OctaneRender for Carrara 3.03.03.20 [Test] Tweet

[Sighman]

Replicated sequins, I love it!

[protovu]

....and of course, now the file (attached) is working. Not crashing now.

Different sort of hair, Phil, but your model looks terrific. Is she using the normal maps you referred to? Would it be difficult to show a side by side with and without? Very curious. Trying to cross the uncanny valley
with Victoria 4. I think that SSS might be the answer but perhaps normal maps can help also.

Too bad about the Emitters. Pycloid is almost ready for showtime, but sooo glitchy. Might need to do sims in Blender from now on, then obj import. .....One more nail the Carrara coffin.

[Sighman]

New update posted to this thread. (Integrated with the latest Octane SDK.)

[PhilW]

Protovu - you are using the same sort of hair as me, Carrara's dynamic hair. Your "hairy log" works fine for me.

I am not sure that the normal maps make a huge difference in the realism of a character, but that particular character comes with normal maps and bump maps so I thought I would give them a try. Carrara's shaders can only support one or the other at a time, while Octane can have both together. I am using my own formula for skin, teeth etc which mixes a Glossy material and a Specular material, with the latter providing the SSS which I think adds a lot to the realism. I was trying a specular only material with some success a few months ago and there was a discussion in a thread about various formulas for skin, it was a thread about renders in unbiased render engines. The SSS in Octane is far superior to that in Carrara's native renderer.

[PhilW]

I was doing some test renders as Protovu requested to show the effects of the normal maps, and I have made a discovery which I think might be a bug. An Octane material allows you to load both a bump map and a normal map (unlike Carrara;s shaders which uses the same channel for one or the other), and so both should have an effect. However it seems that the normal map channel is overriding the effect of the bump. For example I had a bump map on a character's lips (with no normal map) and this showed a clear effect, but when I added a normal map, the bump disappeared - even if the normal map strength was set to zero.

Perhaps Sighman was taking his cue from the way that Carrara natively works, but when you have a defined Octane material, it should be possible to load both and see the effect of both.

P.S. You can clearly see the effect of the SSS on the ears from the backlighting.

[Sighman]

I am doing nothing 'special' when setting the bump and normal maps. Try exporting your scene and checking it in the standalone. I see nothing in the standalone documentation that states you cannot use both so this might be an Octane bug.

[PhilW]

Yes, the same thing is happening in Octane Standalone, with the normal map in place, it overrides the bump map. Can you point me to where this should be reported? (or would it be better coming from you?)

P.S. I have posted in the support forum:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=55514

[Sighman]

According to the Devs, normal map trumps bump (as you have seen). You can't use both at the same time.

[PhilW]

According to the Devs, normal map trumps bump (as you have seen). You can't use both at the same time.

That's a shame! Thanks for finding out.

[PhilW]

I just spotted that if you set the height greater than the width in the render window, the OR4C window does not match the Carrara window. I think we had this issue some time ago, then it was fixed, but it seems to have crept back in again.