Hi
1) is there a way to use the Lights i set up in inventor inside the octane viewport? they are not appearing for me..
No, Octane uses IBL, Daylight and geometry emitters to light scenes - so you need to the Octane Inventor Emitter part as place of the Inventor lights.
http://render.otoy.com/manuals/Inventor/?page_id=792) If i Edit a material in inventor, can it be updated inside the viewport without closing and reopening the viewport? it takes forever to transfer the entire scene even with triangulation tolerance set at 1.
Select the material (use the Material Picker in the Viewport) and rightclick the material tree and select "Reconvert Inventor Material". How long are your scene taking to load? How many triangles is Octane reporting they have in the Viewport statistics?
3) if i have a material, how can i add emission to that material in the octane tab? only thing i found is to download a material from the live DB but that overwrites my current material. i would like to keep my material as it is but just add the emission.
Change the material type to Diffuse, then click the Emission tree item and change it's type from Not Connected to one of the emitter types. You can then tweak the power, distribution, etc.
ps: would it be possible in the stereo mode to add one setting? parallel cross. its the same as parallel but with the images inversed. its the only image that can be easily previewed by crossing the eyes without needing special hardware. would be a big help.
This is something you would need to request from the Octane team (via the Octane Standalone 2.23.2 thread). I thought I had read the Otoy were going to provide a quick way to test 3d cube pano's without uploading them to the Metaverse competition - but I can find where I read that...
Hope that answers your questions.
Paul