OcDS 2.1 PRE RELEASE 5th

[asennov]

What exact issue are you having with animation?

2.x Series has one major issue that prevented me to discover all others - random crash. I never managed to render more than 10 frames with it, so I gave up.

As for 1.2:

Most issues have their roots in how you handle scene geometry updates between frames, this includes: wrong transforms of parented props and conforming figures, not applied modifiers (like push modifier, for example), random switches between high resolution and base meshes from frame to frame. Geografts is a story by itself.

Also there are times when first frame gets out completely wrong or with right geometry but very low spp, I think there is timing issue as you need to make BVH and upload it and this takes time normally allocated to rendering (in rare cases it may even freeze on first frame, need to restart DS after that). As for spp it also may occationally switch to low (~50) in mid-animation.

Materials may be lost for the frame or two (become plain white) and then restored (or not).

Dynamic (generated) geometry is always plain white (although it has correct material in Studio).

Issues with reparenting when prop has been first parented to one figure and then - to other and figures have scale != 100%. Look right in DS viewport but completely wrong in Octane.

[Spectralis]

What exact issue are you having with animation?

2.x Series has one major issue that prevented me to discover all others - random crash. I never managed to render more than 10 frames with it, so I gave up.

As for 1.2:

Most issues have their roots in how you handle scene geometry updates between frames, this includes: wrong transforms of parented props and conforming figures, not applied modifiers (like push modifier, for example), random switches between high resolution and base meshes from frame to frame. Geografts is a story by itself.

Also there are times when first frame gets out completely wrong or with right geometry but very low spp, I think there is timing issue as you need to make BVH and upload it and this takes time normally allocated to rendering (in rare cases it may even freeze on first frame, need to restart DS after that). As for spp it also may occationally switch to low (~50) in mid-animation.

Materials may be lost for the frame or two (become plain white) and then restored (or not).

Dynamic (generated) geometry is always plain white (although it has correct material in Studio).

Issues with reparenting when prop has been first parented to one figure and then - to other and figures have scale != 100%. Look right in DS viewport but completely wrong in Octane.

I've not tried v2 because of negative reports about animation rendering but all the problems you've outlined with v1.2 I've experienced.

[leblancd]

Ok guys, haven't forgotten about you. While it would be great to sit and chat for a while, we think time is best used to further the production of the plug-in. So from time to time we will drop in and give you a bit of update.

There is certainly a good concern about releasing the plug-in based on the Beta for Studio 4.8, while it is a bit harder to hit a moving target if you lead it just right and calculate trajectory, you can hit them from time to time
Certainly we wouldn't release a product as "final" against a beta, since there will always be changes that require patches and such.

**APPLAUSE**
Music to my ears.
Thank you for saying this much. I'm looking forward to what you give us!!

[garand3d]

What exact issue are you having with animation?

All the problems outlined by Asennov with 1.2 I have experienced with 2.15 as well, with the exception of the parenting thing - worth double checking though, I could just be lucky so far.

The biggest problem I've found with 2.15 is with character animations - any animation that involves animating the rig (i.e. bones) is ignored by OcDS. However animating root node's translation, scale and rotation works.

Also with figures that have JCMs such as Genesis and G2s, scene updates after changing a character's pose in DS viewport sometimes ignore their JCMs, it looks correct in DS viewport but not in OcDS viewport. Hitting the reload geo button will almost always fix this, which is fine when you're rendering stills but utter madness when you're rendering hundreds of frames of animation.

[Spectralis]

We all seem to be reporting that the plugin fails to update the scene information with each frame. I'm sure it must be possible to replicate this behaviour with v1.2 and the last v2 beta so it's not exactly news. For some reason (or multiple reasons) the plugin at the current stage in its development is unable to keep up with changes in scene animation. I have more problems with this on an older system than I do on my newer system so I suspect this is partly caused by delays in updating information between DS and the plugin. Maybe there is an information bottleneck with older systems but in order to keep up with animation rendering the plugin skips information on older systems?

[thongology]

For what it's worth, I've experienced all of the aforementioned problems with 2.15, but none of the aforementioned problems with 1.2. Every frame always reloaded correctly in every animation test I did in 1.2. This was on a dual Xeon E5 2650 v2 (16 cores) machine with 64GB RAM and single titan black.

[Spectralis]

For what it's worth, I've experienced all of the aforementioned problems with 2.15, but none of the aforementioned problems with 1.2. Every frame always reloaded correctly in every animation test I did in 1.2. This was on a dual Xeon E5 2650 v2 (16 cores) machine with 64GB RAM and single titan black.

That's a beast of a system! On my new Win 8 system I also experience less problems with v1.2 than on my older, less powerful Win 7 system. I'm sure this has something to do with the systems ability to keep up with the data transfer between DS and the plugin. The problem with that is not everyone has a system powerful enough to keep up so either the plugin system recommendations will need to reflect this or there has to be some way to engineer the plugin to accommodate older systems. This will be especially important if OTOY wish to attract DS users away from iRAY which so far does seem to have much better DS integration and can adapt according to the level of system being used to render animation.

[zimzooma]

Can't you already see what is going to happen here. We will be left holding a bag of outdated software for our money while Otoy displays their wonderful new Octane V3, which was built on the backs of current (paying) users. Of course you can upgrade for a nominal fee and re-enter this wonderful product development cycle. Everything will be fine as long as you don't ever want to move into the future. What has happened with this beta program is an insult. Will people please stop kissing behinds. You shouldn't have to kiss someones butt to get them to do their JOB. Class action???

Just kidding, you guys are doing a bang up job.

[Liagriest]

please just release the beta with animation working that you said is already fixed. I don't care about the new features, and I sincerely hope you are not delaying things just to keep adding new stuff. right now i can't use your software at all because you broken animation when you went from v1 to v2.

i keep checking every week here and everytime the page loads i pray to see an update... we were told it was very close... that was months ago. we were even told it was submitted to otoy for posting.. that was a month ago.

[thongology]

Can't you already see what is going to happen here. We will be left holding a bag of outdated software for our money while Otoy displays their wonderful new Octane V3, which was built on the backs of current (paying) users. Of course you can upgrade for a nominal fee and re-enter this wonderful product development cycle. Everything will be fine as long as you don't ever want to move into the future. What has happened with this beta program is an insult. Will people please stop kissing behinds. You shouldn't have to kiss someones butt to get them to do their JOB. Class action???

Just kidding, you guys are doing a bang up job.

Sorry to say, but even this is likely wishful thinking.