Testing Beta 0.49/0.50 ( Old version)

[aoktar]

is it possible to use c4d shaders now?
i mean layer shader etc...

layer shader not working, some nodes is working. I have not tested everything. But if you use subnodes in a shader sould'nt render generally. I'll workaround in future in this area. Also i'm planning to do a limited layer node.

[indexofrefraction]

is it possible to use c4d shaders now?
i mean layer shader etc...

layer shader not working, some nodes is working. I have not tested everything. But if you use subnodes in a shader sould'nt render generally. I'll workaround in future in this area. Also i'm planning to do a limited layer node.

uhh... :/:/ is it so complicated to use the c4d standard shaders?
(at least most of them, and most important is the layer shader)

i have loads of files where textures are setup with these shaders,
i'd like to be able to just copy/paste these setups into the octane texture slot....
otherwise converting my materials to octane gets nasty

hmm... are you really planning to integrate the octane node system for the materials?
dunno if this is so good... for me it would be essential to be able to copy my standard c4d tex channels
back and forth between renderers, but that only works if they are used/supported.
with an octane node system all materials/textures must made completely new,
and easy converting of materials gets impossible ....

the standard texture channel in c4d is a VERY powerful tool !!
please make these things accessible in octanec4d !
the layer shader with all its functions to compose a texture with multiple elements,
the basic texture shader which allows to pick certain layers in a psd file, etc etc...

gosh that made me carried away

[decade]

Well this is one of the fundamental questions of any render engine plugin.

- Should it seek to stay faithful to the standalone application - with all those advantages & disadvantages ?

- Or should it instead try to integrate as closely as possible with the host application ? - with all the different advantages & disadvantages ?

Both are valid paths of development. Octane C4D hasn't officially said which path it will follow. But I suspect the 1st one, from what we have seen so far.

I think it's a bit naïve to expect all of the specially developed shaders of the Cinema 4D integrated render to be supported by a render plugin.
This is one of the key advantages of the native render. Maxon has spent many years developing the internal render engine & it's related shaders.
It's too much to expect that a 3rd party render plugin can support all these custom shaders.

[indexofrefraction]

I think it's a bit naïve to expect all of the specially developed shaders of the Cinema 4D integrated render to be supported by a render plugin.
This is one of the key advantages of the native render. Maxon has spent many years developing the internal render engine & it's related shaders.
It's too much to expect that a 3rd party render plugin can support all these custom shaders.

naive.... decade, i work for 20 yrs in this business... its not about cheen, banzi, baji, etc.
i am talking about the texture cannel shader like filter, layer, noise, gradient, fusion, tiles, etc, etc
i see absolutely no reason why they shouldnt work, they do in other 3rd party renderers, too.
these shaders just define/process a texture before it gets sent to the renderer. (some exceptions of course)
anyway... this is a functionality of how to work inside c4d, and a reason why it is so comfortable to do so.
why spend all the time and work to build up an own system which is incompatible to the existing (great) system?

[face]

It will not work because each shader uses a calculation in the renderer.

When you change the renderer, you cannot use these shaders because the new render doesn´t know, how to handle these.
When you know which calculation a shader make, like a simple tile or you get the source code, you can make a copy inside your renderer to do the same.

Thats why some renderes, like vray, has own shaders for materials and/or lights. These renderers try to emulate/convert the standard shaders, so that the user must not convert all shaders by hand.

You will see the problem, when the renderer is designed to use with many applications.
3DS Max, Maya and Softimage uses MentalRay, Cinema has his own, also rhino, daz, lightwave and others.
Try to implement all these shaders in one renderer will take many time...

face

[indexofrefraction]

with shaders like fresnel, falloff, proximal you are right of course ..
but if i am not completely off the way a lot of c4d shaders are just used to generate a texture :
like for example the layers shader which can be used to blend different textures together.
i m pretty sure this does not involve the renderer, it just gives a texture in the end which is used by the renderer.
you could do this in photoshop of course. but its a great time saver that you can do it inside c4d
and ajdust things while previewing instead of generating 20 textures in psd.

[face]

And how you will get and use the raw color texture data which is outcoming from the shader?
You say, the shader isn´t calculated in the renderer, then he must be calculated in the CPU.
How you will mix CPU based shaders and GPU based shaders together?

In MentalRay, each shader is calculated in the renderer. Also simple shaders like layers or shaders which only generate one float value.
Have written a simple shader which calculate the camera frustum from the camera position and an object position. The output is only one float value.
This calculation is written in a MR C framework because you need this framework to make sure that this shader works together with other MR shaders.

I can use this shader also with Octane because i know how he works.
If i find this shader in a render tree, i can use my own calculation and put the result in the Octane shader.
Thats how shader converters work.

Use a simple phong shader, you can read the code in the www.
Rebuild it inside your plugin. Now you can transfer the results from this shader to an existing Octane shader to get nearly the same result.
Or, you can read the values, which the shader use, and send this to the Octane shader.

A simple plug this shader into that shaders doesn´t work...

face

[aoktar]

with shaders like fresnel, falloff, proximal you are right of course ..
but if i am not completely off the way a lot of c4d shaders are just used to generate a texture :
like for example the layers shader which can be used to blend different textures together.
i m pretty sure this does not involve the renderer, it just gives a texture in the end which is used by the renderer.
you could do this in photoshop of course. but its a great time saver that you can do it inside c4d
and ajdust things while previewing instead of generating 20 textures in psd.

I'm curouis that are you aware about shader to texture option of my plugin?

[indexofrefraction]

I'm curouis that are you aware about shader to texture option of my plugin?

uhmm.... now i feel a bit.... going to report back on you

[mantra]

plz position pass