ilum_lambert, mib_ilum_phong, mib_ilum_blinn and mia_material)?

Thanks.

[JimStar]

Any chance of being able to convert file textures to Octane Image textures and automatically attaching them to the relevant material node when using the "Convert Maya Materials To Octane" command?

Also could at least some of the mental ray nodes be converted (mib_ilum_lambert, mib_ilum_phong, mib_ilum_blinn and mia_material)?

Thanks.

mia_material is supported - it converts to Octane glossy material. Additional ones - they will be added little by little.

[Joss]

1. about env color again: maybe it would be more logical to take background/env color from current camera's "background color" attribute?
2. Found a new bug: in IPR mode if you changing current frame like 10-15 times(scrubbing over timeline here and there), image in renderView sometimes suddenly becomes twice smaller, and it's not a zoom out, image is physically being rendered twice smaller. After some more timeline movement - even more smaller, etc, etc.
3. Is it possible to render from command line with render.exe?

[JimStar]

3. Is it possible to render from command line with render.exe?

Yes, I wrote about it in previous version annotation...

[charge]

Any chance of being able to convert file textures to Octane Image textures and automatically attaching them to the relevant material node when using the "Convert Maya Materials To Octane" command?

Also could at least some of the mental ray nodes be converted (mib_ilum_lambert, mib_ilum_phong, mib_ilum_blinn and mia_material)?

Thanks.

mia_material is supported - it converts to Octane glossy material. Additional ones - they will be added little by little.

Does anything specific need to be set to convert the mia_material? In a new scene, I tried creating a cube, creating an applying the mia_material (default name of mia_material1SG) to it and then converting all Maya nodes to octane nodes. I get an error:

octaneMatConverter -ca;
// Warning: Shading group "swatchShadingGroup" is not connected to surfase shaders, skipping... //
// Warning: Shading group "mia_material1SG" is not connected to surfase shaders, skipping... //
// Error: No suitable materials found: converted materials must be assigned to "Polygonal mesh", "Subdivision surface" or "NURBS surface". //

Note that if I right click on the mia_material1SG material node and choose "Select objects with material" the cube is highlighted, so it must be connected to it (and a quick check of the nodes directly confirms this).

I am using Maya 2012 x64 on Win7.

[JimStar]

Any chance of being able to convert file textures to Octane Image textures and automatically attaching them to the relevant material node when using the "Convert Maya Materials To Octane" command?

Also could at least some of the mental ray nodes be converted (mib_ilum_lambert, mib_ilum_phong, mib_ilum_blinn and mia_material)?

Thanks.

I just checked it one more time, and found that all these materials that you wrote are already supported for translation to Octane material nodes, not only mia_material as I wrote in the first answer (I just have not found it at the first time, as I searched them in translation code with copy/pasting of your misspelled "ilum" instead of "illum"). The supported MentalRay "illums" are:
mib_illum_blinn
mib_illum_cooktorr
mib_illum_hair
mib_illum_lambert
mib_illum_phong
mib_illum_ward
mib_illum_ward_deriv

[JimStar]

Does anything specific need to be set to convert the mia_material? In a new scene, I tried creating a cube, creating an applying the mia_material (default name of mia_material1SG) to it and then converting all Maya nodes to octane nodes. I get an error:

octaneMatConverter -ca;
// Warning: Shading group "swatchShadingGroup" is not connected to surfase shaders, skipping... //
// Warning: Shading group "mia_material1SG" is not connected to surfase shaders, skipping... //
// Error: No suitable materials found: converted materials must be assigned to "Polygonal mesh", "Subdivision surface" or "NURBS surface". //

Note that if I right click on the mia_material1SG material node and choose "Select objects with material" the cube is highlighted, so it must be connected to it (and a quick check of the nodes directly confirms this).

I am using Maya 2012 x64 on Win7.

Thanks, I will check it.

EDIT: Yes, I've found the little issue with MentalRay material converting, already fixed it. Will be OK in next version.

[JimStar]

1. about env color again: maybe it would be more logical to take background/env color from current camera's "background color" attribute?

No problem technically, but: in this case we become some ambiguity of "what for "Power" value to set for that default environment texture with that color?". If texture is black, no problem, the "Power" gets just "0.0" and we get the black environment.
But if you have e.g. some "light blue" color in camera background - then the value of "Power" attribute in that default Octane texture environment becomes heavy impact on resulting environment color and entire scene lighting at all. As in these images, it may vary from "dark" to "very light" if some different values of "Power" are set (and the resulting brightness with the same "Power" will be different for different colors)...
So, setting the color from the camera background is some ambiguous in choosing the right "Power" value for that background color value, needed exactly for your scene... As camera does not have the "Background power" attribute...
What value you think it should have by default?
What others think about it?..

I think, that for the case of lack of SunSky node in a scene, black default environment texture with "Power" = 0.0 is more univocal...