Render Tests in Maya Octane 2019. Some questions. Tweet

[Intuition]

Hello, I recently became renewed in my interest in Octane as a render solution.

Last time I tried was in 2015 and I was in between Vray and Redshift due to the places that I worked requiring knowledge of these for finishing work.

I wanted to return to Octane since I have seen more Octane work showing up everywhere and remembered it was an unbiased render engine.

I took a scene that was made with Vray and converted it to Octane to see what the learning curve would be converting people from Vray or Redshift in case there was consideration from management for adding Octane to our arsenal at work.

Since I could only get Octane 2019 to run on the VMs we have due to some conflicts with Xeon CPU sets.. and also the limitation of Tesla T4s for GPUs I wanted to ask questions about
functionality in the latest editions vs the 2019.1.x versions I can run on the vms.

I also converted a car scene that I can't post here due to NDA. In the car scene in Vray or Redshift I can setup a Vray area or redshift area light to be textured with an EXR.

We use a few softbox textures on the lights themselves so that there isn't just a flat white square in the reflections of the car panels. One major aspect of lighting with the exrs besides being able to project diffuse and specular breakup with the exr texture is the fact that the lights in Vray and Redshift have slider/attributes for separate Diffuse and Specular contribution.

This makes it so that I can push a lot of diffuse to light the car diffuse panels but then reduce the specular contribution so that the reflection appears a bit more mild and less blown out, giving the panels a much more elegant reflection shape from the softbox exer.

In Octane 2019 I could not see a way to separate the light diffuse and specular contribution with a slider using an actual light.

I had to instead create a geo light that used the Octane Texture Emissive in an Octane Diffuse Material for the diffuse separately from basically the same light cloned... then place the specular contribution light slightly behind the diffuse whilst not casting a shadow and only contributing specular. This had to be made quite a few times in order for the lights to work the same way I use them elsewhere in Vray and Redshift.

I know Octane is an unbiased renderer so perhaps that is why the lights have no separated values for diffuse spec but I think it would be useful, since you have the separate checkboxes, to also have separate diffuse and specular contribution % sliders.

Forget these questions if... 2020+ have resolved these issues.

Questions about Octane 2022 and +
---------------------------------------------
Lights

1. Is there a way to texture the actual light with an exr vs using the emissive texture on geometry?
2. Does the latest versions have light attributes that allows for tuning the diffuse vs specular contribution % separately?
--------------------------------------------
Light Linking

I figured out how to light link using the 8 light groups and made it work thankfully because the car and floor were primarily the only two items to compete for light contribution.
1. Is there a way to implement Octane to use Maya's native light linking methods? Vray and Redshift allow usage of Maya's native light linking.
---------------------------------------------
Texturing

I noticed that Octane has its own way of repeating textures vs Maya's native texture nodes. I like the way you can take one and plug it into many textures to make them uniform.
1. Is there a way though, instead of having to figure out a fraction like 0.28 to get it to repeat many times that instead you just simply use the same values that Maya native texture repeats use?

Using 0.5 to have it repeat the texture twice or 0.25 to repeat 4x is not as intuitive as simply placing the number 2 for 2 repeats and 4 for 4 repeats across the UV space or projections.
----------------------------------------------
Texture Baking

I do like how you have a bake input for making certain Maya nodes bake into Octane. This is very useful as I use Maya Layer Texture nodes quite often and was able to get results from a scene conversion
using this method. Though, some would not convert correctly. Instead I used Vray texture baking to output from the Maya Layer Texture nodes.

1. I was wondering if the input for bake could be given a press button function where you could simply directly Bake out the texture from Maya Layer Texture nodes into an Octane Texture node as a flat image?

The idea workflow here would be some kind of Octane baking node with inputs/outputs that is a node item in hypershade that simply bakes an image into a directory and this could be connected to an Octane image texture node. This way you could plug anything from maya into it but also just select a directory and press "bake" and have the image result from the input made into a png, jpg, etc.
This then could be plugged into any texture input in an Octane material OR Octane Texture image node.
---------------------------------------------
Texure Image Preview

Usually in Maya I can press the little "S" for solo on a texture or other maya node and it will show the 2d flat texture result in the hypershade preview. In 2019 I could not see the preview when switched to view the Octane material preview.

Is there a way to set this up so I can see what Octane sees when I press the "s" solo button on textures or say the setRange, Reverse, Layer Texture nodes?
------------------------------------------

I am really impressed with Octane and am currently building a new computer with an i9 and two 3070 cards for use with Octane which should be complete in July.
I saw the XB1 build on Lino Grande's Instagram and feel like I need Octane in my personal arsenal even if the studio I work for does not adapt it.

Thanks for any info in advance and sorry for the long post.

[Intuition]

One thing I forgot to ask about was Substance usage in Octane.

Is there a plugin or similar for using Substance Designer SBSARs with Octane? I didn't see anything in the documents.

I know I can output the usual Diffuse, Roughness, bumps, etc and hook them up to the Octane shader, but there are workflows for hooking up SBSAR in Vray and Redshift so we can move shaders from one engine to another pretty easily. Maya Substance plugin allows you to load an SBSAR and select Renderman, Vray, Redshift, Arnold, Redshift, and Maxwell at the moment and it will build the material network for you from Substance SBSAR output to the desired render engine's material node. Currently i'd likely just use Maxwell Render preset and try to hook the outputs into Octane Image Texture bake nodes into an Octane material. Though, it would be handy to just have a direct translation so that iterating SBSARs from Designer/Painter/etc was more automated.

[BK]

Hello, I recently became renewed in my interest in Octane as a render solution.

Last time I tried was in 2015 and I was in between Vray and Redshift due to the places that I worked requiring knowledge of these for finishing work.

I wanted to return to Octane since I have seen more Octane work showing up everywhere and remembered it was an unbiased render engine.

I took a scene that was made with Vray and converted it to Octane to see what the learning curve would be converting people from Vray or Redshift in case there was consideration from management for adding Octane to our arsenal at work.

Since I could only get Octane 2019 to run on the VMs we have due to some conflicts with Xeon CPU sets.. and also the limitation of Tesla T4s for GPUs I wanted to ask questions about
functionality in the latest editions vs the 2019.1.x versions I can run on the vms.

I also converted a car scene that I can't post here due to NDA. In the car scene in Vray or Redshift I can setup a Vray area or redshift area light to be textured with an EXR.

We use a few softbox textures on the lights themselves so that there isn't just a flat white square in the reflections of the car panels. One major aspect of lighting with the exrs besides being able to project diffuse and specular breakup with the exr texture is the fact that the lights in Vray and Redshift have slider/attributes for separate Diffuse and Specular contribution.

This makes it so that I can push a lot of diffuse to light the car diffuse panels but then reduce the specular contribution so that the reflection appears a bit more mild and less blown out, giving the panels a much more elegant reflection shape from the softbox exer.

In Octane 2019 I could not see a way to separate the light diffuse and specular contribution with a slider using an actual light.

I had to instead create a geo light that used the Octane Texture Emissive in an Octane Diffuse Material for the diffuse separately from basically the same light cloned... then place the specular contribution light slightly behind the diffuse whilst not casting a shadow and only contributing specular. This had to be made quite a few times in order for the lights to work the same way I use them elsewhere in Vray and Redshift.

I know Octane is an unbiased renderer so perhaps that is why the lights have no separated values for diffuse spec but I think it would be useful, since you have the separate checkboxes, to also have separate diffuse and specular contribution % sliders.

Forget these questions if... 2020+ have resolved these issues.

Questions about Octane 2022 and +
---------------------------------------------
Lights

1. Is there a way to texture the actual light with an exr vs using the emissive texture on geometry?
2. Does the latest versions have light attributes that allows for tuning the diffuse vs specular contribution % separately?
--------------------------------------------
Light Linking

I figured out how to light link using the 8 light groups and made it work thankfully because the car and floor were primarily the only two items to compete for light contribution.
1. Is there a way to implement Octane to use Maya's native light linking methods? Vray and Redshift allow usage of Maya's native light linking.
---------------------------------------------
Texturing

I noticed that Octane has its own way of repeating textures vs Maya's native texture nodes. I like the way you can take one and plug it into many textures to make them uniform.
1. Is there a way though, instead of having to figure out a fraction like 0.28 to get it to repeat many times that instead you just simply use the same values that Maya native texture repeats use?

Using 0.5 to have it repeat the texture twice or 0.25 to repeat 4x is not as intuitive as simply placing the number 2 for 2 repeats and 4 for 4 repeats across the UV space or projections.
----------------------------------------------
Texture Baking

I do like how you have a bake input for making certain Maya nodes bake into Octane. This is very useful as I use Maya Layer Texture nodes quite often and was able to get results from a scene conversion
using this method. Though, some would not convert correctly. Instead I used Vray texture baking to output from the Maya Layer Texture nodes.

1. I was wondering if the input for bake could be given a press button function where you could simply directly Bake out the texture from Maya Layer Texture nodes into an Octane Texture node as a flat image?

The idea workflow here would be some kind of Octane baking node with inputs/outputs that is a node item in hypershade that simply bakes an image into a directory and this could be connected to an Octane image texture node. This way you could plug anything from maya into it but also just select a directory and press "bake" and have the image result from the input made into a png, jpg, etc.
This then could be plugged into any texture input in an Octane material OR Octane Texture image node.
---------------------------------------------
Texure Image Preview

Usually in Maya I can press the little "S" for solo on a texture or other maya node and it will show the 2d flat texture result in the hypershade preview. In 2019 I could not see the preview when switched to view the Octane material preview.

Is there a way to set this up so I can see what Octane sees when I press the "s" solo button on textures or say the setRange, Reverse, Layer Texture nodes?
------------------------------------------

I am really impressed with Octane and am currently building a new computer with an i9 and two 3070 cards for use with Octane which should be complete in July.
I saw the XB1 build on Lino Grande's Instagram and feel like I need Octane in my personal arsenal even if the studio I work for does not adapt it.

Thanks for any info in advance and sorry for the long post.

Hi Intuition,

Sorry for the late response.
We are glad to see you back. Please find our quick response to your queries!

1. Is there a way to texture the actual light with an exr vs using the emissive texture on geometry?
-> Octane emission nodes have two texture inputs, one for putting an image on the geometry (eg. a TV) and one to create an emission pattern (eg. spotlight or projector).
These are respectively the Texture and Distribution inputs.

2. Does the latest versions have light attributes that allows for tuning the diffuse vs specular contribution % separately?
-> unfortunately, we do not support tuning the diffuse vs specular contribution % separately.

-> We have created an internal ticket to investigate if we can implement native Maya light linking, Texture repeating, baking and Solo mode.
Maybe the texture repeating is what we have in Octane Standalone. We will get more information asap.

-> Unfortunately, the Substance Designer SBSARs is not supported yet.


cheers

[Intuition]

I just assembled my new i9-18 core with 3070 this week so I am finally able to download the latest builds and give this a proper go.

Thank you for the reply/answers.

[elsksa]

2. Does the latest versions have light attributes that allows for tuning the diffuse vs specular contribution % separately?
-> unfortunately, we do not support tuning the diffuse vs specular contribution % separately.

Specifically not via a % slider indeed, but possible via ON/OFF checkboxes: Octane's light or Diffuse Material > Emission > Visibility.

I've shared some more on this Octane Lighting post.