OcDS 1.5 news & others

[aturbanotoy]

Will 1.5 be including a Paste Without Textures option? Seems like this would be very useful, since many times I'm interested in propagating the shader values, without overwriting the underlying image maps on the destination surface. Thank you for your hard work!

do you use templates? i'm asking because the concept of templates in the plugin isn't literally the same as "paste without maps" but the outcome would be pretty much the same.

1.5 will indeed also allow to paste minus maps, but this is naturally limited to identical mat (or node) setups, where templating already allows to replace an octane material while keeping the maps from the linked daz surface mat regardless how the previous material was made up...

Uh oh, I'm not sure what Templates are as they relate to Octane. Is this a user strategy, or a feature of Octane I have not bumped into yet? Sorry for the ignorance, I've only been using this for a couple weeks now.

Also, another question that popped up, had me wondering if 1.5 might have a Replace Preset option? I find myself quite frequently updating a preset, but it seems I have have to delete-old, save, rename. It's just a convenience issue, not biggie. Cheers!

[t_3]

Uh oh, I'm not sure what Templates are as they relate to Octane. Is this a user strategy, or a feature of Octane I have not bumped into yet? Sorry for the ignorance, I've only been using this for a couple weeks now.

here are two posts, which describes some what & how:
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 83#p170183
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 60#p170560

imo the "paste settings minus maps" concept is rather limited, esp. when complex mat setups are in use; if a map is run through a couple of intermediate nodes, and in addition is used on multiple inputs in multiple material nodes (again maybe using mix- or other mapping nodes inbetween), it is pretty hard to decide where to use this particular map in another mat setup, which is built quite differently.

so, if you basically want to swap material setups which use all maps from linked dz mats, the template setup allows you to use a particular map exactly where it should be, even if the replaced oc mat setup is completely different.

this does of course not work if the map in question is not to be taken from a linked dz mat, but i.e. from another source (disk). for such situations 1.5 will also allow to keep maps when pasting settings; the plugin will then try to trace a map all the way down to a material node input pin, and use it in the pasted setup, if this setup also had a map in place on the same pin; it'll try to keep intermediate nodes (like mix, color correction, whatever) intact, but depending on the wiring differences the results may vary.

Also, another question that popped up, had me wondering if 1.5 might have a Replace Preset option? I find myself quite frequently updating a preset, but it seems I have have to delete-old, save, rename. It's just a convenience issue, not biggie. Cheers!

yes, unfortunately this is a little more complex as it sounds in first place. have it on my todo list already, but most probably it won't be there in the 1st 1.5 iteration.

btw, templates can also be saved as presets and directly applied from there...

[aturbanotoy]

Thank you, T_3, templates will easily be a tool I will turn to over and over to address shader reusability. Cheers!

[DrHemulen]

Templates are awesome!

[aturbanotoy]

Now that we have reached May, would it be reasonable to inquire on the status of 1.5? I am eagerly looking forward to its release! Cheers!

[larsmidnatt]

that Photoshop integration looks so awesome.

[wackymidget]

Hi,

Was wondering, will it work together with the Alembic animation Exporter plug-in from DAZ?

Thanks!

[larsmidnatt]

any update?

[larsmidnatt]

More than a few weeks past and no update. Few months actually now have gone by.

How confident are you that materials in 1.2 will work in 1.5? I haven't wasted any time on 1.2 yet but if the same scenario happens where mats are not compatible in the new version I will just wait for 1.5.

[t_3]

More than a few weeks past and no update. Few months actually now have gone by.

How confident are you that materials in 1.2 will work in 1.5? I haven't wasted any time on 1.2 yet but if the same scenario happens where mats are not compatible in the new version I will just wait for 1.5.

there is no plugin specific change to the save format up from 1.2. octane now has a node versioning system, does also internal conversion of nodes from different octane versions (like when attributes did change), and the plugin only saves its own meta data along with it. this is also true for 2.0 and up. it is probably not advised to load newer version's data with older versions, as there are of course just missing features, but in theory that should also work...