so, what can be seen here:
- octane viewport pickers/tools; left of the progress bar, from left to right:
- select object (plus filter materials in the corresponding plugin tab)
- select surface/material (like in the standalone)
- directly open the picked material in the nodegraph editor
- focus (to the picked point - like in the standalone)
- focus follow (lets the camera focus follow the picked object until another focus mode is set)
- reload the picked object (useful if the live geometry mode is turned off; while tweaking poses/morphs)
- picking into an empty area deselects elements (if any) and clears the materials filters
. - viewport context menu:
- basically all the picker functions (plus affected objects/sufaces/mats labels)
- back to autofocus & full scene reload (same as the buttons on the bottom)
- switch between scale-to-viewport or current fixed render size
- select a fixed render size from a list (as also found in the resolution node in the standalone)
. - camera controls:
since fov and dof control is notably more important when using octane, it can get tedious to always open the parameters tab, select the camera, and open the parameter group, to finally tweak those settings, so there is a quick access to them (for the currently active camera) by clicking the camera tool button in the top-right corner (overlaying the viewport until hidden).
note: the f/stop parameter from the daz camera is translated into the octane aperture value and vice versa.
and here is a compilation of changes and improvements completed since mid december:
- material applying between one or more daz materials and an octane material by drag & drop;
also live db thumbnails can be dragged onto one or more daz materials to apply them;
dragging octane materials onto other octane materials will replace them.
. - in addition to the octane viewport picker tools, also the node- and mat pickers from studio are supported
to select corresponding octane materials or filter the materials trees.
. - auto materials are updated (if activated) whenever new material sets are loaded onto an object
. - as long as the live geometry mode is on, this also happens for morph/pose sets
. - also for auto materials it can be chosen to skip specific maps (i.e. to save vram by not using specular or bump maps).
. - the node type (diffuse/glossy/specular) can be changed for one ore more octane materials at once
without the need to go into the materials settings (while keeping all appropriate settings of course).
. - the nodegraph editor supports copy & paste for nodes, and it is also possible to paste node settings only.
. - it can be chosen to use only base meshes for rendering (in favor of the subdivided meshes),
mainly to speed up rendering while tweaking a scene.
. - octane's set of hdri studio maps and ies lights are embedded and can be selected from the maps list
without the need to browse the disk (for valid nodes = texture environment power and emission distribution).
. - of course the new sunlight model is already included, and in addition the location
can be set via an integrated google maps browser (fun to use and useful too).
. - full support for orthogonal cameras; the view cameras (top, front, left, ...) do use this by nature of course
(thus the octane viewport replicates the daz viewport also for this cameras),
and in addition the "perspective" on/off switch of standard daz cameras also translates to octane.
. - to free up resources for rendering, switching off windows 7 aero is most recommended;
this can be done from within the plugin, and even chosen to turn aero off on every startup.
. - also supported is the clay rendering mode from the standalone,
. - as well as reduced size rendering (to speed up the viewport, called "subsampling" in the standalone).
the current release "roadmap" includes 1-2 more updates to the closed beta (which usually happen within a week each), until the plugin should be ready to be prepared for the public beta release (creating installers, preparing a manual, ...)