Working with random color nodes

[riggles]

Doing some testing with the new random color feature. At first I was confused by the Random Seed channel because in the setup properties it's mis-labeled as Random Color only there. Besides changing the label to Random Seed, it might be clearer that it's a random seed control by assigning it an actual seed value like MODO natively does with seed generators for particles, etc. When arranging a series of different colors, like the example in the manual, when the random color seed is left at it's default value of 0 for each random color node, not all color nodes seem to be used, it's weighted to two or three color tones. Is that supposed to happen? If I give all the random color nodes a different seed value (instead of default 0), all colors are included to at least some extent. If the random nodes only function as expected if each one has a different seed value, it would make sense to either both that in the manual and/or assign a random seed upon node creation.

I realize the random color basically blends between the two color inputs randomly, but sometimes you want to randomly select between only specific colors, not a random blending of the two. I tried to use math functions on the random color output (which should be a random float between 0 and 1) so that I could basically round them to 0 or 1 to keep the color inputs from blending, but the Octane plugin won't let me connect it to any math nodes. Why is that? And is there a way to step the output so it's only 0 or 1? That would allow for the use of randomly selected image textures as well (which technically works already, except that the images get blended).

[face_off]

I will change the channel name to "Random Seed".

When arranging a series of different colors, like the example in the manual, when the random color seed is left at it's default value of 0 for each random color node, not all color nodes seem to be used, it's weighted to two or three color tones. Is that supposed to happen? If I give all the random color nodes a different seed value (instead of default 0), all colors are included to at least some extent. If the random nodes only function as expected if each one has a different seed value, it would make sense to either both that in the manual and/or assign a random seed upon node creation.

I don't know the answer to this one - suggest you ask in the Octane 2.0 Standalone thread.

I realize the random color basically blends between the two color inputs randomly, but sometimes you want to randomly select between only specific colors, not a random blending of the two. I tried to use math functions on the random color output (which should be a random float between 0 and 1) so that I could basically round them to 0 or 1 to keep the color inputs from blending, but the Octane plugin won't let me connect it to any math nodes. Why is that? And is there a way to step the output so it's only 0 or 1? That would allow for the use of randomly selected image textures as well (which technically works already, except that the images get blended).

The Random Color node outputs texture (between 0 and 1) rather than a number. I tried to come up with a creative way to lock it into selecting between 2 colors, but could not find a way to do that - sorry. Suggest you submit this as a feature request for Octane Standalone 2.0.

Paul

[riggles]

Thank you Paul. I posted a thread in the support forum with some example images and the requested behavior.
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=40799