Changes in 3.0.0.5
- Fixed problem with animated Octane Environment settings not changing during an animation.
- Fixed problem with animated Octane Light (Point & Spot) settings not changing during an animation or while panning the timeline.
- Completely revamped Object Layer configuration. Object Layers are no longer an effect, they are modifiers. (See notes below.)
- Added Baking Camera support. (See notes below.)
Changes in 3.0.0.4
- Fixed a problem with visibility where instances that were not initially visible would not become visible when visibility was enabled.
- Fixed a visibility issue where Carrara could crash when toggling the visibility of multiple objects.
- Fixed the loading of Live DB materials where a material is contained in multiple node graphs. (corrugated mesh for example).
- Fixed problem where rendering an animation could stall if nothing in the scene changed.
- Added the Microsoft VC 110 (2012) CRT runtime to the installer.
Changes in 3.0.0.3
- Fixed restoring animation settings on scene load.
- Fixed volumetric cloud rendering (corrected transforms).
- Added early support for fountain volumes. These can be animated. See notes.
Changes in 3.0.0.2
- Based on Octane Render SDK 3.0 Alpha 6
- Added new Volume medium.
- Added support for loading OpenVDB files into Carrara volumes (fire, fog, and clouds). See notes.
- Volumes (Cloud & VDB) now work with replicators.
- Alpha period extended until May 1st.
Changes in 3.0.0.1
- Fixed saving corrupt scene files by changing the render pass setting ids to be Carrara conformant. Note that any scenes saved with version 3.0.0.0 of the plugin are corrupt and cannot be recovered. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Changes in 3.0.0.0
- Linked against Octane SDK 3.0 alpha 2
- Added new 'level' option to displacement shader.
- Added new medium option to Octane Environment effect.
- Updated Render Target Settings for the 3.0 SDK.
- Added support for the new Render Passes including new Render Pass save options.
- Added option to save Deep Image EXR files.
- Added support for Cloud Volumes (see notes below.)
Quick Notes:
The new Octane Object Layer modifier
This change was driven by a bug in Carrara when dealing with Effects on a Genesis (any generation) character. If you modify anything in the Effects Tab on a genesis character (such as Blur) Carrara will hang for about a minute and then, at some point later on, Carrara will crash. In order to support a baking camera with Genesis I needed to change the Octane Object Layer effect to be a modifier instead. This is unfortunately, a breaking change to old scenes that use object layers. Objects layers will not load when you load an old project that uses the Octane Object Layer effect. You will need to reconfigure the object layer using the new Octane Object Layer modifier instead.
The Octane Object Layer modifier is added from an instance's Modifiers tab. This modifier is identical to the old effect configuration with the exception that there is a new Domains button. The Domains button allows you to create separate object layers for the different material domains on a figure. This is important when you want to bake the texture of a complex figure that uses multiple material maps (such as V4 or Genesis). The idea is that you Add a new object layer, name it something useful, assign it a unique Baking Group ID, and then transfer material domains to it using the >> button. Those material domains will then use the new object layer settings instead of the default ones. Note that the Domains button will not be enabled if the selected figure only contains a single material domain.
The new Octane Baking Camera
To use the baking camera, add a new Conical camera to your scene and then switch it to an Octane Baking Camera. Set the Baking Group ID to the baking group ID you configured in the Octane Object Layer modifier and render. I'll add a more detailed tutorial soon.
Fountains
Fountains will now render in octane as a volume. The particles in the fountain add a volume density to the grid where they are located. Right now there are no options but you will be able to adjust the particle size and weight soon. I wanted to get a fix out for volumetric clouds so treat this as an early preview. Any suggestions for improvements are always welcome. I am also thinking of doing the same thing for emitters and meta balls.
VDB Files
To load a VDB file, add a Carrara Volume (Fire, Cloud, or Fog) to your scene. Select the volume and open the Effects Tab. You should now see a Carrara OpenVDB effect that you can use to load a VDB file into the area where the Carrara Volume is positioned. You can scale and move the VDB volume by manipulating the dimensions and position of the Carrara volume.
Volumetric Clouds
Carrara has volumetric clouds that can be rendered in Octane 3.0. I cannot gain direct access to the volumetric data held within Carrara but I can resample the volume. The default resample size is 100x100x100 but you can change this using the Octane Cloud effect. Rendering clouds in Octane is disabled by default so you need to visit each cloud instance and select Enable in the Octane Cloud effect. You can also assign an Octane Medium shader to a cloud instance. This will allow you to change the Absorption, Scattering, and Emission of the rendered cloud. This is done through the standard Carrara shader mechanism. The Carrara native renderer does not use shaders for Volumetric Clouds but you can assign one anyway and Octane will use it if you make it an Octane Medium shader.
Note that only the 'new' Carrara volumetric clouds are supported for Octane volumetric clouds. The clouds, fire, and fog volumes do not expose any volumetric data however you can load a VDB file into them.
Also, please let me know if you are interested in Cloud Rendering (using OTOY's OCS cloud rendering service).
As usual, please let me know if you find ANY other issues.
ATTENTION: This version is based on Octane 3.0. That means you need to update your NVIDIA graphics drivers.
Happy Rendering...
Download Links:
OctaneRender for Carrara (64-bit) 3.0.0.5