Please add basic camera animation + ability to move objects

[steveps3]

The video has been deleted. What is the point in starting a thread to say this is what I want and then deleting the video.

[synapsemedia]

its nice for a change to see software to actually be of a high standard for once. octane in its beta form is far more stable than vue ever was/is and i am having a lot of problems with max crashing on my system. to be honest. i know i said before that it wasnt necessary for octane to become a sophisticated 3D package but secretly i kind of hope it does because I for once actually have some respect now for a software firm that produces a product that for the most part actually works for a low price instead of the other way around. In fact there was only one other software company that I felt the same way about and that was Ambient Design with Art Rage. That app has NEVER crashed on me and I have used it for about 5 years now. Truly inspirational. It's worth noting that it is also a new zealand company. The kiwis seem to imho make the best websites in the world and the best software in the world. I also think refractive/otoy should perhaps focus more on developing the standalone first as now is a great opportuity to do some 3D software in a completely different way, very fast renders, stable and hopefully easy to use. All the myriad other programs are in my opinion all doing the same thing in the same way. expensive, huge, difficult and unstable. I have 2 kids shows I want to make but cannot due to 3D software being simply to slow to render, unstable and difficult to learn. I started in 3D very late and have 2 kids/wife and a bunch of responsibilities that makes it very difficult for me to spend large amounts of time learning one of these enormous packages. Unfortunately none of the easier to learn programs like vue infinite, poser (whcih would be great for one of my kids shows as i just need simple animal characters walking around) support octane. At least not that I am aware of.

I was looking at maxwells website recently and stumbled across something that really interested me. On their product description page they wrote: "Time saving
With Maxwell is not necessary to learn strange concepts or long lists of parameters such as “radiosity bounces”, “photons maps” or “final gathering” that are old terminology, not reality. The settings of the Maxwell Render camera work and adjust like the settings of a real camera. The strength of lights in your scene is based on real-world units. Because of this, set-up times are extremely low compared to other renderers. "

Ah. Music to the ears for an old codger like me. Unfortunately most if not all software is designed by software engineers for software engineers. There are also a lot of big egos. This I am painfully aware of. Even on this forum. Something musn't be too easy otherwise it's "not professional" I have a stack of scripts on my desk just waiting for the software to "get out of the way" and just let me get on with doing it. I think GPU rendering is going to make huge swathes of stuff you used to have to learn obsolete. At least in terms of rendering. Now its all just brute force and photorealistic. The way it should be. I want to focus on making shows not perpetually learning software and workarounds. That is a waste of time.

I would love to see camera animation become possible in octane standalone. also the ability to import camera data from match moving software and the ability to move objects. This would go a LONG way to making octane my primary 3D package.

Angus

[synapsemedia]

sorry steveps3. Another user pointed out that the video was too long winded and i watched it again and agreed so i have just amended the opening comment.

[rappet]

Camera paths would be a huge advantage. Just that feature for animation and I would be very very happy.

yes, yes, yes... oh yes please.

[synapsemedia]

Ray Tracey

Here are links to examples of the type of camera and object animation support I would like to see introduced in Octane.

These are very simple, openGL rendered previz videos for shot/set preparation.

The shots with the car will in fact be using a real car on a fake/set road. I would prefer to do some of these shots using a 3D car but render times are prohibitive in my main 3D package Vue infinite so we chose to do it for real. If I could do these shots completely in 3D it would have saved me a lot of money.

In this shot, http://youtu.be/SUla-4ON9TQ i would like to be able to move a CG car at speed (object animation) across the frame in front of a CG gas station with a CG desert environment in the background. All rendered in octane standalone.

In this shot http://youtu.be/JW356L6SPHc I would liek to be able to move a CG car (object animation) whilst dollying the octane camera (camera animation)with a CG desert background. All rendered iin octane standalone.

In this shot http://youtu.be/dAUYSRh4Fq4 I would like to be able to move the octane camera (camera animation) with the desert background moving appropriatly (all rendered in octane) The car would remain real with a real actor. This will requite octane to have the ability to import camera tracking data.

In this shot http://youtu.be/rf7evXnHgVQ I would liek to be able to move the octane camera (camera animation) with a CG desert environmant in the background. The actor is real and will be composited later. This will requite octane to have the ability to import camera tracking data.

So in a nutshell. The ability to move the octane camera obviously with keyframing features. ANd the ability to import camera tracking data from programs like syntheyes and matchmover and the ability to move objects.

This would help me enormously and would cover at least 80% of my needs. It would get rid of my need for another 3D program like max or maya. i could then use my non compatible 3D program Vue Infinite to do all my modelling and then use octane to do all the rendering and camera/object moving.

Hope this helps.

Angus

[r-username]

I would like to see a bit more on the animation side. That render with a good motion program like after effects would produce very professional results (particles, camera shake, lighting effects...)

Cheers

[Faizol]

How about .mdd or point cache (or even Alembic) support? Plus a csv file format for camera animation?

[sdwhitton]

good post Angus, I agree entirely (from another old codger...)

I think having the ability to keyframe / import some camera movement would be great,

a nice bonus would be if it could be combined with the animated sun system,

particles, explosions and all that caboodle could be comped over with summat else, but then would also need some sorta matte material..

[Tugpsx]

Since my D2O plugin does animation thru seq obj, it would be interesting to know what the intent is and therefore what direction us plugin developers should consider in the future.
The current turntable animation can easily be adopted to source a seq obj folder (scene) thereby solving small animation needs. Since seq obj scenes can consume a lot of space they are not the best option, but are very useful at this time.

The option to use camera paths via a csv file is very easy to implement too, since the current version of octane does support camera movement, we did a test using a file to source the camera movement option with a batch file.

The camera position, rotation, dof was simply read from the csv file and passed to a batch script that rendered the frame, store the output and repositioned the camera from the info on the next line and repeat until all data used.

[kavorka]

Since my D2O plugin does animation thru seq obj, it would be interesting to know what the intent is and therefore what direction us plugin developers should consider in the future.
The current turntable animation can easily be adopted to source a seq obj folder (scene) thereby solving small animation needs. Since seq obj scenes can consume a lot of space they are not the best option, but are very useful at this time.

The option to use camera paths via a csv file is very easy to implement too, since the current version of octane does support camera movement, we did a test using a file to source the camera movement option with a batch file.

The camera position, rotation, dof was simply read from the csv file and passed to a batch script that rendered the frame, store the output and repositioned the camera from the info on the next line and repeat until all data used.

How did it come out?
I am looking to be doing some fly through animations in about a month, and want to use Octane render for it, if possible.