Blender Exporter 2.02 Tweet

[kavorka]

is there any way to get the exporting back to how 1.17 is (only exporting the visible layers)?

1.17 works fine at first for Octane 1.5, but not when I want to change the camera and re render the image.

I may need to get my office using the official plugin if we want to use 1.5.

[ROUBAL]

+1, having the instances extra script work with 2.02 would be great or just a instance exporter py.

thanks in advance

The octinstances script works fine in Blender 2.69 official (and probably in 2.70 but I have not yet tested)... but it doesn't work in the Blender for Octane version for an unknown reason : can't be installed properly.

I wrote to matej, who made the instances script, but got no response. He hasn't been here since december 2013 apparently...
I hope he is fine, because I have been also far from Blender and Octane for more than a year due to family troubles and not seeing someone for a long time is always worrying.

[steveps3]

I've probably mentioned this before but I am not a python programmer. I am a programmer though so I thought that I'd try to help.

Find attached octane instances v019a. It will install as v019, I only made minimal changes.

I've not tested that much but it does appear to work. Let me know if you have any problems and I will try to fix them.

[ROUBAL]

Thank you very much Steveps3 ! It works with Blender 2.69 for Octane. Not yet tried with 2.70 For octane, as I have not yet installed it . I would have to deinstall the current version but I don't want to do it right now in the middle of a project.

However : your modified v0.1.9a version doesn't display the export obj/mtl button, but exports directly the obj and mtl. It is fine for simple objects, but maybe it would slow down the export for complex objects. Also, there is the risk of overwriting obj file previously exported with the unofficial obj exporter. So, a button offering the choice of exporting or not the obj/mtl like previously would be safer imho...

Even no button and so no export at all of obj and mtl would be fine, as this can be done in a safer way with the obj exporter itself.

I spent hours searching how to disable the export of obj and mtl, but as I said in some posts , I have no skill in coding, and the only thing I have been able to do so far is to change the commentaries in the GUI to show 1.0.9a as version number to avoid confusion !

EDIT : I tried with logic and trials and errors, and finally I disabled some lines and the Obj and Mtl are no more exported. However, I don't know if they are internally computed and if some ressource is wasted in the process. I have to test with a big Mesh as instance.

Below the modified script and a screen shot of the disabled lines in the script. Please could you tell me if I did it correctly ?

[steveps3]

Looks like we are all becoming python coders... or at least hackers.

I will have to find out how the switch worked and reinstate it.

[ROUBAL]

@Steveps3 : today, I have installed Blender 2.70 for Octane, and tested the 1.0.9b script : it works in 2.70. I also generated a csv file with an object with huge geometry, and the computing took few seconds, so I think that the obj export is actually disabled.

For the switch, I don't know if some people need/use it. For my own, I prefer to export obj/mtl only with the 2.02 exporter. The current solution is OK for me. So, except if someone really need it, don't bother yourself with the switch.

I just hope that my hack is correct and will not have hidden effets...


@Kavorka : the Export Selection Only feature had been disabled (still present in the GUI, but internally disabled) after 1.17 because it was not compatible with animation (selection lost and not refreshed after first frame), if I remember well. So I fear that it will not be possible to bring it back.

But the method I described to you in a post above is actually simple even if a bit less intuitive as Selection Only :

All objects set to visible even if on hidden layers are exported.

1 : Enable visibility of all layers.
2 : Select the objects you want to export.
3 : Ctrl I to inverse selection.
4 : H for hiding all unwanted objects.

Less tedious than it could seem at first glance. After few trials, you will be used to do it without even thinking.

[steveps3]

I'm not sure what has happened but I appear to have gotten the export option working again. I've been fiddling with the code for over an hour trying all sorts of things. Eventually I went back to 2.02 exporter and the 1.90 instances, closed Blender, reopened and... it works.

instances.PNG (21.6 KiB) Viewed 7155 times

[ROUBAL]

Did you do it in the official version or Blender for Octane ? I ask, because it always worked and still works in Blender official, but the button is not here in the Blender for Octane version !

[steveps3]

Official version.

Why would you want to use the blender4octane version and then export out to Octane? B4O is always going to be behind official Blender so I can't see much point.

I have just tried it in B4O and it works in there as well as long as you turn off the B4O exporter. I think the problem is a conflict between the two blender exporters.

So the steps are
1. turn on blender exporter 2.02
2. turn on instancing
3. turn off oToy Blender script
4. restart blender
bingo

[ROUBAL]

Didn't you forget to enable again the instancing script in your list ? Yes, it works and there is the button (use the 1.0.9a otherwise it will not export the obj and mtl !) But I want to have all my usual Tools enabled. So I will stay with my solution without the button , as I don't need it. For my workflow, it is more efficient to have all my usual Tools at my hand than having the very last Blender version. Anyway my projects are always long and I rarely update blender in the middle of a project and so working on a not very uptodate version is inevitable at a moment or an other.

As a start of clue, Jimstar said something about bad naming rules in the unofficial scripts, but I am not able to interpret and fix it :

Sorry, I have no time to debug all non-official scripts which have some issues, but at first glance looking at your screenshots I see that it's not the problem of this plugin. It is the script's developers task - to not interfere with official OctaneRender plugin namespace inside Blender. E.g. - only Otoy has priority to use "octane" name for render-settings object (or any other objects), and if some script developers decide to use the same instead of e.g. "octane_instances" of "octane_export" - you will get into troubles. But not the official plugin is cause of these issues. And it's not the official plugin's task - to change its namespace to let some script to work...
Those things are easy to fix, you just need to ask the script developers...

Even if the plugin for 2.70 is not yet fully functionnal (Octane server crashes at any time), the 2.70 for Octane has been released very soon after the official one. Rendering in the plugin is fine, but more memory consuming for big scenes as data are loaded both for Blender and for Octane. Blender for Octane exports only in Alembic format. Obj are more flexible and can store materials, so I still need to use the v2.02 to export in obj for big scenes in Standalone.

I'd really like to do everything in Blender for Octane, and launch as well other engines from there if I need or want to (I have an indigo and a Thea licenses that I have very few used so far). Switching from one version to the other back and forth may lead one day to broken files... This said, the roaming path of Octane for Blender seems to be the origin of some troubles with Addons installation : some addons, like the layer manager is sometimes discarded with no apparent reason.