Standalone GUI Request - Independant viewport scaling

[rcheezum]

For background, I have been working in CG for 15 years, working in everything from PowerAnimator and Softimage in the early days, up through 3dsmax, Maya and all the lovely rendering technologies that have evolved over the years. I have watched the progression of GPU based rendering for the last 5 years or so, but never really felt it was ready for production, until now. I didn't even know Octane existed until doing some R&D with the GearVR and was intrigued by the demos that are on the Samsung S6. So great job working with the Samsung/FacebOcculus teams to get that in there!

I threw some data into the demo on my Macbook Pro and within an hour had a pretty damn good image, better than I would have gotten in Vray/Mental Ray in that time, so I ponied up and bought a license, build a proper GPU rig and am now loving it and looking forward to seeing Octane evolve. I've also been telling all my friends, some who found it before me and weren't so kind to show me the light sooner Oh well, better late than never.

So, I am using the standalone and not the plugin. Why? Well, because I am cheap and I have a license of 2013 and Autodesk is being a pain about getting the update to 2013.5 for me so I can use the plugin for my ancient license. That is all good though, because I like to work with the native rendering interface to really learn the in's an out's before I have to navigate the plugin and the equivalent Maya nodes.

With that said, there are some things in the standalone that make it a little frustrating to use. I could put together a list, but most of them are just things that getting more familiar with it would solve, like picking materials with the material picker instead of selecting them in the outline panel, so that the viewport doesn't shift to the object node instead of the render target...

The only thing I would really like to see is some independent control of the viewport resolution and final resolution. I really want to be able to work with framing up my scene using a scaled preview of my render target, while the render is actually rendering at the full resolution. Currently, I have to set the resolution, and pan around using the sliders to make sure the shot is in frame, or adjust the scale down, frame it up, and then adjust it back up. I understand that some of the plugins actually do this, but I have not found a way to do this in the standalone. Perhaps I just suck at googling how to do this if it does exist, but if it doesn't, please think about adding it to a next release.

Thanks!

[Rikk The Gaijin]

I don't know if this will help you, but if you pause the render (or lock the viewport), then you press CTRL and left click in the viewport, you can pan around, and with mouse wheel up or down you can zoom in and out your image without changing the camera in your scene.
There is also a button in the toolbar (the monitor with two axis arrows) to fit the rendered image to your viewport size.
In the upcoming version 3 it will also be possible to detach the render view and move it to a separate monitor.

[rcheezum]

This is exactly what I was looking for, it works both in locked and unlocked modes. Just wish it was documented or had some GUI buttons then

[kavorka]

With that said, there are some things in the standalone that make it a little frustrating to use. I could put together a list, but most of them are just things that getting more familiar with it would solve, like picking materials with the material picker instead of selecting them in the outline panel, so that the viewport doesn't shift to the object node instead of the render target...

Thanks!

If I am reading this correctly, there is a button on the left of the node inspector that shows a sphere with an eye above it. disable that and it wont switch to rendering the material ball instead of the render target.

[Rikk The Gaijin]

This is exactly what I was looking for, it works both in locked and unlocked modes. Just wish it was documented or had some GUI buttons then

I feel you on this. Octane is a great piece of software, but the manual is really poor. Basically if you don't ask here in the forum, you'll never find half of the features...