OctaneRender® for Maya® beta 3.03e [OBSOLETE]

[JimStar]

Refractive Software®/Otoy® is proud to announce the availability of a new version of OctaneRender™ for Maya®
The world's fastest and most feature-rich unbiased render engine that integrates completely into Autodesk® Maya®.

Maya® Version Requirements

This release will work with Maya® Versions 2011, 2012 and 2013 / 32-bit & 64-bit on MS Windows operating systems.

Notes regarding features/functionality

OctaneRender™ for Maya® implements almost full functionality of OctaneRender™ standalone inside Maya®. Materials from the Live DB are currently not available.

COMPATIBILITY AND OCTANERENDER STANDALONE REQUIREMENT

To run OctaneRender™ for Maya®, you need to also have an activated OctaneRender™ Standalone copy activated on the machine you wish to install the plugin onto.
You cannot purchase and use only the Maya plugin and use it without also owning an activated copy of OctaneRender™ Standalone on your machine.


HOW TO PURCHASE LICENSES

Go to our online shop here: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/shop/

If you do not own an OctaneRender™ Standalone Edition License yet:
You can purchase both the OctaneRender™ Standalone Edition and the OctaneRender™ for Maya® Edition as a reduced price bundle, purchase the bundle priced at 179€

If you already own one or more OctaneRender™ Standalone Edition licenses you want to pair the plugin with:
Purchase an "OctaneRender™ for Maya® Beta License" priced at 99€

You can also purchase a 3, 5 or 10 pack of OctaneRender™ for Maya® licenses,
just like OctaneRender™ Standalone Edition packs.


OCTANELIVE

Just like OctaneRender™ Standalone, the Maya® plugin product also needs an additional OctaneLive license and be activated on a machine.
This has to be done in the plugin interface panel in Maya, and is covered in the included PDF manual.
It can only be done after an OctaneRender™ Standalone license is already activated on the machine in question.


BUG FIXES SINCE LAST RELEASE:

• Improved the "pick node" behaviour (when the checkerbox of Octane complex values is pressed).
• Fixed the "Frame step" - now it is float point value, not integer.

NEW FEATURES SINCE LAST RELEASE:

• Added "Render layer" support to batch render "-rl" command switch.
• Added "Fix names to unique" processing (new button on Octane toolshelf).

DOWNLOAD

Next version HERE.


Yours,
The OctaneRender™ Team.

[cyrillweiss]

Added "Fix names to unique" processing (new button on Octane toolshelf).

You're my hero! In the last days I had to rename plenty of objects to get the rendering work - unfortunately the error notice didn't tell me which one, I hated it.

Have you got in plans to integrate polygon smoothing (button 3) without everytime to use "Mesh smooth to polygon"? It would keep the complexity of the work simple. (UV mapping, etc.)

Would it be in near future possible, to export the scene with all materials for the standalone version? Otherwise I have to keep maya open the hole time and can't work in the meantime (I don't need all GPUs on the rendering sometimes)

Ty
Cyrill

[TBFX]

Added "Fix names to unique" processing (new button on Octane toolshelf).

Thanks JimStar that button helps a lot with existing scenes!
However now we cannot have a particle instance set to movable proxy as they don't get unique names and therfore the render errors out.

T.

[icelaglace]

Improved the "pick node" behaviour (when the checkerbox of Octane complex values is pressed).

Excellent, Thank you Jimstar

[TBFX]

Would it be in near future possible, to export the scene with all materials for the standalone version? Otherwise I have to keep maya open the hole time and can't work in the meantime (I don't need all GPUs on the rendering sometimes)

If you set a batch render going, either from command line or from the render menu you do not have to keep Maya open to render.

T.

[jmfowler]

setup a batch file

its a txt file saved with .bat at the end

then type in your .bat file something like

Render -proj C:\Users\Fowler7\Documents\maya\projects\RemVillageCare -renderer Octane -gpu1 0 -gpu2 1 -gpu3 1 -v 1 -s 1099 -e 1450 pool_oct6b.mb

pause

save it, double click it to activate and it will open a command shell and proceed to render, i like to have "pause" at the end so I know from looking at the computer that it rendered and didn't 'bomb out'.
You can have as many seperate render lines as possible which is a great way to render lots of different still images too aswell as animations. - NOTICE I'm only using 2 out of 3 video cards in this setup as gpu1 is set to 0 meaning it will not be used, hence you will want to free up your UI/monitor card on a machine you intend using while rendering in background.

[jmfowler]

Jimstar - I think there might be a bug either in Octane render or plugin.

After various tests its like this.

I have 1*580 and 2*680's that I use on one machine, If i set them all to render a single frame they all work together and will render for a long time 8000, 16000 samples on an image that can take 8 hours etc... and I have monitored that they are ALL working from gpu load, temperature etc all the way to the end.

BUT ---- If i set off an animation ( command line) , it always renders the first frame BUT fails on the second right at the end the command shell verbose will say 7999 out of 8000 samples and it will just keep repeating 7999 indefinitely. Its always the 580 ( compute model 2.) that fails BUT it never fails on the first frame and of course if I render a single frame from the command line or inside maya - it never fails - so It can't be a problem with the card - there must be a problem with the way the process transfers to a second frame....

This happens on any scene and seems to be specific to rendering animations with a card that is different - since it happens in the second frame.
I tried setting off the 680's to render from a .bat file and the 580 to render from a different scene file but the same thing happens at the end of the second frame for the 580...

Surely if there was a problem with the 580 card it would not render single frames with the other 2*680's....but it does..so it must be a bug?

Is there a way to investigate this further to solve it?

[cyrillweiss]

setup a batch file

its a txt file saved with .bat at the end

then type in your .bat file something like

Render -proj C:\Users\Fowler7\Documents\maya\projects\RemVillageCare -renderer Octane -gpu1 0 -gpu2 1 -gpu3 1 -v 1 -s 1099 -e 1450 pool_oct6b.mb

pause

thx a lot!
I've got a seperate Computer with an octane license, but without Maya. What could you suggest, if I would like to render there as well? Do I need another Maya and Octane plugin?

Cyr

[TBFX]

I've got a seperate Computer with an octane license, but without Maya. What could you suggest, if I would like to render there as well? Do I need another Maya and Octane plugin?

Yes you will need another octane for maya license but you shouldn't need another Maya license as the Maya batch render command does not require a license to run from the command line (you just install Maya and don't license it). I'm not sure how you would go about registering the octane for Maya license without being able to open Maya though. Although when you first install Maya you get a 15 day trial period so registering the plugin during this time may work. If this can't be done it's something that Otoy need to look at as no one will want to, or should have to, pay for extra Maya licenses to build a render farm for Octane for Maya.

All of this is only theory though and may not work as expected. I only have one machine capable of running Octane at present so can't test it for you.

T.

[JimStar]

Thanks JimStar that button helps a lot with existing scenes!
However now we cannot have a particle instance set to movable proxy as they don't get unique names and therfore the render errors out.

Oops.
It's just a little bug. Will release "quick-fix" soon.