Teamwork in ArchiCAD with Octane Tweet

[s3d-weyrauch]

How does it work really in Teamwork?
It works, I use it, but if somebody else opens an Octane-Plugin at once, the complications come.

You don´t have to reserve anything, but you are always allowed to set the Octane-materials, you can set the proxies to the ArchiCAD-objects. Both of you have the right to change something, the only question is, who wins.

My job is to tell the colleagues the limitations in teamwork. Therefore I would like to know, what happens when I send and recieve. When are the Octane-settings safe stored? When can somebody else open on another computer the Octane-Plugin, and work further?

Could you script the Plugin for teamwork as well in the future?
For example:
- No possibility to set a material, if the materials are not reserved.
- No possibility to set Rendertargets, if the viewports are not reserved.
- No possibility to set proxies, of the AC-object is not reserved.

Many Thanks, and best wishes

[face_off]

Sorry for the late reply to your question.

It may be easier to discuss these issue via Skype - is that possible for you?

Octane Materials are /not/ ArchiCAD Elements, however there is an Octane Material for each ArchiCAD Surface (material), which are (I believe?) ArchiCAD element which can be reserved. However the plugin does not current check the "reserve" status of a Surface before allowing a user to edit the Octane material for it - but this should be able to be done.

You don´t have to reserve anything, but you are always allowed to set the Octane-materials, you can set the proxies to the ArchiCAD-objects. Both of you have the right to change something, the only question is, who wins.

I believe that the person who saves last will be the "winner". The Octane settings (including all the Octane materials) are saved to the pln/pla via the ArchiCAD API, using the save functions Graphisoft provide. There is an ArchiCAD "event" which fires for plugins when to instances of AC try to save the same info (for example, user A and B both load the file, user A edits the bricks material and saves the file and user B edits the bricks and saves the file 1 min later). When each user saves the file, ALL Octane materials are saved (not just changed materials), so the OctaneRender for ArchiCAD plugin does not currently do anything with this "event", since it would not know which Octane material to save.

If you bring an existing AC scene into the Teamwork project - AC will in theory "merge" the Octane saved info from the two scenes. I believe that it will bring across any Octane materials for non-duplicate Surface/material names between the two scene, but there will be a "winner" for duplicates (ie. I'm not sure if the original or merged AC scene's materials will be used). Similarly for rendertarget info.

When can somebody else open on another computer the Octane-Plugin, and work further?

I believe that if a user does NOT have OctaneRender for ArchiCAD installed - then there will be NO change to the Octane rendertarget or materials in the scene file. If however they DO have the plugin installed, when they save the scene file, it will save all the Octane rendertarget info and materials.

Could you script the Plugin for teamwork as well in the future?
For example:
- No possibility to set a material, if the materials are not reserved.
- No possibility to set Rendertargets, if the viewports are not reserved.
- No possibility to set proxies, of the AC-object is not reserved.

Yes, it should be possible to implement this.

The plugin probably needs to NOT save Octane materials for ArchiCAD material which are reserved by another user.

Again - sorry for the late response on this - and it would be good to discuss with you the best way to get the plugin working in your environment.

Paul

[face_off]

Edit to the above - I just tried to Reserve a Surface (ie. ArchiCAD material) and a View - and both could be done, so it should be possible to limit the editing of Octane Materials and Rendertargets based on this. However, is this what you really want? Do you have many people edit Octane attributes, or just one? If is it the later, there may be a better way.

Paul

[s3d-weyrauch]

Excuse me, I did´nt reply yet. I would have like to test something else, what we should discuss as well.

Teamwork:
We are beginners by Octane, but we see our future with that software. We have done only a few projects by Octane, but the coworkers are very curious. That´s why we have bought 10 more licenses today. I could see at the first project, that we need Octane in Teamwork as well. All of the projects are in Teamwork, an average housing project has more than 5000 m², at least 3 architects work at the same time. The deadline is always close, we need exterior and interior design, these require different persons. It´s really important to edit Octane-attributes together.

You have already answered my question. At the moment it is better to work alone on the Octane-Plugin in Teamwork.

I have considered the regulation of octane in teamwork, and it is not so simple as we thought, the following reservations are required:
Materials:
Octane Materials should not be editable if ArchiCAD-Materials are not reserved and not sent.
It makes problems if you are able to set materials on an ArchiCAD-material what is not sended (not saved on the server) because of the following:
You are able to create a new ArchiCAD-material without reserving the materials in teamwork. If two people happen to give the same name to a material, than the last who sends become (1) as a suffix.

Views:
Octane Rendertarget should not be editable if the ArchiCAD-View is not reserved and sent. Sending is important because of the following:
You are able to give the same name, what somebody else can give as well. If both of you set various rendertarget-settings to the same name, than one of them can go missing. The default rendertarget doesn´t matter.

Proxies:
Editing the Octane Proxy should not be possible, if the ArchiCAD-Object is not reserved. The materials of a Proxy should not be editable, if all of the instances are not reserved.

The other subject what we should discuss is the proxies with OBRX/OCS. Unfortunately I didn´t have time to test it. Please, give me a week, and I can summarise our experiences for a skype-talk. This subject would be more exciting for us.

I will report, if I have results. Thanks for all!

[face_off]

Hi. I have done some work with the Teamwork API now, and can confirm....

1) The plugin can be modified so that it will not let you edit an Octane material if the user either has not reserved all Surfaces (if it is a Teamwork project). There may be complications when you first open the scene in Octane and the plugin converts all AC Surfaces to Octane materials. I suggest letting any users plugin convert AC Surfaces to Object materials if there is not already an Octane material for that Surface, regardless of the Surface reserve status, since that will be early in the process.

2) The plugin can be modified so that you can only save a rendertarget to a View if you have that View reserved, and you can only edit the rendertarget assigned to a View if that View is reserved.

3) The plugin can be modified so that you can only assign or edit a proxy for an Object is that Object is reserved by you. I would suggest not allowing proxy material editing unless you have all Surfaces reserved.

ORBX/OCS proxies (and materials). The process for using these has changes a little in the last few releases. At the moment, any assets from ORBX files (texturemaps or OBJ fles) are unpacked into the plugin LiveDb Texturemap folder. So the LiveDb Texturemap folder should be the same on all users PC's. However, I am reviewing whether it would be better to leave these assets unpacked, so only the ORBX file needs to be present on each users PC (and not the assets from that ORBX).

Also, if working on large projects, performance recommendations are:
1) Keep the total number of Surfaces to a minimum (ie. don't have large numbers of unused Surfaces in the scene
2) Geometry in Hot-linked files needs to be parsed by the plugin in order to get a complete list of materials. So lots of large hot-linked files on network file stores will slow the caching process considerably.
3) When used proxy host Objects, use simply, low-polygon host objects, so that these are quickly parse by the caching process

Paul

[s3d-weyrauch]

Hi Paul,
Maybe we should make a new topic for OCS/OBRX.
It´s not a problem, that I have to set all of the clients to the same LiveDB folder. However I found the OCS much better, and I don´t use OBRX, only OCS, OAM, and OAT. These formats are better, because many OCS can use the same OBJ-Mesh-file, many OAM can use the same texture-file. This solution saves a lot of disk-space, GDDR and time.

I have many OCS with different materials to one OBJ-Mesh. This is my solution to that fact, that you can´t set the materials to an OCS/OBRX proxy in ArchiCAD. It would be really nice, if it could be possible. It would be even better, if you can set only a few selected options, not all of the parameters.
Now I have a car as OBJ-Mesh, I have four OCS with different carpaint, but every other materials are the same.

By the way, I have an annoying thing at the proxy-parameters in ArchiCAD-Objects (GSM). I would script something behind the proxy-parameters, for example I would connect the scale-parameters with the measures of the ArchiCAD Object. It´s ready, however, if I change a value of a parameter, I can refresh the proxy settings only by deleting the actual proxy and refreshing the scene.
It makes no sence by OCS, because I can´t edit even the materials (only the scale). My imagination is a Boolean ArchiCAD-Objectparameter with which I decide about refreshing the proxy parameters always by refreshing the Octane-window. If it is on, the Octane loads all of the proxy-settings from the ArchiCAD-Object. What do You think, is it possible?

I have one more thing. I have to restructure my Objectlibrary or Texturelibrary sometimes. It´s not the same subject about moving a project, I miss only a few textures or OBJs. It would be great to have the chance to reconnect the missing elements with the new path instead of a simple message: Cannot find texturemap.

Many thanks for all!

[face_off]

I have many OCS with different materials to one OBJ-Mesh. This is my solution to that fact, that you can´t set the materials to an OCS/OBRX proxy in ArchiCAD. It would be really nice, if it could be possible. It would be even better, if you can set only a few selected options, not all of the parameters.
Now I have a car as OBJ-Mesh, I have four OCS with different carpaint, but every other materials are the same.

I added OCS and ORBX proxies to both the Revit and ArchiCAD plugins with the constraint that the proxy materials could not be edited. OBJ proxies have very simple materials, so they convert nicely to Octane materials and can be edited in the plugin. However there are many more ways to setup materials (and geometry) in ORBX/OCS files, which may cause stability issues in the plugin. So the OCS/ORBX files are directly loaded into the Octane scene, and not interpreted in any way by the plugin. For example, an ORBX might have 20 mesh nodes connected via Placement and Geometry Group nodes, all with different or shared materials - and having the plugin read this situation would be a problem. Also, an ORBX file is loaded multiple times if used by multiple ArchiCAD objects, so editing the materials on one object would not propagate that change to the other users of that ORBX/OCS.

So in summary, in the short term I do not believe it is viable to edit the materials of ORBX/OCS proxies in the plugin. Instead, these materials need to be setup in Octane Standalone. In the long term I may work out an alternative way to edit these materials - so it may be possible.

By the way, I have an annoying thing at the proxy-parameters in ArchiCAD-Objects (GSM). I would script something behind the proxy-parameters, for example I would connect the scale-parameters with the measures of the ArchiCAD Object. It´s ready, however, if I change a value of a parameter, I can refresh the proxy settings only by deleting the actual proxy and refreshing the scene.
It makes no sence by OCS, because I can´t edit even the materials (only the scale). My imagination is a Boolean ArchiCAD-Objectparameter with which I decide about refreshing the proxy parameters always by refreshing the Octane-window. If it is on, the Octane loads all of the proxy-settings from the ArchiCAD-Object. What do You think, is it possible?

Good idea. I will add a checkbox in the next release so it determines if the proxy parameters are read from the GSM property once, or everything you load the scene.

I have one more thing. I have to restructure my Objectlibrary or Texturelibrary sometimes. It´s not the same subject about moving a project, I miss only a few textures or OBJs. It would be great to have the chance to reconnect the missing elements with the new path instead of a simple message: Cannot find texturemap.

This has been requested previously, and on my list of things to do. I will try to incorporate this in the next release.

Thanks

Paul

[s3d-weyrauch]

The OCS-proxy is already a very good option to have preset personal object-library. It was only a wish for the future to edit some parameters at the materials. Not very important.
The other features are more necessary, thanks for all in advance!