OCM Tweet

[pfrancke]

Hi t_3.

Congrats on an excellent product that you have put together. No rest for the wicked though!! I was fooling with a box and was trying to create a specular fog type material and it struck me that I had a couple of them sitting in an "import macro OCM" type of file. But could not figure out how to access it from the node area.

You gave us much and it will take a while to get comfortable with things (as if I learned the stand-alone overnight). Thank you very much for the tool you gave us and that you have been and will be slaving over!!

[t_3]

Hi t_3.

Congrats on an excellent product that you have put together. No rest for the wicked though!! I was fooling with a box and was trying to create a specular fog type material and it struck me that I had a couple of them sitting in an "import macro OCM" type of file. But could not figure out how to access it from the node area.

You gave us much and it will take a while to get comfortable with things (as if I learned the stand-alone overnight). Thank you very much for the tool you gave us and that you have been and will be slaving over!!

thanks for compliments

the current state regarding ocm import is: there is no such thing like importing .ocm or .ocs - much to my regret. the octane api currently doesn't support it, and that is why all plugins lack this feature, even if users ask for it every other day

imo it will be implemented - i just can't tell an ETA for it.

what you _could_ do (i'm not directly advising to do so ) is to upload mats from the standalone to the live db - to get it into the plugin the other way round. the live db can always take some nice materials, and i can't remember to have seen much fog mats in there

[pfrancke]

Hi T3 --
am frustrated and think I will go outside and do some yard work - it's almost spring here! I figure placing my notes here is ok since the topic is kind of about "how do you move around and keep materials".

Using DAZ primitives, I created a couple of planes and a sphere. Some how I managed to get the liveDB mirror white material onto the sphere which was great. But I'm having difficulty working with the nodegraph editor.

From the material tab of Octane control panel, I select the scene surface (a plane for instance), then I click on the NodeGraph button and it opens the graph. Here is where my frustration begins, I just can't figure out how to get a liveDB material (like asphalt for example) onto the node graph. Whenever I do a paste on the nodegraph, it only has last material from NodeGraph that I might have "copied".

I really like the LiveDB interface that you have (better than stand-alone as everything is pre-loaded), but I"m at a loss as to how to get that material onto the NodeGraph.

Also, as a sidenote, a mechanism to place any material that you work on into a place controlled by the user (an export/import type process) is really needed. I can't believe that liveDB is the only mechanism.. but don't take this as complaining, I'm a slow learner and hardly know DAZ, let alone Octane. Just trying to figure things out (I'm hoping you've got such a mechanism). Anyway, enough rambling for one morning.

Later,
Piet

[t_3]

From the material tab of Octane control panel, I select the scene surface (a plane for instance), then I click on the NodeGraph button and it opens the graph. Here is where my frustration begins, I just can't figure out how to get a liveDB material (like asphalt for example) onto the node graph. Whenever I do a paste on the nodegraph, it only has last material from NodeGraph that I might have "copied".

I really like the LiveDB interface that you have (better than stand-alone as everything is pre-loaded), but I"m at a loss as to how to get that material onto the NodeGraph.

first off, there is one substantial difference to the standalone (if you refer to its nodegraph), that of course needs to be understand: in the plugin you will only have a nodegraph view inside a specific material - to connect materials to the mesh pins (represented through their surface names), have an overview about octane material <> daz surfaces connections, you have these both trees in the mat tab, that will show the relationship in misc. ways, and of course allow to alter them in many ways.

if you happen to know the standalone: it is like having macro nodes, each one connected to one or more mesh pins, and to edit the macro-material you double click it, and see its internal node graph. the left tree in the plugin's mat tab would then be a bunch of octane macro nodes, the right tree the mesh node with its pins (=daz surfaces).

2nd thing to note: live db materials or always "off scene"; either need to be downloaded first, or maybe are already locally cached, but to use and/or edit them, you need to bring them into the scene - this is not really different from the standalone.

you may doing this by dragging one from the octane/left tree or from the thumbnail view onto a daz surface, onto an already existing octane material (actually replacing it), by dragging it somewhere into an empty space in one of the tree views (just copying it into the scene "unlinked"), or by right clicking it (only from the tree view) and select "copy as new material". from this point on it gets downloaded (if needed) and will be a part of the scene. now you can open it in the nge, edit it, copy its contents (to paste them into some other material), add new nodes, paste other nodes into it, etc.

additionally, since all live db materials are "delivered" as a single collapsed node, you can hover over any of the pin names, press ALT, and then drag the respective pin node out of its parent. then you can easily change connections, insert modifiers, ... this works btw with any other node. ALT + drag from a pin name, and you have placed its internal node visibly into the nodegraph, to edit its connections.

the key concept, that is really important to understand and to follow, to get things done fast and easy: connecting materials should be always done by dragging them wherever needed between the both tree views, or you may right click any made selection (in the left or the right tree) and select link to "..." (= the current selections in the other tree). this way you get them connected as fast as possible either in groups or as single materials. note that you of course can only link one single octane material to daz surfaces at a time, but you may always link one or more daz surfaces onto any octane material. if, by the way, you drag/link one or more daz surfaces onto an entry in the live db tree, this material will be automatically downloaded and copied into the scene.

so, don't try to change a specific material into a completely different material by copy&paste the other materials contents into it, and connect it to the single surface pin inside - this is of course possible, but it's not the way it was meant to be, thus not exactly the fastest and easiest way to switch materials.

i admit this is an important point that needs to be described in the manual, supported by tutorial videos of course - i will some day have the time to complete it - hopefully soon

Also, as a sidenote, a mechanism to place any material that you work on into a place controlled by the user (an export/import type process) is really needed. I can't believe that liveDB is the only mechanism.. but don't take this as complaining, I'm a slow learner and hardly know DAZ, let alone Octane. Just trying to figure things out (I'm hoping you've got such a mechanism). Anyway, enough rambling for one morning.

Later,
Piet

you are welcome

if you look closely, you will see in different places options called "save as user preset", currently grayed out (for octane materials by right clicking them in the tree), for render settings if clicking new or copy, the same for lighting setups.

this will be the mechanism to save things that will be globally available. the materials will get an own root node "user presets" in the octane mats tree (much like the live db), maybe also an own thumbnail preview, render settings and environment settings will be added to the respective dropdown box and are from there on available form every new or loaded scene.

did i mention time before? this is in the works and will appear in a timely manner. please keep in mind this is beta 1.0 and will need some time to get mature, reliable, stable and thus pure fun to use. i still hope you can get already some fun out of it as of now, at least with these explanations...

[pfrancke]

thank you for the great explanation. I tried it this afternoon and was able to get live material in by dragging it onto the octane viewport. And if I happened to get it to the wrong material, it was easy to straighten out. Slowly getting used the the interface.

Some bad experiences that I had:
1) somehow got the octane render menu screen docked above the DAZ scene window and had a hard time figuring out how to undock it (the little pane button was gone too). Finally found the DAZ menu item that let me restore the basic window layout.
2) This one was worse for me, cost me about 45 minutes of pure misery. I would drag materials around and no matter what, the material just wouldn't show. Without realizing it, I was stuck in clay render mode. Oh you should have seen the grin on my face when I figured THAT one out.

[t_3]

1) somehow got the octane render menu screen docked above the DAZ scene window and had a hard time figuring out how to undock it (the little pane button was gone too). Finally found the DAZ menu item that let me restore the basic window layout.

can you please explain this as detailed as possible? the pane management is done by studio itself, so i can't exactly tell what happened, but i would of course be interested to see if i can reproduce it...

[pfrancke]

I have two use two monitors, so I typically have DAZ on the left and the Octane stuff on the better monitor on the right. When I was in "clay" mode, not understanding why no textures were "taking", I dragged the plugin menu panel on top of the DAZ program (for no good reason), and it "snapped/docked" into place. And for some reason, I couldn't see the corner icon that lets you undock the pane. It might have been invisible because it wasn't wide enough, but I think it was just gone. A monkey on a piano could have done it. Or a three year old on a keyboard -- ever see that happen? I am always amazed at how a three year old can do things to a desktop that are beyond imagination. Anyway, as far as I can tell, it just "auto-docked". But it was strange because it pushed everything else down beneath it, under it in a small thin window. It was on the top left side that it landed, above scene and smart content. I use 4.5.1.6 64 bit version.

[t_3]

I have two use two monitors, so I typically have DAZ on the left and the Octane stuff on the better monitor on the right. When I was in "clay" mode, not understanding why no textures were "taking", I dragged the plugin menu panel on top of the DAZ program (for no good reason), and it "snapped/docked" into place. And for some reason, I couldn't see the corner icon that lets you undock the pane. It might have been invisible because it wasn't wide enough, but I think it was just gone. A monkey on a piano could have done it. Or a three year old on a keyboard -- ever see that happen? I am always amazed at how a three year old can do things to a desktop that are beyond imagination. Anyway, as far as I can tell, it just "auto-docked". But it was strange because it pushed everything else down beneath it, under it in a small thin window. It was on the top left side that it landed, above scene and smart content. I use 4.5.1.6 64 bit version.

thanks for the explanation. i'd say this might be the only thing i'm not responsible for as this is indeed under full control of studio.

and imo the toolbars menus and panes system has quite a bunch of bugs ever since ds4 (not 4.5) was released. the customization option is completely erratic (on fresh installs it won't appear at all) and depends mainly on your upgrade path (from various ds versions installed) as does the placement and overall content of toolbars and menus; there are bugs in putting custom actions to the toolbars, the order of panes grouped together is (at least for me) constantly changing; once i managed somehow to hide the toolbar strip and found no way to get it back but resetting the layout, and i did still find no reliable way to add the octanerender actions to the toolbars, because they are completely different with every single installation and have no consistent calling implemented (they are only addressed by a user editable name ... ) - in other words: i feel with you