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Making the exporter work in Blender 2.55 (Windows)

PostPosted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 4:43 am
by kiwimage
I've spent quite some time trying to set up an animation render with the exporter. Finally, it works for me, on blender v.2.55, at least for a simple scene.

I make this topic to attempt to summarize the different steps, centralize some informations and avoid you guys to make the mistakes i've done.
Hopefuly it'll save you a bit of time searching for infos here and there on the forum.

-1- First of all, download the official 2.55 release of Blender on http://www.blender.org, (the other builds found at graphicall.org didn't work for me).
-2- Get the 2.54 exporter by enricocerica on this thread : http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=4035&start=0
-3- Open the .py file and in two different places of the file (currently on lines 997 and 1817), you'll find a variable name called "oct_export_samples_per_image_presets" change it to something shorter, like "oct_export_s_per_i_presets". ( I found this info here: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=4280&start=0 )
-4- Now save and copy the script file to your \2.55\scripts\io folder, in the blender'directory.
-5- Run Blender, open any.blend file and choose render/octane, the blender's render panel should now display options for Octane.
-6- please remember that all the files paths must be absolutes , i.e you have to enter the full name of the path.
-7- The first path is the absolute path to your octane program, for example on my computer it's C:\Program Files\OctaneRender_pre23_5\octane.exe
-8- The second is the absolute path to the directory where your .blend file is (no need to type the .blend name in it) for example : "D:\3D-blender\scenes\anim-test"
-9- :!: make sure the files paths don't contain spaces (i guess nor any exotic types such as accents) My blend project was located in a folder called "3d blender", and it provoqued an error at some point, i renamed it in "3d-blender" and it worked fine.
-10- If Export Sun is checked, you have to define a light source, otherwise uncheck it, in my opinion it's nicer to manage the lights directly in Octane.
-11- The third is a custom string that the script will use to name your obj. and .mtl exports. example ("my_obj_scene") no need to enter the ansolute path of anything here, just a name.
-12- Hit "Render", that will export the .obj, .mtl and create the .ocs file
-13 - Octane should have opened itself and start rendering, edit your scene to make it nice and beautiful : add some materials, nodes, change the lighting and the sampling (please note that the sampling value set in Octane overrides whatever you can input in blender). Save it as is.
-14 - Now, if you want to render an animation, you can set the frame range you want, and a valid directory (once again don't use any space in the folder's name) and hit "render animation"
-15 - The script will launch Octane, render the first frame and save it, then close itself and reopen, render, and so on.

hope this will help.

edit : added step 10

Re: Making the exporter work in Blender 2.55 (Windows)

PostPosted: Thu Dec 23, 2010 10:26 am
by teecee2107
Nice job ! This is clear, complete and precise, Thanks a lot.

Re: Making the exporter work in Blender 2.55 (Windows)

PostPosted: Sun Jan 02, 2011 9:52 am
by RainerS
Thanks for clearing things up, but actually I still got a problem. After making research on the forum, I solved my problems and it seems like the exporter works like a charm for animation. I've done all the steps(exept changing the lines in the script because I used 2.54) in this tutorial before and after hitting "Render animation" button, it exports, renders, closes, launces again etc. like it should, but no image files are saved to the destination folder. Everything works well with 2.49 and its exporter script.