OctaneRender for Carrara 2.06.0047 [Stable]

[SciFiFunk]

Hi Sighman,

Thanks for completing this epic work. It's great that you've gone straight in at 2.0 Hopefully this will put Carrara on the map at least until the other plugins catchup. In the meantime it's up to us to show what Carrara can do.

I'm currently adjusting to the interface having spent a couple of months with the DAZ-OCTANE interface.

I'm having difficulty in getting the Octane viewport to update to the current camera. If I select a change of camera in the 3D view, the viewport doesn't update. If I go into the render room and change the camera it will update.

I'm not sure if I'm missing something here, or whether this is how it works, but it would save me a lot of clicks to have the viewport change with the current camera. I am constantly switching between cameras to create my movie sets.

Secondly most of the time I used CTRL-SHIFT-O I got an in built Carrara command "Send to Origin". I changed that keyboard shortcut in Carrara preferences to solve the issue. It might be worth adding in the manual that new users need to do that.

The other thing that is causing me pain is the viewport it's self will lock up when rebuilding a scene. I've tried this on LOW and MEDIUM render priority settings. (Fast means I lose control over my GUI so I've not gone there more than once). It would be helpful to be able to minimise or drag it out the way to continue working on the Carrara scene whist waiting for the rebuild.

Cheers!

Steve

[SciFiFunk]

Hello again.

I am posting concerns here as this is the only Carrara thread atm, but feel free to move my posts to a wishlist/bugs thread.

I am looking at the Sunlight, HDRI and combined options. I think it's great that you've integrated the sunlight into Octanes sun light. When setting up the lighting on a scene, one of the joys of DAZ/Octane is that you move a slider and get a real time update on how the sun falls across your scene. This makes for rapid scene lighting.

If I am understanding correctly here, we get an update only when committing the changes in the sunlight popup window. This is quite a drawback with the techniques for fast rendering I've developed under DAZ (I avoid emitters where possible and use sunlight/daylight with cut out scenes to get near instant rendering).

Is this a limitation of the Native Carrara interface or could at least sun position and time of day be moved out into "Octane Environment" settings? That would help a great deal!

Thanks

Steve

[Sighman]

Hi Sighman,

Thanks for completing this epic work. It's great that you've gone straight in at 2.0 Hopefully this will put Carrara on the map at least until the other plugins catchup. In the meantime it's up to us to show what Carrara can do.

I'm currently adjusting to the interface having spent a couple of months with the DAZ-OCTANE interface.

I'm having difficulty in getting the Octane viewport to update to the current camera. If I select a change of camera in the 3D view, the viewport doesn't update. If I go into the render room and change the camera it will update.

I'm not sure if I'm missing something here, or whether this is how it works, but it would save me a lot of clicks to have the viewport change with the current camera. I am constantly switching between cameras to create my movie sets.

The 'Octane' camera should be the camera that is set as the Render Camera in the render settings. If the view port is not tracking this camera then it is something I need to look into. As an alternative you might want to try switching the view port to free camera mode. This will give you a new view of your scene independent of the Carrara cameras.

Secondly most of the time I used CTRL-SHIFT-O I got an in built Carrara command "Send to Origin". I changed that keyboard shortcut in Carrara preferences to solve the issue. It might be worth adding in the manual that new users need to do that.

Noted.

The other thing that is causing me pain is the viewport it's self will lock up when rebuilding a scene. I've tried this on LOW and MEDIUM render priority settings. (Fast means I lose control over my GUI so I've not gone there more than once). It would be helpful to be able to minimise or drag it out the way to continue working on the Carrara scene whist waiting for the rebuild.
Cheers!

Steve

Not much that can be done there I'm afraid. The rebuild is CPU intensive not GPU. Once the scene is loaded into the viewport then the GPU kicks in. The best workflow in this case may be to close the viewport while working on your scene.

[Sighman]

Hello again.

I am posting concerns here as this is the only Carrara thread atm, but feel free to move my posts to a wishlist/bugs thread.

I am looking at the Sunlight, HDRI and combined options. I think it's great that you've integrated the sunlight into Octanes sun light. When setting up the lighting on a scene, one of the joys of DAZ/Octane is that you move a slider and get a real time update on how the sun falls across your scene. This makes for rapid scene lighting.

If I am understanding correctly here, we get an update only when committing the changes in the sunlight popup window. This is quite a drawback with the techniques for fast rendering I've developed under DAZ (I avoid emitters where possible and use sunlight/daylight with cut out scenes to get near instant rendering).

Is this a limitation of the Native Carrara interface or could at least sun position and time of day be moved out into "Octane Environment" settings? That would help a great deal!

Thanks

Steve

Yeah, that is an annoying 'feature' of Carrara's Realistic Sky dialog. It is not 'real-time'. The alternative is to use the Sun-Light lighting widget to position the sun. This will give you an update after you make an adjustment.

[orion_uk]

Hello again.

I am posting concerns here as this is the only Carrara thread atm, but feel free to move my posts to a wishlist/bugs thread.

I am looking at the Sunlight, HDRI and combined options. I think it's great that you've integrated the sunlight into Octanes sun light. When setting up the lighting on a scene, one of the joys of DAZ/Octane is that you move a slider and get a real time update on how the sun falls across your scene. This makes for rapid scene lighting.

If I am understanding correctly here, we get an update only when committing the changes in the sunlight popup window. This is quite a drawback with the techniques for fast rendering I've developed under DAZ (I avoid emitters where possible and use sunlight/daylight with cut out scenes to get near instant rendering).

Is this a limitation of the Native Carrara interface or could at least sun position and time of day be moved out into "Octane Environment" settings? That would help a great deal!

Thanks

Steve

Hi Steve,

The solution described for new users too

1st making sure Atmosphere is set to Sky in scene / Effects tab...

In the tree list (instances tab) select the default light (AKA:Light 1) or add your own Sunlight. Now change it to sunlight in the General Tab above from distant light to Sunlight..

You can then rotate the Sun-Light lighting widget (the arrow with the sun above it in your work area) to position the sun as you need for Live viewport updates

EDIT:

Lol, Sighman posted while I was typing

[SciFiFunk]

The 'Octane' camera should be the camera that is set as the Render Camera in the render settings. If the view port is not tracking this camera then it is something I need to look into. As an alternative you might want to try switching the view port to free camera mode. This will give you a new view of your scene independent of the Carrara cameras.

The viewport is tracking the render camera fine from my early experiments. What would really help my scene development is that when I change the 3DView camera, the viewport also updates. With DAZ it will work some of the time, other times I rebuild and it updates. With Carrara I cannot get an update this way.

The reason this is a problem for me is that I specialize in large scenes. Often Carrara it's self is unresponsive due to the scene size, so I set up a lot of cameras covering the set, then switch between them. atm I will have to go in and out of the Render room.

...The best workflow in this case may be to close the viewport while working on your scene.

I can adjust to that.

RE SUNLIGHT: Sighman & Orion_Uk - GREAT! That solves that one. Cue those 24 hour in a second demos!

[SciFiFunk]

Sunlight.

I've got a horrible feeling this is a 8.5 thing only. I use 8.1 to avoid a whole load of 8.5 bugs and to keep my scenes compatible (I often merge scenes in together).

In 8.1 The sunlight shows as a standard distant light. I've set the atmosphere to both realistic sky and sky (tested both), then added a sunlight, ensuring it says it's a type sunlight. I rotate, but only see a difference when rebuilding the scene. Also I fail to see how I can change the time of day like this in real-time unless you are referring to brightness - which surely is a different parameter.

atm I'm no further forward. I could animate the suns position in the sequencer and render out a test sequence but that's a very slow way of working.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

[SciFiFunk]

I'm going to post both positive feedback and issues.

POSITIVE. Just rendered my First test Carrara-OCTANE animation, with the motion blur that comes in 2.0. Wow!

First of all a big thank you Sighman for not setting a minimum samples on the animation. This means on my dual card setup I can test render at one second per frame. 1 second!!

The earlier items I mentioned will slow down my development, but this one thing will GREATLY decrease the animation time. I am testing 2 second clips with a 48 second wait. Woohooh!

Previously this would never be possible under Cararra native unless you had a CPU monster of a machine (which no one had lets be honest). Then under DAZ-OCTANE, you had an artificial limit of (I think) 20 seconds, which was a real pain.

48 seconds is the time it takes to pop to the bathroom or drink a few sips of tea ... and then you are BACK!

Well done Sighman.

[Sighman]

Sunlight.

I've got a horrible feeling this is a 8.5 thing only. I use 8.1 to avoid a whole load of 8.5 bugs and to keep my scenes compatible (I often merge scenes in together).

In 8.1 The sunlight shows as a standard distant light. I've set the atmosphere to both realistic sky and sky (tested both), then added a sunlight, ensuring it says it's a type sunlight. I rotate, but only see a difference when rebuilding the scene. Also I fail to see how I can change the time of day like this in real-time unless you are referring to brightness - which surely is a different parameter.

atm I'm no further forward. I could animate the suns position in the sequencer and render out a test sequence but that's a very slow way of working.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

I haven't actually tested the sunlight control in 8.1 myself. I will need to investigate further.
For animation, changing the sun position/time should generate a new key frame in the carrara timeline which the plugin should pick up.

[SciFiFunk]

Some more notes on Animation.

This is what I do, animation. Carrara is a great all round tool, with a pretty decent animation toolkit you can use without leaving the program. So these features would greatly help an animator.

1. We need to know which frame we are on when animating out a sequence.
2. Time left to complete render would help us to plan our work.
3. When animating with the camera a dynamic render whilst moving the Pan Icon would mean I could have the viewport open whilst choosing a camera position/movement. atm it only updates after I let go of the icon - the Carrara 3dview updates as you move.

Less of a priority, but important.

4. I'm having to keep half an eye on OC guru as I can't see a temperature read out on the cards. This becomes important on long rendering sessions.

Thanks.

Hope this feedback is useful. Thanks for your replies.