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Can anyone give me some guidance on the best way - if possible - to export a scene with materials form the DAZ Octane plugin to -> Stand alone Octane?

Updated:
- added more precise information for animation export
- updated links to lead to the corresponding manual pages

bpzen wrote:Can anyone give me some guidance on the best way - if possible - to export a scene with materials form the DAZ Octane plugin to -> Stand alone Octane?

OcDS System Tab:

OctaneRender export - Complete Scene

- ORBX will create one compressed file including all geometry and materials.
- OCS will create a separate folder with the geometry in .obj form

IMPORTANT: You need to have started rendering with OctaneRender prior to using these export functions, otherwise the Mesh nodes will be blank when you open the exported scene in Octane Standalone.

compare:

https://docs.otoy.com/#60Program%20Overview

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For still images:

- use .OCS when you want to work locally with texture files just referenced in their original position.
- use .OCS when you also want .obj to be created in a separate folder
- use .ORBX when you prefer to just have one file for the whole scene
- use .ORBX to share scenes with others

For animations:

Currently .ORBX has some limitations which animated information is included.

- If you only animated OctaneRender related parameters you can use .ORBX

- if you animated poses, morphs, translation, rotation or any other animateable DAZ Studio values use .OCS

- to export animated cameras use the separate options to export Camera Data as .ocs that includes an .abc

You can export animated parts of the DAZ Studio scene separately and combine all the different files with animated data in OctaneRender standalone by dragging pin connections between the nodes in the scene based Node Graph Editor.

- - -

Saving and loading .OCS in OR standalone is explained here:

https://docs.otoy.com/#60Saving%20%2F%2 ... g%20Scenes

Using .ORBX in OR standalone is explained here:

https://docs.otoy.com/#60The%20Packager ... RBX%20File

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For the sake of it I add information how to import the ORBX and OCS in OR standalone.

In OctaneRender standalone the imported DAZ Studio scene files consist of several red "nested group nodes".
This can be a bit confusing at first.

Maybe it can help to read through the official manual section of the Graph Editor first:

https://docs.otoy.com/#60The%20Graph%20Editor

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001 exporting ORBX and OCS - was explained in the previous post.


002 Right click - Import



003 Browse to the saved ORBX or OCS



004 imported scene as group node



005A double click the group node to open it

alternatively:

005B right click and select ungroup



006 click on the Default Rendersetting node to start rendering



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Update / Edit:
Added information about

Default Rendersetting / Render target nodes
group items / ungroup

in another post:

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=52847&p=278396#p278396

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The OctaneRender standalone manual has a lot of very detailed guides about working with the OR standalone UI:

https://docs.otoy.com/#60Program%20Overview

- - -

- - -

Changes introduced in 3.04.11

From release 3.0.4.11, when you save to an Alembic file, the plugin will also save to an OCS file which contains that ABC file, with all the material connections in place. The OCS file saved to be the ABC filename with a .OCS file extension.

compare:
https://docs.otoy.com/#60System%20Tab

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State OR 3.0.20.22

previous post updated to include information to use

- for still images use your preferred scene export option either .ORBX or .OCS
- for animations scene .OCS export
- for animated cameras the separate camera export .OCS with .abc

- - -

- What is the benefit of export to Standalone? What's better?

1) It can render vertex motion blur. 2) You can add Volume nodes to render VDB files.

- Can I use Octane Render Export (DAZ Studio) and import in OctaneRender Import (Houidini)?

I'm not sure. I know you can export from DAZStudio and import into OctaneRender for Nuke. But unsure of the Houdini import functionality.

Paul

Veneris wrote:- What is the benefit of export to Standalone? What's better?

The features that are available in OctaneRender standalone but (not yet) supported in OcDS may change over time.

A huge benefit of OctaneRender standalone is it's scene based node graph editor.

In OcDS you can link the same material to multiple surface zones.
What you cannot do is link just a group of nodes to multiple surface zones while other nodes on the same surface zone remain different.

TLDR version:
The scene based node graph editor is one of the strongest features of OctaneRender because it allows a more time efficient workflow by linking nodes to multiple surface zones or even objects. You just have to update the shared node once to see the result on all linked surfaces or objects immediately.


Example - Creating custom skin materials:

A skin material consists of nodes that are different for each surface like the diffuse and displacement maps etc. But there are also values like specular, roughness, absorption, scattering settings.

If those settings are not identical on all surface zones you will see visible edges where surface zones touch and more importantly there is not a volume created for the skin.

This makes experimenting with skin surfaces challening in OcDS because you have to update each surface zone one after the other with the same settings to see the final result.

In OctaneRender standalone you can simply link 1 node with all the absorption and scattering information to multiple surface zones and you see the result on the whole figure immediately by changing just one setting in one node.

And this goes even a step further. If you have multiple figures in the scene you could link the shared nodes to multiple figures.

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Still keep in mind that OcDS offers other unique features like templating, OctaneRender image browser, VRAM management, the ability to animate OctaneRender specific parameters.

I try to perform as much workflow steps in OcDS as possible and then export to OctaneRender standalone for the finishing touches.

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In addtion there are 3rd party tools that actively support OctaneRender standalone:

http://www.phantomtechnology.nl/

Phantom Scatter is a procedural instancing technology for OctaneRender that lets you create amazing scenes with instances in a very conveniant way.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=33791

Phantom Photo Match is an amazing tool to help you figure out the proper camera settings to match computer graphic elements with photographs.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=48403