OctaneRender™ for Blender 1.52 - 4.8 beta Win [OBSOLETE]

[ROUBAL]

@ Jimstar : No, I hit Animation directly. The logins/passwords fields are empty. Render works, so the server is already active and there is no need to type the logins/passwords again.

In the last scene I sent to you, the only difference with the previous one (other than the materials renamed) is that I used the recent Exclude layer to avoid the export of the camera, as Viewport hide priority didn't seem to exclude the hidden camera from export, as well as putting it simply on a non selected layer. One of the short successful exports shown that the camera is exported anyway.

[ROUBAL]

Octane Alembic importer has a feature in preferences, to allow merging materials with same names. It is great, but the problem is that the exporter in Blender plugin creates different names for same materials belonging to different meshes.

So this prevents the importer to do its job, and leads to alembic nodes with much more materials than needed.

In my example, the car has four wheels sharing 6 materials. After export, there are 24 pins for these 6 materials. The wheels also share some materials with the car body, so around 30 pins created when only 6 would be required... very tedious to assign materials in Octane.

I know that there is a LUA script for merging materials, but we have to rename all materials in Blender following a special pattern of names, and create Template objects to give a Guide to the script... something not actually usable in a serious workflow as it is as long as assigning the materials in Octane. But over all, the Merge Materials script uses a special prefix added to the material names, to be compared with reference names of the Template object... But as the exporter for Blender adds the name of the mesh before the prefix, the script can't work anyway with Blender plugin !

[JimStar]

Octane Alembic importer has a feature in preferences, to allow merging materials with same names. It is great, but the problem is that the exporter in Blender plugin creates different names for same materials belonging to different meshes.

So this prevents the importer to do its job, and leads to alembic nodes with much more materials than needed.

In my example, the car has four wheels sharing 6 materials. After export, there are 24 pins for these 6 materials. The wheels also share some materials with the car body, so around 30 pins created when only 6 would be required... very tedious to assign materials in Octane.

I know that there is a LUA script for merging materials, but we have to rename all materials in Blender following a special pattern of names, and create Template objects to give a Guide to the script... something not actually usable in a serious workflow as it is as long as assigning the materials in Octane. But over all, the Merge Materials script uses a special prefix added to the material names, to be compared with reference names of the Template object... But as the exporter for Blender adds the name of the mesh before the prefix, the script can't work anyway with Blender plugin !

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 70#p179870

[MattRM]

Hi,

I found a bug with stereo option in camera. In attachment a video of the bug.

Matt

https://vimeo.com/93837362

[Marten74]

Hello, again

I would really appreciate if someone could give me a hand getting this "Alembic version" to work. It was a long time I needed to think about how to install any version (just been working directly after install), so maybe I´m just forgetting a little detail that makes all the difference?

I install the blender and server component in to new directorys. I create a simple object with a octane material and a camera (my default scene setup is blank). I then enter the login and password by copy paste directly from my webb account (enter each number and hit enter). I then hit render and get the error messages below. What is going wrong? I have a I7 system with 16Gb ram that is a couple of years old with a Titan graphics card. It has fairly new drivers, but maybe not the latest. Could that be a problem? I´m guessing it´s something else though.

Not sure what the "only node-textures are supported" mean or if it is even a broblem. The only texture loaded in the scene is a hdr exr connected to the world output node with a octane image node (so I guess my default scene is not completely empty). Has the nodes changed so that my scene is loading an older node version that is not compatible?

Super greatful for a push in the right direction since I´m tinkering with a project now that could benifit from the Alembic functionality. And I´m curious of the new version and would love to work in Blender 2.70.

Thanks in advance!

::mb

[ROUBAL]

@Jimstar : I was exactly referring to the topic you put in link : Currently the way the plugin exports alembic files (modifying the original materials nodes names by adding a prefix and the name of the mesh) is not compatible with the LUA script that Stratified made as a workaround !

I precise that I use Full/Reshapable, and that the geometry is not multiplicated by the number of frames. Each object is present only once in the scene. The materials shared by several objects have same name in Blender and different names after export in the alembic node.

Stratified wrote :
Here's a script I hacked together. It tries to group the materials of an abc archive that match the material names of a "guidance" obj mesh (e.g. RED_1, RED_2 & RED_3 would match RED and are grouped together "RED"). If the "guidance" obj mesh is bogus then you would get an abc mesh that's the same as the original.

For example, even if I export a reference object (car wheel, obj file as specified in Stratified's example) with materials TireGrey, TireBlack,WheelChrome... and name my wheels materials to be exported the same (or even different like TireGrey_1, TireGrey_2), The alembic material nodes will use the mesh name and will add aprefix : __m_Wheel-Front.R-TireGrey, __m_Wheel-Front.L-TireGrey, __m_Wheel-Rear.R-TireGrey ... The MergeMaterial Lua script will not find in the alembic file the prefix TireGrey it needs to work by comparison with the reference obj node !

The script works for other 3D plugins, but Blender plugins doesn't allow the Official Octane built in importer to merge materials, and doesn't allow the use of this script as a workaround. Multiplicated material pins are really a problem !

In my big project, I try to use as few materials as possible and make them shared when possible by several objects, and despite that I can have 60 materials in one object (detailed car being seen from inside). Currently I have some alembic nodes larger than my wide screen, with many spread pins for almost each material, and connecting these pins to materials nodes is a nightmare !

I started my project inside Octane, and have a big collection of ready complex object. This is one of the reasons why I want to use alembic exports to animate my objects while reusing materials already made in Standalone. The other reason is that having few RAM (8GB) on my system, and being on the edge with the full scene, I don't want Blender to be opened simultaneously with the renderer. I really need an efficient and reliable Alembic exporter ! In order to leave the regular tools working properly, it is important that the alembic exporter doesn't change the name of the materials.

[enricocerica]

Octane Alembic importer has a feature in preferences, to allow merging materials with same names. It is great, but the problem is that the exporter in Blender plugin creates different names for same materials belonging to different meshes.

So this prevents the importer to do its job, and leads to alembic nodes with much more materials than needed.

In my example, the car has four wheels sharing 6 materials. After export, there are 24 pins for these 6 materials. The wheels also share some materials with the car body, so around 30 pins created when only 6 would be required... very tedious to assign materials in Octane.

I know that there is a LUA script for merging materials, but we have to rename all materials in Blender following a special pattern of names, and create Template objects to give a Guide to the script... something not actually usable in a serious workflow as it is as long as assigning the materials in Octane. But over all, the Merge Materials script uses a special prefix added to the material names, to be compared with reference names of the Template object... But as the exporter for Blender adds the name of the mesh before the prefix, the script can't work anyway with Blender plugin !

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 70#p179870

Hi Jim,

I followed what suggested in the mentioned topic.
I set animated objects as movable proxy and the other as scatter.
Seems to work fine for me but if I select animation with movable proxies option, well nothing moves anymore in the standalone I must select full option to get the animation in the standalone and indeed the alembic file size is greater.

[JimStar]

Hi Jim,

I followed what suggested in the mentioned topic.
I set animated objects as movable proxy and the other as scatter.
Seems to work fine for me but if I select animation with movable proxies option, well nothing moves anymore in the standalone I must select full option to get the animation in the standalone and indeed the alembic file size is greater.

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong, but I can't reproduce it...

I set the animation to "Movable proxies":

Then set all movable objects to "Movable proxy" type:

After alembic file is exported and opened inside standalone - I get the working animation, where the objects move when I scroll the timeline:

[JimStar]

... the exporter for Blender adds the name of the mesh before the prefix, the script can't work anyway with Blender plugin !

If by "the exporter for Blender" you mean this integrated plugin - then you are wrong, it does not add "the name of the mesh" to material name. The material names are exported as is. So, if you get them changed inside standalone - they are changed not by this plugin's export.

E.g. this is the scene where all different objects (cubes) have the same "Block" material set, and the floor plane has "Material" material set:

Here is the result of alembic export:

So, please, if you get some issues - just send me the scene with dry and detailed description how to reproduce your issue.

PS. Please, less emotions, more descriptions.

[ROUBAL]

So, please, if you get some issues - just send me the scene with dry and detailed description how to reproduce your issue.

PS. Please, less emotions, more descriptions.

As I need a working tool, I do my best to be awake when you are too, despite 10 hours of time shift, to get faster response on each part. So sorry if there is a bit of emotion in my text. It is more fatigue than emotion.

I thought I described enough... I joined screen shots and explained in detail. I will prepare a scene, but it is not scene dependent, it occurs with any export and it is difficult to believe that it happens only to me.

When I have a material named for example WheelGrey belonging to a mesh named Wheel-Front.R, after export the name of the corresponding input pin in alembic node in Octane is __m_Wheel-Front.R-WheelGrey. And as there are 4 wheels, I get four pins per material with each material name ending by a different number.

I will prepare a file...