Exporting animated camera data from OcDS to standalone?

[linvanchene]

Is this a bug or not?

How to export scenes with animated camera data from OcDS to OctaneRender standalone?

How exactly am I supposed to export a scene with an animated camera from OcDS to OctaneRender standalone?

- If I use ORBX it seems only the one static camera information is available and all the keyframed camera movement is missing?


- If I select "Alembic Export" in the OcDS plugin with "default camera" selected no .abc file seems to be created in the selected folder.

- If I select "Camera Export" in the OcDS plugin only a static camera seems to be exported without any keyframes as well.

And once again it does not help at all that OctaneRender standalone does not have a useable timeline to actually check which keyframes were transfered.
- - -

Can some of those users having expericence with animation in OcDS please help out and fill in the missing information?

Or am I trying to do something that the current version of the software is simply not ready to do?
In that case some simple confirmation from a developer like "This is not working yet." would help me very much.

[photonreality]

We have similar OcDs "Alembic Export" problems.
I have tried all combinations of "Default Camera", "Camera 1", "All Frames", "Frame Range" but still no alembic files are created.

Have you been able to resolve it or is this something that simply doesn't work in the OcDs 2.2 beta plugin?

[linvanchene]

We have similar OcDs "Alembic Export" problems.
I have tried all combinations of "Default Camera", "Camera 1", "All Frames", "Frame Range" but still no alembic files are created.

Have you been able to resolve it or is this something that simply doesn't work in the OcDs 2.2 beta plugin?

I never found a workaround for the issues described already in July 2015.

I deactivated all my OctaneRender licenses months ago because despite all my efforts to find workarounds neither the OctaneRender for DAZ Studio plugin nor OctaneRender standalone were ready for production work in a reasonable time to quality relationship.

- I do not have any specific information if a working solution to export animated camera data from OcDS to standalone will be provided with the next update.

- I do not have any updated information if the OctaneRender standalone developers will be allowed to invest time to add a basic timeline and keyframe system to the standalone

- - -

Side Note:

At the moment it seems the options are

- to either wait for the next update and then try out what works with alpha and beta versions

- to wait some more for OctaneRender 3 reviews of the release version to get some information if these issues have been addressed

- to wait 16 months longer to see if those issues were finally addressed with some updates later in the release cycle.

[Veneris]

Try this viewtopic.php?f=73&t=41365

It works for me.

[linvanchene]

Try this viewtopic.php?f=73&t=41365

It works for me.

Thanks for the link to the script.
I will follow up on that after the next OcDS version or OR 3 standalone is released.

In order to manage expectations can you share what exactly is working for you already at the moment?

- 1) Creating animations from scratch in OR standalone with the help of the script you linked?

OR

- 2) Exporting an animated camera from OcDS to OR standalone?

Is the script able to read exported OcDS camera keyframes?

OR

- 3) Exporting an animated camera from OcDS to OR standalone and then being able to actually edit the keyframes of the exported cameras again in OR standalone?

Is the script able to read and even edit exported OcDS camera keyframes?
- - -

1) might be a solution for some projects.

but 2) and 3) is what I am actually trying to hope to do one day:

Exporting ORBX from any OR plugin and then combine all the different ORBX scenes in OR standalone while still having the option to change the exported camera value keyframes directly inside OR standalone.

Sidenote:
The underlying assumption is that it probably will always be a huge challenge to export ORBX scenes created in plugin A and import them in plugin B.

I will try to export an ORBX scene from OcDS and then try to import in the OR for AfterEffects plugin as soon as that is out of BETA.
Maybe that will actually work.

Nevertheless I hoped to export ORBX scenes created in plugin A, B and C and combine them all in OR standalone. But what is needed for such a workflow is the ability to edit the exported animated camera data keyframes in OR standalone.

As long as animated camera data is not exported and imported properly I fail to see how we are supposed to prepare scenes in different plugins in an efficient way to match up in the end.

In any case I guess at this point we just have to wait for the next updates to both OcDS and OctaneRender 3 standalone to see what will work then.

Scripts that work now may not be compatible with OR3. And things that are not working now may actually be possible after the updates.

[face_off]

Exporting from a plugin to Standalone options are....(and I don't know yet which of these the DazStudio plugin implements)

1) You can export a single frame from a plugin to OCS or ORBX. That single frame may have an animated camera (the Modo plugin for example) IF the plugin loads the camera track for a single frame - and in this case, Octane Standalone will show a timeline slider. That single frame can also have animated transforms. If there is no timeline slider in Octane Standalone, there is no animated data in the OCS/ORBX.

2) You can export an animation from the plugin to OCS or ORBX - NOT using Alembic. In this case it is simply 1) but with the camera and transforms animation data loaded by the plugin. Again, the Modo plugin has this option (but maybe no others) - and it provides object and camera motion blur in Octane Standalone, but not vertex motion blur.

3) You can export an animation from the plugin to OCS or ORBX using Alembic. In this case there is generally no animation loaded into the object transforms (since they will have world space vertex motion blur). The vertex positions will be exported to ABC. The camera animation can either be via the animation used in 2) above, or can be via ABC.

For your specific problem you need to determine if the camera track has any animation, or if it was stored in an ABC node. In Octane Standalone you can determine this by a) if there is a camera track in the ABC node, there will be a camera output pin in the ABC node. And b) if you copy and paste the thinlens camera into a blank scene in Octane Standalone, if it has an animation track the timeline will display.

Paul

[face_off]

Had a quick look at exporting from the DazStudio plugin. "OctaneRender Export"->Cameras only exports the current frame. So you need Alembic Export but that is not actually saving to a file. I will investigate.

Paul

[face_off]

The alembic exporter is working in the next release.

Paul

[photonreality]

Thank you, Paul!

Finally after waiting one year I can do something useful with the Octane Daz plugin 2.24.2.4.
I have managed to export one animation (1080 frames) into 11Gbyte Alembic file and it looks perfect in Octane Standalone.

Sadly, that is where my luck ended.

I have tried another animation, 2340 frames, holding my breath and never touching any keys:
1st attempt I got 1090 frames exported,
2nd attempt 1600 frames,
3rd attempt 2010 frames.
It just stops randomly in the middle of the export process without any error messages .

Ok, I tried a third shorter animation with 1080 frames in total:
1st attempt 441, 2nd attempt 442, 3rd attempt 450, 4th attempt 450.
I'm giving up... with only 10% success rate it is very time consuming...

Also, exporting active range (for example 1080-2340) only produces very few frames, 2-5 maximum.

It would be excellent if you could fix the Alembic export so that it doesn't stop randomly.

[face_off]

I'm not able to get the ABC exporter working correctly (having more problems than you). I will fix a number of issues with this in the next release.

Paul