Octane Render for SketchUp 3.06.2.5 Test Release Tweet

[CaptainCrowbar]

Release Notes for Octane Render SketchUp Plugin 3.06.2.5

Changes in This Release

The main change here is the ability to use multiple render targets. When you add a new camera view in SketchUp, a corresponding render target node will be created in Octane. The camera position and render settings are tracked separately for each render target, and will be saved with the SketchUp model in your .SKP file.

A new menu command has been added to discard the current Octane version of the scene and rebuild it from the SketchUp version.

Fixes have also been applied for several minor issues. We hope this version will be more stable than earlier 3.06.x releases, but further stability improvements are still a high priority.

About This Release Series

This is a public test release of a major update to the Octane Render Plugin for SketchUp. Please note that this is an early beta release and should be used with care.

The 3.06 release series represents a thorough redesign of the plugin's user interface. The plugin now uses a separate window of its own, similar to the standalone Octane Render application. You can open this window through the Octane button on the SketchUp toolbar, or from SketchUp's Extensions menu.

The Octane plugin window is built from a set of panels similar to the standalone app:

* The Scene Outliner (on the left in the default layout) shows an expandable list of all nodes in the Octane version of the scene. This panel also has tabs giving access to the LiveDB and the local database.

* The Render Viewport (top) shows the image rendered by Octane. This was originally a separate window in earlier versions of the plugin.

* The Node Graph Editor (bottom) depicts a "sandbox" that shows only the material nodes (and linker nodes connecting them to the geometry); the rest of the node graph (geometry, rendering options, etc) is hidden. You can manipulate the material nodes in the same way you would in the Octane standalone app.

* The Node Inspector (right) shows the full details of any selected node, and allows them to be edited by hand.

You can learn more about the new user interface from the manuals and tutorial videos for the Octane SketchUp plugin and the Octane Render standalone application:

* SketchUp plugin manual
* Octane Render standalone manual
* Octane Render 3.06.1 release notes

SketchUp Plugin v3.06 - Introduction Video



Other Recent Changes

* There are no longer separate menu options for converting a SketchUp material to an Octane one, or for creating a new Octane material from scratch. These are no longer necessary since the new GUI window provides equivalent functionality. Converting a material from SketchUp to Octane is not a separate operation now; it happens automatically as soon as the material is used.

* All information about Octane materials is now saved with the SketchUp scene in the .SKP file. Unlike earlier versions, all texture graphics are included in this; textures are no longer saved in a separate directory. The saved scene also records any changes you make to the material nodes through the node graph editor. This has two important consequences:

* You can now transfer a scene file to another computer, or send it to another user, without losing the texture information.

* Scene files containing Octane plugin data are necessarily larger (sometimes much larger) than they were as plain SketchUp scenes, since they now contain all of the image files needed to reconstruct the Octane textures.

Requirements

Software:

* The plugin requires SketchUp 2015, 2016, or 2017 for Windows x64
* SketchUp 2017 is recommended
* Microsoft Windows 7, 8, 8.1, or 10 for x64
* The plugin is not compatible with any x86 (32-bit) version of SketchUp or Windows

Hardware:

* 64-bit Intel or AMD CPU
* One or more recent model Nvidia GPU cards
* Nvidia drivers 353.x or later; CUDA 8.0 support is required
* The plugin is not compatible with AMD or Intel GPUs

Installation

The installer has been completely rewritten. There are now separate installers for the SketchUp 2016 and 2017 versions of the plugin. You can install both versions on the same computer; they are now treated as separate applications. (The 2016 version of the plugin is also compatible with SketchUp 2015, although you will need to manually edit the install location.)

We recommend uninstalling all previous versions of the SketchUp plugin before installing the latest version.

Please note that stable and test releases will not be identified by any special version numbers. Because of potential compatibility issues if different builds of the Octane engine are run on the same system, we believe it is more important to keep plugin version numbers synchronised with the corresponding build of the standalone Octane application and the Octane SDK. If you are having problems, the first thing you should check is that you do not have different versions of other Octane products installed.

Support Information

If you have a support issue, please provide the following information:
- Operating system (e.g. Windows 8.1 x64)
- CPU type (e.g. Intel Core i7)
- Amount of RAM
- Graphics cards - model (e.g. Nvidia GTX 690 with 4GB)
- Nvidia driver version (e.g. 365.10)
- SketchUp version (e.g. SketchUp Pro 2016 version 16.1.1449 64-bit)
- Skatter version (if you have it installed; e.g. Skatter 1.2.0)
- OctaneRender for SketchUp version (e.g. 3.06.2.5)

The most important part of resolving a problem is our being able to reproduce the problem, so please provide as much detail as possible!

Download Links

* Plugin for SketchUp 2017
* Plugin for SketchUp 2016
* Demo plugin for SketchUp 2017
* Demo plugin for SketchUp 2016

Earlier Changes

These changes were made in earlier 3.x releases of the plugin, and are still relevant in the latest release:

* Like the Octane 3 standalone version, the SketchUp plugin uses the new single sign-on system. You still need to have purchased a license for the SketchUp plugin, but it will now be checked automatically when you log in using your Otoy account credentials; you no longer need to keep track of user IDs and passwords for individual licenses. The new authorization management window is a modal dialog where the user can sign out and sign in. It also informs the you under which name you are signed in and if that sign-in was in offline or online mode. When a user signs out, all of your licenses which were activated on this computer will be deactivated. This requires that all these licenses are currently not in use by other Octane processes; if that is not the case the sign out will fail.

* Because most rendered images are now stored in your computer's main RAM instead of your video card's RAM, all Octane 3 applications, including the SketchUp plugin, will frequently use a good deal more memory than their Octane 2 equivalents, especially for high resolution renders. You should keep this in mind when upgrading.

* 3.03+ releases include experimental Pascal GPU support. Please note that we are still working on performance issues there.

* Support has been added for the Skatter plugin's Render Only mode.

Known Issues

We hope to fix these in a coming update:

* Custom resolution in the material preview does not work.

* Material picking is not fully working yet.

* Once a texture has been copied from SketchUp to the Octane version of the scene, any changes made to either version of the material are not reflected in the other version. (This is a simplification applied to ensure the two versions of the material are handled correctly in this version of the plugin; we intend to add automatic transfer of changes from one to the other in future, where the different properties and behaviour of Octane and SketchUp materials allows it.)

* Importing materials directly from the LiveDB can crash the plugin. Materials can be brought in by copy and paste instead.

* Re-applying the same texture after an undo may fail to work. This is a bug in SketchUp, not related to the Octane plugin.

Release History

3.06.2.5 - Track separate render targets for each SketchUp camera; add menu command to rebuild the Octane scene.

3.06.1.4 - Fix slow geometry transfer when render window is not open; add scene outliner to default view; save workspace layout with scene file.

3.06.1.2 - Initial public test release with the new user interface.

[smicha]

Quick question before installing - is the background gpu activity issue fixed?

[-rb-]

<3 <3 <3

THANKS!

- Rich

[-rb-]

Again thankyou very much for your effort devs.

One thing I'm going to mention is the need to have Octane Geo be built only when the plugin is activated/launched within SU, not on initial load of the file itself The initial load times are a bit of a nightmare on large models

- Rich