Plugin

[JNDesign]

Hi Paul

When we are rendering in Revit, is the plugin using Octane stand alone install to render or is it rendering within itself?

Point being can the stand alone install be removed?


Also, do you see Tutorials coming in future for Revit, similar to Archicad tutorials?


cheers

[face_off]

I believe (but haven't tried it myself) that you can install, activate and use the plugin WITHOUT Octane Standalone installed, although you will still need to activate Standalone (the plugin will handle this). So I /think/ you can safely uninstall Standalone (and it's easy enough to reinstall if I am mistaken on all this).

Tutorials : Yes, we need to look at doing a tutorial series at some point. I know of at least one person who is looking at putting together some tutorials, but if anyone is keen, pls let me know. It's probably something that will take some time to put together.

Paul

[JNDesign]

Great news on tutorials

I think the person doing tutorials will have to just keep in mind that the lighting is alot different in Revit / mental ray.

I was having a few problems initially with emitters / black body etc.

This could be off putting for some who might put the plugin a "too hard" basket.

I believe octane will be the best render engine for revit work flow and also the speed.

So in summary, would be great if someone could put together a few interior night scenes with in Revit and plugin. We would be willing to pay a reasonable amount for this.


cheers

[prehabitat]

Hey JNDesign,

I've had a stack of problems with lights too: blackbody, <default light source>, etc. No method seems to work well/consistently for me - either no power (regardless of 'Power' setting, or 'default light source power' setting) or too much power.
I'm sure there's a harmony of emitter power, and possibly some camera settings, but I haven't had a chance to go through all TimTam's tutorials yet.

What issues did you have? what did you do to get it working nicely?
A few written setting workflows: (x in Revit + Y in plugin = good result) might help a few people out (myself included). (no need for video walkthrough, most of us know what we're doing?
I myself have put interior shots into the too-hard/holiday category for the moment...

[face_off]

I've had a stack of problems with lights too: blackbody, <default light source>, etc. No method seems to work well/consistently for me - either no power (regardless of 'Power' setting, or 'default light source power' setting) or too much power.

Power in Octane is different from power in Revit. In Octane, the amount of light emitted from emitter geometry is proportional to the size of the emitter geometry, so there is not really a Revit-to-Octane emitter power formula. Also - the Octane emitter power can vary depending on the amount of geometry that is attached to that pin on the rendertarget. So you will need to do some testing to determine the ranges of emitters powers best suit you scenes and emitter sizes.

Also, emitters render with the least amount of noise when they are low-poly - so if you are creating emitters, do so which the least number of polygons. I know some people use proxies as emitters, since that gives them the most control over the emitter.

Paul

[prehabitat]

Aha, Thanks Paul,

My previous attempts have all been small (low Poly) task lighting, or atmosphere generating lights - perhaps I'm better off placing a large 'studio light' panel out of view (or concealed) & assigning the emitter material to it as mentioned by you in another post on here?

Andrew

[face_off]

My previous attempts have all been small (low Poly) task lighting, or atmosphere generating lights - perhaps I'm better off using a large 'studio light' panel & assigning the emitter material to it as mentioned by you in another post on here?

I'm not exactly sure what you are saying here. From memory - the Studio Lights don't have any geometry, so cannot be used as emitters. If you use them, you'll need to add an emitter (create the geometry in Revit, or load a familty with a single poly square, or use a proxy).

For the Revit interior shots I've done so far, I used daylight with fake-shadows ENABLED on all the glass (which provided probably 50-70% of the light), and add a couple of emitters (if you add geometry, you can set the opacity to 0 so they cannot be seen) as interior fill lights. But there are people here with way more expertise in this area than me.

Paul

[JNDesign]

Also I have had success with geometry being only 2mm thick (revit cant do any less as you would agree)

also had to forget all mental ray stuff and re learn octane way which is try and use as much sun light and if its a nite scene then use emitters

I think main issue is what we used to do in mental ray is not going to work in octane....

I had a hard time trying to rethink