Octane/LW questions and comments

[Builtdown]

Hi,
Just uppgraded from LW9.6+Fprime to LW 11.6+Octane. There has been two days of experimenting.
Been pretty happy with the results. Rendered an old interior scene that took ~11 hours on previous setup. Now it took only ~4 hours and looks maybe a bit better.

1. LW 11.6 is having problems with European letters (ä and ö). It turns them to chinese letters and can´t find the files from folders. Anyone has had this or can help to solve this?

2. Octane for LW crashes if an object has a surface name with an European letter.

3. Let´s say I have a tabletop with a wood texture and glossy material. I want the wood to have some reflection (50%) but don´t want it to turn almost white. In LW surface editor I would put reflection to 50% and lower the diffuse value. How should I do this with Octane?

4. IPR scene looks good. When starting to render F9 the scene looks different (darker). Why is this? (When the render is finished, the final picture looks just like in IPR)

5. I have seen videos of how to click+set the DOF focus point in IPR. How to do this in IPR/Lightwave?

6. LW Surface Editor has a possibility to change the Smoothing treshold. In Octane materials there is only Smooth on/off. Is this true?

I´m sure there will be more questions, but I will begin with these.
I will be thankful if someone can help me out.


- Builtdown

[FrankPooleFloating]

Hey there. Welcome to Octane for LW!

Have you read through the entire manual? http://render.otoy.com/manuals/Lightwave3D/ Every minute you spend studying is going to be time very well spent, and you save you a bunch of heartache/misery.

#3 - You will want to understand how glossy material's specular, roughness and index (very important) work.

#4 - You need to switch over to a Full Linear CS setup. Hit D or O in Layout and change all CS settings to Linear.

#5 - You should have a ThinLens Camera plugged into your Render Target. Double-click it (which opens it) and click Pick Focus in IPR Window.

[juanjgon]

Hi and welcome !!!

Yes, currently you can't use European letters with the Octane plugin, I am not sure if LightWave 11.6 itself also has problems, but there is an issue not fixed yet in the plugin.

For reflections in Octane you need to use the glossy material node, where you can set the textures or values for both diffuse and reflection channels.

Your problem with the different lighting in the IPR/F9 could be that you don't have all the Lightwave color space settings disabled (all set to linear)

You have an option to pick the focus point in the Camera node, available in the render target node editor

You can set the smoothing threshold for the Octane objects with the parameter in the surface editor, but you need to reload the scene in the IPR to see the changes.

-Juanjo

[Builtdown]

Hi,

Thanks, what I great forum. Got all the answers in few minutes

#3. Thanks for the "Refraction index" tip!. Didn´t realise it earlier. I was used to set a gradient in reflection channels Incidence Angle.

#4. I have all the CS setting as Linear. But this is not so big of a deal.

#5. I found the "Pick focus in IPR Window". But I have to click it everytime I want to change focus point. Any shortcut for it or something?

[juanjgon]

It is strange your problem with the IPR/F9 render difference, if all your LightWave color space settings are set to linear. There is an option in the render target root node options panel "Get full linear HDRI image" that should be disabled to get always the same render, but I am not sure if this is your problem.

And yes, sorry, currently you need to click over "Pick focus in IPR Window" for each focus pick.

-Juanjo

[UnCommonGrafx]

Someone posted this graphic for using the lw camera's dof settings to control the Octane camera's dof.
I have found it indispensable and keeps it lw-ish.

[Builtdown]

Hi,

Few new questions :

1# When I zoom in IPR with my mouse wheel, the zoom doesn´t go where my mouse arrow is. This is very annoying. I have to zoom, then move the view, then zoom, then move, etc... In Fprime zoom went always where the mouse arrow was.

2# I see some hot pixels in my IPR view. I want to put on Imager and lower Hot Pixel Visibility but the Imager is changing my image in all other ways also. How can I keep the image looking the same as without Imager but to turn only Hot Pixel Visibility on?

3# I put a background picture to Lightwave>Compositing>Background Image but can´t get it to show in my IPR or final render.



- Builtdown

[gordonrobb]

Someone posted this graphic for using the lw camera's dof settings to control the Octane camera's dof.
I have found it indispensable and keeps it lw-ish.

fstop2.jpg

That's neat. You could just add the null for setting focal distance thing and it would be superb.

[FrankPooleFloating]

#1 - Juanjo is working on it. It should be in next version.

#3 - You need to Enable Alpha Channel in Render Target > Kernel.

[Builtdown]

Thanks!

Can someone help me with these :

1# I see some hot pixels in my IPR view. I want to put on Imager and lower Hot Pixel Visibility but the Imager is changing my image in all other ways also. How can I keep the image looking the same as without Imager but to turn only Hot Pixel Visibility on?

2# I render a frame F9 with Octane. It takes 10 minutes to finish. Then I set a render region with LW that is about 1/4 of the original screen size. F9 with Octane takes same 10 minutes to finish the region. What´s the point? To me the smaller region should be faster to render...

3# I have a exterior scene with a Daylight setup and Pathtracing. The shadowed areas are very dark. How could I lighten them up a bit without burning up the light areas?


- Builtdown