Some Clarification on Standalone and ORDS Plugin

[TK237]

I just bought the standalone and Daz Studio beta versions of the program. The purchase was prompted by the absolutely fabulous renders and render times seen in various advertisements and videos. However, the differences between the standalone version and the plugin are a bit confusing as is the number of variant tutorials on how to use the software. The following questions are an effort to get on the right track. Any help toward that end will be greatly appreciated:

1. Material Creation – If I am not mistaken, Daz Studio materials will not work with the standalone or plugin versions, correct? You can see a diffuse texture and but otherwise the material will not react correctly to the lighting and rendering options of Octane. Does this mean that if I need to create a custom material I must to do it inside the standalone package and import that material into Daz Studio? I don’t see any options to add new or different nodes inside the nge window of the Daz plugin.

2. My primary use for the Octane software was going to be characters rendered out of Daz with shadowcatcher for compositing purposes. I saw a thread about shadowcatching in the forums but there seemed to be some question over the total functionality. Is this a viable tactic with the current plugin or would I be better served exporting the posed character into standalone for rendering?

3. Outdoor scenes are going to be created with Vue 11, to include HDR images from it to streamline lighting with the shadowcatcher character renders. For indoor scenes I’m not sure which the best route is. I tried adding a point light to the scene in Daz but it had no effect on the Octane render preview. It feels like the Daz plugin is useful only when you need relatively simple lighting setups, not so much if you want secondary lights or emissions from something like a glowing weapon or explosion.
Thanks.

[linvanchene]

1. Material Creation – If I am not mistaken, Daz Studio materials will not work with the standalone or plugin versions, correct?

There is a basic autoconversion that will get you started.

Compare:

FAQ - Loading and converting DAZ Studio materials

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=41543

You can see a diffuse texture and but otherwise the material will not react correctly to the lighting and rendering options of Octane. Does this mean that if I need to create a custom material I must to do it inside the standalone package and import that material into Daz Studio? I don’t see any options to add new or different nodes inside the nge window of the Daz plugin.

- You can create materials in the OcDS Node Graph Editor - NGE.

Just hoover with your mouse on the right side of the pane Octane Node Graph List to expand it.

There is also a huge selection of preset shaders in the OctaneRender live db.

Materials work exactly the same in the OctaneRender standalone and the plugin.

The standalone manual will help you get started to get an overview about materials:

http://render.otoy.com/manuals/Standalo ... age_id=292

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2. My primary use for the Octane software was going to be characters rendered out of Daz with shadowcatcher for compositing purposes. I saw a thread about shadowcatching in the forums but there seemed to be some question over the total functionality. Is this a viable tactic with the current plugin or would I be better served exporting the posed character into standalone for rendering?

If you only need a basic shadow catching solution that catches shadows on MATTE material surfaces OcDS has the function do it.
You get an image with an alpha layer included the shadow.

compare:

Shadow Catching with OcDS

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=44331

If you want more advanced options like rendering out beauty, shadow and reflection passes you may want to export an .ocs scene from the OcDS plugin to the standalone.

compare:

How to use the render layer passes

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=44267

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3. Outdoor scenes are going to be created with Vue 11, to include HDR images from it to streamline lighting with the shadowcatcher character renders.

You can add any HDR images in the Default HDR Texture Environment.
OcDS has even a selection of HDR images included to get you started creating dramatic looking portraits from the start.

For indoor scenes I’m not sure which the best route is. I tried adding a point light to the scene in Daz but it had no effect on the Octane render preview.

You will not use the DAZ light presets anymore. They are simply ignored and not converted.

OctaneRender offers many different ways to create realistic light solutions.

You can turn any surface in the scene in a light emitting surface with the click of a button.

Compare the standalone manual for more information about blackbody and texture emission:

http://render.otoy.com/manuals/Standalo ... age_id=390

You can also use IES light presets to further customize how the light emitting surface illuminates your scene.

Compare:

Version 2,1 and IES lights not working as before

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ES#p216267

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For outdoor scenes you can use the default daylight environment.

The position of the sun is simulated based on day and hour.
You can even select a specific position on the world map.

You can also add your own hdr images as a background image and used the combined with the sunlight.

compare:

http://render.otoy.com/manuals/Standalo ... age_id=385

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There is actually a quick way to find only information about the plugin you are using without displaying all the other information about the standalone and other plugins.


Each OctaneRender plugin forum has its own search function.

If you use the top search bar results of all OctaneRender forums will be displayed.

But if you only want to find topics about the DAZ studio plugin use the DAZ studio plugin search function.

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[TK237]

Thank you for the detailed information and it was very helpful, especially the part about the material information being the same in both versions. I'll definitely be looking over the manual now to get up to speed.

Is it possible to export a scene from Daz using Octane materials and have them transfer over into the standalone, or will I need to build everything from scratch using the diffuse texture as a base?

Thanks again.

[linvanchene]

Is it possible to export a scene from Daz using Octane materials and have them transfer over into the standalone, or will I need to build everything from scratch using the diffuse texture as a base?

You can set up a complete scene in the OctaneRender plugin for DAZ Studio with all materials and then export it as either an .ocs or .orbx file.

The .ocs file will create a separate folder with the geometry.
The .orbx file is a packaged version.

- - -
In test scene Streets of Asia 2 the folder with the .ocs and the geometry was 90.4 MB.
The .orbx was 136 MB.

I have not yet figured out if the ORBX includes some additional information that is not available in the .ocs file.

For now I assume that both the .ocs and the .orbx can be used for the standalone.

In the future the .orbx file may be the prefered container to upload scenes to the octaneRender Cloud edition.

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When you open the scene in OctaneRender standalone the scene should look exactly the same.

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Create the scene in the OcDS plugin and then as a very last step export it to the standalone to add some features that are not yet included in the plugin.

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Update / Edit:

An OcDS scene can get very large when you open it in the standalone.

I find it useful to reduce scene complexity by combining several nodes to "groups".

You find a guide to do that here:

https://docs.otoy.com/#51The%20Graph%20Editor

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[TK237]

Thanks again for your help. it has cleared up quite a few things.

[TK237]

One more thing: When I purchased the Octane Daz Studio plugin it's listed as beta version 2, yet the only download options for it are beta versions 1.2 and 1.0. Apparently I need version 2.12 in order to use the RedSpec materials also purchased. Any idea why I cannot access beta version 2?

Edit: I found the link to the latest version in the pre-release thread. Both plugin and shaders seem to be working.