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in short terms: all is possible, plus even more, some things are by nature a bit different (like with any other hosted plugin too).
you may want to take a quick look here: http://vimeo.com/60253899 - not a tutorial of course, but there is some basic editing which should reveal a few key points.

in addition:

• what you really wanted to know is how to get new nodes into a material... just hover over the vertical bar on the left side of the graph view... you may find this working faster in the end than right clicking and navigating a popup-tree with sub menus
• also useful to know is, that you can "extract" any existing pin node from its parent by hovering over the pin name, press & hold ALT and drag the pin node out into the graph. now you can connect it to other nodes, copy it, ...
• btw "import maps" will automatically create all texture maps from the currently linked daz surface material; this is useful if you rather like to work without auto material creation, to quickly get all maps into an octane material (without creating all the image nodes by hand of course). or you can just create a new blank material, link it to a surface (in the main material tab) and again import all the maps.
• the last important point: keep an eye on all the dropdown boxes right beneath a specific node parameter in the right pane (the inspector) - it will allow to change node types to another without dragging them from the nodes' tree and connecting them by hand. this change switch will also keep the settings as far as possible (say you change an image node into a floatimage node, you will still have the selected texture map...) this works also if nodes are connected externally of course, or for changing whole material nodes.

there is of course plenty more to say (or show), but i hope this helps to get used to it to some extent

linvanchene wrote:

t_3 wrote: just hover over the vertical bar on the left side of the graph view

!!! that is an amazing concept and indeed a lot more comfortable than right clicking.

I did not know that it is possible to make menus appear when the mouse is hovering over areas of the interface in DS (other than tooltips).

Turns out I was moving around my mouse to quickly over the "Octane Nodes List" therefore I did not notice that all the details appear when the mouse rests over it.

I should have thought to have a look at that video again. Now that I am familiar with the basics it helped me discover more details of your workflow that I did not think of.

- - -
Thank you so much for the addtional hints. They will help me a lot to get started with creating materials.

you are welcome
since the so-called manual currently stops at a point where it would really get interesting, i will of course answer every question that may arise; "bonus" for early adopters
will use it also to train for the man pages, and see where in-depth explanation is needed...

ps: in early versions the tree was always visible, but even working with 2 screens, free space for the nodes is limited, so i decided to change it this way.

and one thing more, you might or not might find out per accident: you can zoom (mouse wheel) and drag the node graph (click hold and drag somewhere in an empty space)...

t_3 wrote:ps: in early versions the tree was always visible, but even working with 2 screens, free space for the nodes is limited, so i decided to change it this way.

and one thing more, you might or not might find out per accident: you can zoom (mouse wheel) and drag the node graph (click hold and drag somewhere in an empty space)...

Yeah, found the mouse-wheel zoom by accident