some news from the ongoing frontier

[t_3]

even if some tend to believe that no updates for a long time means no updates forever, this isn't true.
there is still much work to do, much problems to overcome, but it gets together bit by bit (literally).

apart from lots of changes that happen under the hood, there are also some upcoming ui changes:

WHAT CAN BE SEEN HERE...

• a new color swatch (apparently )
  of course being srgb / linear converted from/to octane
  
  • much better color picking by color ring and hue/brightness box (plus sliders and values of course)
  • live update to the according rgb spectrum node
  • rgb, hsv and hsl input, rgb hex text input, cmyk input
  • complete ral color picker
  • 32 preset slots
  • picker for screen colors
• new value input module (sliders)
  completely done from scratch to match octane's needs, allowing much more precise input:
  
  • adaptive logarithmic range; means the slider scale stretches according to the value range
  • adaptive quantized steps when sliding or using the +/- stepper
  • mouse wheel stepping (not on focus but with rmb click, to avoid accidental changes)
  • tab key navigation to cycle directly through the values
  • up/down stepper for list values (like i.e. the camera tonemapping)
  • minor detail: since the hotpixel removal is likely to be misinterpreted,
    as 1 is no and 0 is full removal, the slider for this particular node is inverted
• mode values saving
  
  • revert to previous value after changes
  • revert to the initial value (when the node was created/loaded)
  • memorize & restore a single value (per node)
  • add own often needed values (of course saved to disk)
  in addition i'm trying to utilize the daz studio undo/redo also for octane changes. this is rather complicated, but if once done, it will even allow to undo changes to the material structure (node connections) done in the nge.

other features/ongoing work worth to mention:
- auto rayepsilon calculation (as seen above - the slider in blue)
- material saving to a local material db
- material saving to .duf scene subsets (like figure and shader presets)
- completely redone scene data saving to avoid data loss when the plugin is not active
- a new lights tab similar to materials, dedicated to mesh lights in a scene (for quick access)
- access to other materials nodes from any material (in the nge)
- node and material preview (already shown in the roadmap topic)
- timed autosave for still image rendering
- "what's this" help system for settings (will later on be extended to cover any of the octane parameters)
- lots of small improvements here and there
- and a plethora of fixes to known issues.

when will it come?
when it's done...

... and believe it or not, it will happen

[SimonJM]

An impressive array of upgrades. Have a break and a cup of tea and a biscuit.

Ok, that's long enough - back to work!

[dustrider]

Thanks for the update - great to know what's in the works.

[bluerocket]

Thanks T_3

Keep going please

Regards

[gyoung]

Very much appreciate the news on the updates, looking forward to it!

[SiliconAya]

Good to see!

Re the new colour picker, will we still be able to make/use custom colour presets?

I currently have 8 different shades of gray and a few other colours preset and it's a feature I use heavily.

[t_3]

Good to see!

Re the new colour picker, will we still be able to make/use custom colour presets?

I currently have 8 different shades of gray and a few other colours preset and it's a feature I use heavily.

yes; it's the bottom right of the 4 views; you can drag the current color from the preview area onto any of the 32 slots to save it...

ps. shades of gray

[linvanchene]

edited and removed by user

[slash]

Thanks T_3!

[t_3]

...more news:

user presets - finally;
i already mentioned it...

how it works - for render settings & environments:
- by using the copy dialog and ticking the "save to my presets" checkbox, exactly that happens
- user presets are at any time available from the according dropdown box (= without extra loading)
- selecting them from there will directly apply them to the scene
- when selected, they can't be edited (= grayed out, just like presets should behave )
- they can still be directly renamed and deleted, and of course copied forth & back into/from the scene

additional behaviors: most important is, that a scene won't keep a reference to a preset - if you save a scene while a preset is selected, it will be copied into the scene during save, otherwise deleting presets would of course alter other scenes that may use them also (if accidentally done - no problem just delete it from the scene).

this means you can switch between presets the same way as with scene settings/environments, seeing immediate results, and copy them into the scene if you like to keep them within. afaik this is as much straight forward and easy to use as can be.

note: user presets for materials, render settings and environments will be saved into a database that is created in your user profile (in the octane specific folder), means the settings can be easily backed up also...