Yes I agree completely. I think the way it works now is nice. I would just like to see more options to match the functionality of the standalone and other plugins. The dropdown panels could simply display the node that's currently plugged in.
Having thought about this some more - my preference is to add functionality/properties to the existing kernel, camera, etc properties panels rather than expose these via the schematic, since the former method will b much less confusing to users. The "Use Modo FStop" channel in the Camera properties of the next version being a good example of this. I can split the current camera/imager/postproc panel into 3 if things get too crowded.
Octane runs a startup command to initialise a few variables. This marks the default scene as changed resulting in modo always asking you if you want to save changes when you exit.
There must be a different way to run a command on startup that doesnt cause this. MeshFusion runs a script and initialises variables on startup similar to octane but doesnt mark the scene as changed.
The "scene changed" state is being triggered when the plugin adds the Octane channels to the Modo Camera and Render items. I have posted the question to the Modo devs on how to suppress this state change - may not be possible.
Paul, can you allow us to set the default kernel/cam/env ect settings? One thing I like about the lightwave plugin is that it allows me to set a default "render target" setup and also allows me to save out presets. Similar things can be done in the standalone by saving node graphs as orbx (use to be macros)
It can be a bit of a pain having to change the settings with each new scene (or converting old scenes)
Yes, all my other plugins allow the saving of a "default" rendertarget state. I have found a couple of ways to implement this with the Modo plugin - but none are fully automatic. I would appreciate peoples feedback on this. The current best (IMO) method is to save the Modo Render (and optionally Camera) item as a preset. Then simply load that preset when you start a new scene or load an existing lxo which has not had the plugin run on it previously. You can also automatically load that preset by adding a command to the config.cfg file, however that doesn't load the preset when you load an existing lxo which has not previously. I can also modify the plugin so that when it needs to add the package of plugin channels to the Render item, it loads a Render preset (containing your preferred setup) - although this has the potential to go wrong.
Also, keep in mind the Octane kernel/resolution settings are attached to the Modo Render item, and the camera/images/postproc settings are attached to the Camera item. So the default settings are split across the Render and Camera items.
The other consideration is that when you load a Preset, it loads ALL Render/Camera settings, not just the Octane settings - so you run the risk of unintentionally overwriting Render/Camera settings.
The other solution to this is to have a blank Modo startup scene - which contains the Octane default settings.
And yet another solution is for the plugin to pull the default settings from an XML file, however you would need to manually edit that file when you want to change the default settings, which may not be that convenient.
Anyhow, would appreciate your feedback on this topic.
Paul
