Okay. Bought the $500 plugin + standalone. Working on a pretty nice PC rig with 2 NVIDIA cards: 980TI and GTX1080.
No problem getting a 'hello world' scene to run. Create a box and a plane, execute the plugin and things work fine.
Huge problems trying to 'map' SU materials to Octane materials and/or edit them. Using 3.04.4.5. Read the manual but it's not clear at all on how to do any of this.
Q1. Is the 3.04.4.5 plugin the correct one to be using (I believe it's the latest as of this post).
Q2. Is there a video tute on any of the material editiing? The manual is pretty lame. Sometimes mapping seems to work, other times it does not. Sometimes I can get a change in tile size to work, other times it doesn't. I don't know if I'm the problem or the plugin is the problem. Any help would be appreciated.
Q3. How to get DOF to work? I tried all the settings I could (not using the node editor) . Under CAMERA menu>Thin Lens>Aperture (both large and small), Focus type=Depth (pick focus) and still it doesn't seem to work at all.
Q4. Can you 'save' SU materials so you can just *use them* in projects? Or do you have to go through the multiple step process everytime you want to 'redefine' a SU material for a new scene?
Q5. Are there any other docs or instructions on how to use Octane Render with SketchUp? I've scoured YouTube and have only found speeded up replays without audio annotation.
Q6. Is there a way to use SU to 'setup' a scene, then use OR application to 'finalize and render?' IOW, can I use SU to create a scene file which can be opened by the OR standalone application?
I'm sure there's more. Looking forward to some answers. Thanks!