Mixed Capitalization / Lowercase everywhere Tweet

[futoryan]

I know it's super trivial and purely aesthetic but would it be possible to standardize the capitalization of the settings and nodes? It would go a long way to making Octane feel more tightly integrated into the UI and match the formatting of all the other features, nodes, and settings throughout Blender.

It's inconsistent even within the Octane implementation, such as the Standard Surface Material being capitalized in the Material Tools (N-Panel of Shader Graph) and Standard surface material name in the actual node.

I'm sure there's a long list of priorities that are way more important than capital letters vs lowercase, but for those of us that are super OCD about having everything organized, consistent and properly named, this is one of the things that I would personally love to see implemented.

[linograndiotoy]

In general, all nodes name are following the Standalone convention (first word only capitalized). Personally I don't like this choice (I would prefer everything to be capitalized).
The snapshot you're showing is not part of the "standard" OctaneRender for Blender, by the way (it's probably generated by some addon you may be using).

[futoryan]

Got it - thanks for the reply. I must have installed the Octane Tools addon when first setting up Octane and not realized it wasn't built into Octane.

[Andreas_Resch]

I suggested a while ago to bring the naming conventions of Octane in line with the Blender guidelines, but it was dismissed back then because of lack of time to do it. In my addon here, I used the capitalized approach as it fits better with Blender and the other addons. Still something that should not be completely dismissed, but resources always seem to be tight with the Blender branch at OTOY so it might take a while.

[futoryan]

I suggested a while ago to bring the naming conventions of Octane in line with the Blender guidelines, but it was dismissed back then because of lack of time to do it. In my addon here, I used the capitalized approach as it fits better with Blender and the other addons. Still something that should not be completely dismissed, but resources always seem to be tight with the Blender branch at OTOY so it might take a while.

What a great addon. It's been incredibly useful for me.

I agree that the capitalization shouldn't be ignored, especially with Otoy contributing to the Blender Foundation and working to bring more Blender users over to the Octane camp, making it feel "Native" is more than just aesthetics. It's about creating confidence in users to justify the time investment. When I first installed Octane for Blender I was personally put off by the mismatch and it made me think that it was in a rough Beta and didn't feel like a finished product.

The first time I looked at the render kernal settings or dropped down a Universal shader node that's longer than a pharmacy receipt I felt like, man, this is gonna be a learning curve, it better be worth it and I hope the integration isn't as clunky and rushed as this appears to be (I know it isn't, but it does look that way at surface level.)

I know it sounds like I'm tearing into this when few people seem to care about it or mind at all, but from a UX perspective, it's not doing any favors for a new Octane user that's already put off by how daunting switching over from something that's more simplified and tightly integrated like Cycles can be.

[skientia]

making it feel "Native" is more than just aesthetics. It's about creating confidence in users to justify the time investment.

Absolutely.

When I first installed Octane for Blender I was personally put off by the mismatch and it made me think that it was in a rough Beta and didn't feel like a finished product.

Absolutely fair.

The first time I looked at the render kernal settings or dropped down a Universal shader node that's longer than a pharmacy receipt I felt like, man, this is gonna be a learning curve, it better be worth it and I hope the integration isn't as clunky and rushed as this appears to be (I know it isn't, but it does look that way at surface level.)

There is a conflation here: between what is fundamentally the integral composition of the shader (all its components, lobes, options) and UI/UX. The Universal material (and camera) are "feature-rich" and consequently resulting in what appears to be an overabundance of options. There should be arrows to fold / unfold sections. The removal of options would not be conceivable as it would loose parity with Octane core / Standalone and all other plug-ins.

tightly integrated like Cycles can be.

No renderer is as tightly integrated as the native one from the 3D DCC, by nature of how 3rd party integration works. Not all program's API are equal. These are deeper technical aspects that concern developers but are often not acknowledged by users. This does not contradict the fact that there is always room for improvements.

[futoryan]

There is a conflation here: between what is fundamentally the integral composition of the shader (all its components, lobes, options) and UI/UX. The Universal material (and camera) are "feature-rich" and consequently resulting in what appears to be an overabundance of options. There should be arrows to fold / unfold sections. The removal of options would not be conceivable as it would loose parity with Octane core / Standalone and all other plug-ins.

I absolutely agree. I was just being overly dramatic in how I described the initial sight of all the options unfolded in the Universal Shader, but I would never suggest removing any of them for the sake of simplicity, that would be ludicrous!

I think Octane is very well integrated into Blender and I love it and think the results you can create with it are stunning. My crusade is purely a UI/UX one.

I'm also not just picking on the Blender integration, Houdini's render ROP suffers from a similar malady of mixed capitalization on some options and Capital/lowercase on others in the same panel, such as the Resolution Scale option and the Update Objects and Update Materials. I'm guessing that some of these options are native to Houdini even if they appear alongside Octane's render settings.

All in all, these things don't matter from a performance or usability standpoint and lowercase letters are never going to get in the way of an artist creating something beautiful. It's just a tiny quality of life thing that only a few people will notice and being one of those people that smile at a pile of neatly folded laundry, I thought I'd make the suggestion on the off chance that someone out there might agree with me.