I'm evaluating if I can use the Maya plugin for production Tweet

[Rikk The Gaijin]

Hi there, after months I decided to give one more chance to the Maya plugin.
I honestly never liked it, especially the interface, which I think is really bad, but after all this months I thought to check it out and see if can be used for production, or if it's better to stick with the Standalone.

First of all, where the hell is the manual of v3?!
I checked on https://docs.otoy.com but there is nothing about it, only few videos of the Maya v2 plugin, 3DSMax plugin and Standalone...

Alright, I get it's a Beta, I figured maybe there isn't a manual yet, so let's see if I can apply my Standalone knowledge do things on my own...
After few hours, I manage to put together a test scene, however there are few things I can't figure out:

1) How to show Motion blur?
There is a Motion Blur Type under the render settings, which is set to 'None' by default, but I tried both 'Subframe' and 'Internal', and messing around with the parameters doesn't seem to do anything.

2) How to rotate the sky image?
In the texture settings there is an empty slot called 'Transform', so I tried to plug an 'Octane Rotation Transform', 'Octane Full Transform', 'Octane 2D Transform' and 'Octane 3D Transform', none of those works. So, what am I supposed to use?
EDIT: restarting Maya made it possible to plug the transform node.

3) How to render out an animation?
Batch Render cannot be used with Octane, so... What do I do?

4) Where is Clay Mode?
I use it quite often in the Standalone, but I cannot find it in the plugin.

5) How to import/export .orbx files?
This is an essential feature, I cannot find it anywhere.

Encountered problems/bugs:

1) From the object properties, unchecking 'Camera visibility' hides the object but leaves it's shadow, which is correct, but unchecking 'Shadow visibility' doesn't seem to work.

2) Suddenly, all the Octane tabs in the property panels disappeared, and all the Octane attributes were moved in a long, unorganized list under 'Extra Attributes'.
Fortunately, closing/reopening Maya fixed it.

3) There seems to be a severe banding problem, especially visible on dark surfaces, and in the Z-depth pass. In the beauty pass you kinda solve it by checking 'Dithering' in the options, but it doesn't affect the banding in the Z-depth pass.

I will add more questions / bugs the more I use it, but so far it seems it's not ready for productions.

Also, is there any plan for a complete redesign of the interface? The current one is awful, everything is hidden inside the Maya panels, and it's a pain to jump back and forth in the menus.
For example, plugins such as Peregrin Labs Yeti, have their own custom interface, so could we have a similar system where the plugin shares the same interface as the standalone?

Thanks
Riccardo

[calus]

1) How to show Motion blur?
There is a Motion Blur Type under the render settings, which is set to 'None' by default, but I tried both 'Subframe' and 'Internal', and messing around with the parameters doesn't seem to do anything.

Use "Internal" and up shutter time.

"Subframe", is a post process that blend frames rendered at higher FPS so is only visible with batch rendering and much slower than Octane Motion Blur, only useful for special cases.

2) How to rotate the sky image?
In the texture settings there is an empty slot called 'Transform', so I tried to plug an 'Octane Rotation Transform', 'Octane Full Transform', 'Octane 2D Transform' and 'Octane 3D Transform', none of those works. So, what am I supposed to use?

In the "image texture" node, in the "project" field, create a "spherical project" node,
in the spherical "project node" add a "3D tranform node" or just a "rotation node" to keep it simple.
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=58806#p301773

3) How to render out an animation?
Batch Render cannot be use with Octane, so... What do I do?

What do you mean ? Batch-render inside Maya and from command line works fine with Octane.

For rendering animation I would advise to set render setting "animation mode : movable proxies" and be sure you use the appropriate geometry type for every meshes.

4) Where is Clay Mode?
I use it quite often in the Standalone, but I cannot find it in the plugin.

5) How to import/export .orbx files?
This is an essential feature, I cannot find it anywhere.

[Rikk The Gaijin]

Hi calus, thanks for your quick answers.
However I still have problems:

- Batch Rendering doesn't work for me. If I click on the option box this warning message appears:
"OctaneRender" does not provide batch rendered options.
If I cannot access the option box, where do I set the output path, format, etc?
If I click directly on 'Batch render' my computer freezes instantly. I had to do a hard reset. So I'm not sure what's going on here..

- The export to orbx scene doesn't work either. When I try to export I get this error:
// Error: line 0: Could not save file "C:/Users/*****/Desktop/test.orbx"
I get the same error on both Export All and Export Selection.

- The 'Render in gray material' is not quite the same as Clay mode. All the normal maps and displacements are lost.

Any ideas?

Thank you
Riccardo

[calus]

First of all, where the hell is the manual of v3?!
I checked on https://docs.otoy.com but there is nothing about it, only few videos of the Maya v2 plugin, 3DSMax plugin and Standalone...

Right, that's a problem, especially since the Maya plugin have a lot of Octane attributes with different name/default/implementation than Standalone,
and Octane attributes don't even have help tips popup like all other maya attributes...

Alright, I get it's a Beta

Not a beta, this is a very stable version always maintained in a very stable state.

Is there any plan for a complete redesign of the interface? The current one is awful, everything is hidden inside the Maya panels, and it's a pain to jump back and forth in the menus.

Interface have been improved a little compared to V2, but this is baby steps ...
In my opinion the plugin UI in general is still a draft half/finished implementation with a lot of flaws,
and would need a dedicated period of development to get a more robust and completed UI code-base.

so far it seems it's not ready for productions.

It's ready for production, I use it every day, very stable but yes a lot of flaws of workflow breakers and quirks coming from the initial implementation of the UI.
One great point is that the ORBX exporter have been improved a lot ! some improvement of the plugin are still missing in the exporter but it's coming I guess.
So if any Octane 3 feature is missing in the plugin you can quickly continue the work in standalone or back and forth in parallel.

[calus]

- Batch Rendering doesn't work for me. If I click on the option box this warning message appears:
"OctaneRender" does not provide batch rendered options.
If I cannot access the option box, where do I set the output path, format, etc?
If I click directly on 'Batch render' my computer freezes instantly. I had to do a hard reset. So I'm not sure what's going on here..

- The export to orbx scene doesn't work. When I try to export I get this error:
// Error: line 0: Could not save file "C:/Users/*****/Desktop/test.orbx"
I get the same error on both Export All and Export Selection.

Well that's weird never had this problem, batch render and export were broken only the pre-alpha plug-in from Kai,
(but since this version was abandoned.)
what version of the plugin are you using ?
OctaneRender® for Maya® 3.05.3 - 9.36 is the last stable version
viewtopic.php?f=109&t=59317



- The 'Render in gray material' is not quite the same as Clay mode. All the normal maps and displacements are lost.[/quote]
Right, the true octane Clay mode, should be implemented, ... baby steps...

[Rikk The Gaijin]

Ok, I did an uninstall and reinstall and now it all works fine... Weird...

[p3taoctane]

"One great point is that the ORBX exporter have been improved..."

Yes I agree this is very useful

"So if any Octane 3 feature is missing in the plugin you can quickly continue the work in standalone or back and forth in parallel.+

Is this true? I know you can save materials etc.... but you cant import a whole ORBX scene into maya with everything set up can you???

That would be truly awesome

[calus]

"So if any Octane 3 feature is missing in the plugin you can quickly continue the work in standalone or back and forth in parallel.+

Is this true? I know you can save materials etc.... but you cant import a whole ORBX scene into maya with everything set up can you???

That would be truly awesome

Lol, sorry for the false hope, we still can only import materials from standalone in Maya, trough the Local DB.
But I mean parallel work in Maya and standalone is way easier than before.
But yes still far from perfect, for example animated visibility now works in Maya but still not with the exporter ....
I'm waiting for the "render proxy" feature to be implemented hopefully:
viewtopic.php?f=111&t=58521

[gah5118]

so far i'm sticking with stand alone... haven't tried it since they reverted back to the old code and did away with some of the improvements that were showing promise. Mainly, the ability to interact with the standalone interface within Maya. Overall, trying to manage material assignment through maya's methods for our purposes, it takes 2-3 times longer than pushing an alembic file to standalone.

[calus]

so far i'm sticking with stand alone... haven't tried it since they reverted back to the old code and did away with some of the improvements that were showing promise. Mainly, the ability to interact with the standalone interface within Maya. Overall, trying to manage material assignment through maya's methods for our purposes, it takes 2-3 times longer than pushing an alembic file to standalone.

If we had "render proxi" no need to have an octane render graph in Maya anymore, we could just export an object as proxyORBX, in Maya the object would be replaced by a standin object linked to the ORBX,
and we could work on Look developement in Standalone, save the ORBX, then render the full scene from Maya ...