Export Animation to Standalone Tweet

[Hesekiel2517]

Yes, of course: "2020.1.5.163"

[face_off]

It's a very basic animation, but very heavy meshes. Would it be possible to have a checkbox on the mesh to set the mesh to a rigid or deforming object? So that the plugin doesn't need to export every single point every single frame and could just write the transforms?

I assume you are exporting to an SSD? 2020.1.5.163 actually contains some speed improvements when moving between animations frames, however you are already on this release. I think that just having a "Do not update when exporting an animation" checkbox would not help, as the Octane API exporter functions dump every vertex/polygon from every frame into the ABC file. I have not tested this, but I think even exporting static meshes into an ORBX and loading the ORBX as a Proxy would still result in this happening.

So the recommended approach for this situation is to save a single frame to ORBX, with only the static meshes visible (so the ORBX file contains just the static meshes). The make the static meshes invisible and export the animation to ORBX. Merge the two ORBX exports in Standalone and render.

Sorry there is not a better solution.

Paul

[Hesekiel2517]

Thank you for being so patient with me So do i understand this correctly: This is an octane api limitation. If someone can improve this, it's the octane devs?

[face_off]

Thank you for being so patient with me So do i understand this correctly: This is an octane api limitation. If someone can improve this, it's the octane devs?

I think it's a hardware issue It's just how long it takes to write all the vertices to an SSD. In theory, the plugin could somehow automate the manual process I described above, however I think the time it would take to implement this would be hard to justify given the other Octane features that are missing from the plugin that users have asked to be added.

Thanks

Paul

[Hesekiel2517]

Yes, i understand this and i know for deforming objects it's necessary to know every position of every vertex in every frame. And dividing these from the static objects works fine. But often there are no deforming objects, but only rigid objects with transforms. For these it would be sufficient to write out the transforms and a static object, but the plugin also writes out every vertex, every frame.
In Octane Standalone you can import an object and add a placement node. Do you think there is no way to export keyframes for the placement node? It seems to be possible for the camera for example (Item plus transform = fast export).
I'm under the impression that you don't consider this important, but i think there is no point in using the Octane Render Cloud if exporting to orbx is slower than rendering itself.

[face_off]

Yes, i understand this and i know for deforming objects it's necessary to know every position of every vertex in every frame. And dividing these from the static objects works fine. But often there are no deforming objects, but only rigid objects with transforms. For these it would be sufficient to write out the transforms and a static object, but the plugin also writes out every vertex, every frame.
In Octane Standalone you can import an object and add a placement node. Do you think there is no way to export keyframes for the placement node? It seems to be possible for the camera for example (Item plus transform = fast export).
I'm under the impression that you don't consider this important, but i think there is no point in using the Octane Render Cloud if exporting to orbx is slower than rendering itself.

By default, the Octane API exporter doesn't export the transforms - just the absolute vertex positions for each frame of each mesh. I would need to modify the plugin to effectively automate the manual process I described above (ie. separate the static and moving objects, write the static objects to a single Mesh object, write the moving object vertices to an ABC file, then merge them with a Geometry Group and save the ORBX). This is possible, but a sizeable coding exercise. I have to balance what is ultimately a performance increase request against implementing new Octane features, and it's hard to justify.

Paul

[Hesekiel2517]

Hi Paul,

i made a little Testscene: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yqjld0a06bohmn8/Export_Animation_to_Orbx.zip?dl=0

1. Export as FBX and imported in Standalone:
Exporttime 2 Seconds - Filesize 20Mb

2 Export as Alembic and imported in Standalone:
Exporttime 3 Seconds - Filesize 40Mb

3. Export via "octane.saveAnimation":
Exporttime 1 Minute and 50 Seconds - Filesize 80Mb

So it is definitely possible to have a fast export to orbx but for now the materials have to be connected by hand. Since also the alembic export from Modo is way faster than the export command, would it be possible to simply switch the way the alembic is exported?

This way you can seperate the deformed objects from the transformed/static ones and merge them by hand in Standalone. This would be a ok solution to me

[Hesekiel2517]

It's even possible to exchange the alembic file in the Modo Export. But it's necessary to reconnect all the Materials and Object Layers. I know you are busy with all the new Features of the new Octane Release, but please have a look when you have some time

[face_off]

I had a look at your files, and I think there might be some confusion on the recommended way to do this.

1) Enable only static meshes in the Modo scene, open the Octane Viewport, and export the FRAME to ORBX using the plugin
2) Disable the static meshes and enable the dynamic meshes in the Modo scene, and use the octane.saveAnimation command to save to ORBX.
3) Open each ORBX above in a separate copy of Octane Standalone, and copy the .abc file from step 2) in Octane Standalone into the scene from step 1) in Octane Standalone. Merge the geometry together with a Geometry Group. You would now have all the static mesh geometry in one Octane node, and the dynamic meshes in another and they will render together as per your original Modo scene.

1. Export as FBX and imported in Standalone:
Exporttime 2 Seconds - Filesize 20Mb

2 Export as Alembic and imported in Standalone:
Exporttime 3 Seconds - Filesize 40Mb

3. Export via "octane.saveAnimation":
Exporttime 1 Minute and 50 Seconds - Filesize 80Mb

The export of the scene from Modo to ORBX is handled by the Octane API, so it's not something I can help you with - sorry.

Paul

[Hesekiel2517]

Yes, Paul I know that and thank you for your effort. As i said, this works great, but becomes useless if you have a large number of highpoly meshes which are only transformed and not deformed. My files are meant to show, that it is possible to have this kind of animation exported in a fast way.

So if you have only transformed meshes you can export them as alembic (only takes a few seconds instead of minutes or hours) and import without a problem in octane standalone. The only downside is that you have to make the material connections by hand. So i thought there might be a way for you to change (or let the user change) the way the alembic file is created. You repeatedly said this is not possible for you and i'm willing to believe you but it's hard to do so because it seems to be so easy to get this animation out of modo.