OcDS Setup v2.2 (last Beta)

[Notiusweb]

Okay, let's start by listing generic issue points. We can expand on them as we get our list going... I can compile after reading your posts. And this would be with goal of not requiring a workaround in the future.

From my own experience, so far I know of:
(1) Materials Conversion - problems converting materials (including IRay materials) from Daz to OcDS
(2) Delete Key - while using in OcDS deletes character in Daz scene
(3) Plugin Stall - plugin no longer functions, grayed out...cannot create 'New' scene in Daz, can only load 'Recent'
(4) Non-responsive node to keyboard - sometimes you can't type a numeric figure for a node parameter, you have to use a mouse on the slider, then it works
(5) Drop-Down Defaults to 'None' - sometimes when using a node drop-down, and you select something other than 'None", it sets itself as 'None" requiring a second drop-down entry (then it works....)

Others? Let's get our list

[Hydra]

That Black Scalp Blotch is solved easily enough by changing/applying a displacement offset to the scalp. In this case you can just set to a 0 offset.

Not all materials seem to have this issue, and frankly I almost always set displacements to +x, and offset -.5x. So I'd make the same mistake by hand. You just need to figure out how the material works with your render.

The source of this glitching has to do with differences between how different rendering engines handle different materials. Octane doesn't handle intersecting planes, well, and some materials don't use the same numeric ranges for its maps, so there's no real automatic solution. (Maybe.. but I kinda doubt it.)

[giovanino]

don't see gloss on objects , what am I doing deferent

[Notiusweb]

Postby giovanino » Mon Jun 29, 2015 1:12 am
don't see gloss on objects , what am I doing deferent

I'll take a shot at this...I think it's the 'Roughness' set to '0' (Between 'Specular' and 'Index of Refraction'), needs to be > 0. Slide Roughness > 0, then mess with Specular and Index of Refraction.

Post by Hydra » Sun Jun 28, 2015 10:52 pm
That Black Scalp Blotch is solved easily enough by changing/applying a displacement offset to the scalp. In this case you can just set to a 0 offset.

Not all materials seem to have this issue, and frankly I almost always set displacements to +x, and offset -.5x. So I'd make the same mistake by hand. You just need to figure out how the material works with your render.

The source of this glitching has to do with differences between how different rendering engines handle different materials. Octane doesn't handle intersecting planes, well, and some materials don't use the same numeric ranges for its maps, so there's no real automatic solution. (Maybe.. but I kinda doubt it.)

You are right, thanks! This method can hide the blotches, at the cost of modding the hair itself to a different shape and location. But, taking your idea and running with it, and incorporating Spectralis' suggestion of opacity on the skullcap, I adjusted not the 'Displacement', but the 'Height', which did not as overtly mod the shape of the hair, but rather minimized the blotching further. Then, I adjusted the Opacity on the 'Scalp' material, and also raised the Detail resolution to 8152 x 8152 for both the 'Over' and 'Under' materials on the Krayon hair for V7.
I was able to get the following results:

V7 Krayon Hair 3Delight Material, OcDS, with Scalp Height & Opacity adjustments, along with raised Over and Under hair material detail of 8152 x 8152

V7 Krayon Hair Iray Material, OcDS, with Scalp Opacity set to '0'... admittedly, wouldn't be the chosen method

And so, yeah, with the 3Delight material tinkering in OcDS you can, after a deal of time, get it to look decent. But look at this...straight through Daz's Iray, without any material tinkering:

V7 Krayon Hair 3Delight Material, Daz Iray

V7 Krayon Hair Iray Material, Daz Iray

With my Titan X by itself, the OcDS images at 500px rendered in ~30 seconds. For the Daz Iray images, it took ~3 1/2 minutes, BUT, the work needed to tweak the image in the first place in OcDS was by far greater than the rendering time in Daz Iray. Just a rant, and I know I'm preaching to the choir, but if Daz's Iray evolves and gets faster render power, for single images, the requirement for little tweaks and workarounds in OcDS becomes a more comparative hassle. Okay, yes, Octane will let me give V7 crazy purple hair in seconds, but I mean, for no thought put in, the Iray shader through Daz, at default, looks great...and even the 3Delight one, looks really good. I could know nothing about rendering parameters, hit a button, and get those 2 images...I am happy we have that, but I want OcDS to do that too!...

[asennov]

Others? Let's get our list

What's the point of making lists when no one from the stuff bother to read them not to mention fix what's listed ?

Where are t_3 with his 'two weeks on forums' and 'long list of improvements' and Goldorak with 'better communications every few weeks'? Hey, there are 'few weeks' sinse we had listen from those persons already!..

[asennov]

With my Titan X by itself, the OcDS images at 500px rendered in ~30 seconds. For the Daz Iray images, it took ~3 1/2 minutes

Not very accurate comparison as in iray you rendered much more iterations (~1200-1300 according to the image you've posted) with SSS, eye refractions etc. while in Octane it's just 500 spp with simple materials, that's where the difference in render times came from.

To make more or less accurate comparison you have to setup identical scene (I would use HDRI lighting as it's very easy to make it 'the same' : ) ), use only diffuse materials (manually switch off all extra layers in default iray material, set material type to diffuse in Octane). Then render it in Octane in PT kernel with limited spp (say, 1000) and write down the time, then save image into .png and notice the size of file. Then render in iray with same limit on iterations (without convergence measure/limit), save in .png aside of Octane and see if sizes are equal, if iray's one is smaller, diminish the number of iterations, if larger - increase it. Iterate until files have identical (to few kilos ) sizes. Then write down the iray time and compare with Octane. PNG uses simple LZW to compress images so the size of .png file may be used as approximate measure of image noise, images of the same scene of equal size will carry equal amount of noise in them (in different places maybe) so one could say that we've achieved more or less the same quality using different renderers.

[DrHemulen]

Just a rant, and I know I'm preaching to the choir, but if Daz's Iray evolves and gets faster render power, for single images, the requirement for little tweaks and workarounds in OcDS becomes a more comparative hassle. Okay, yes, Octane will let me give V7 crazy purple hair in seconds, but I mean, for no thought put in, the Iray shader through Daz, at default, looks great...and even the 3Delight one, looks really good. I could know nothing about rendering parameters, hit a button, and get those 2 images...I am happy we have that, but I want OcDS to do that too!...

I know exactly what you mean. I just rendered a GF3 test in Iray to look for those shoulder artifacts, and was blown away by the quality, and left feeling a little stupid.

I guess it's not really fair to compare something that comes with an aptimized shader to something where you have to built it yourself. But still... the feeling of how awesome everything is with Octane is kida gone for me with the introduction of Iray. I still really like the node based shaders in Octane, but now that t_3 has totally jumped ship and ignored all his promises, I'm starting to think my attachtment to OCDS is a strange mix between Sunk Cost Fallcy, Stockholm Syndrome and stubborness.

So what if Octane is a little bit faster, if it takes days to get things working? I think I'll start looking into Iray instead of spend a lot of hours trying to get the latest OCDS beta (kind) working for me.

If t_3 or somebody else decides to pick up the reins, I'll probably feel enthusiastic about this again. But so far that's not looking too good

[asennov]

I still really like the node based shaders in Octane

iray has node-based shaders too and there are much more nodes available for iray in Shader Mixer than for Octane in NGE. Nobody force you to use universal DAZUberShader, you can make your own in Shader Mixer or even write .MDL and import it as new type of node (see bundled samples from NVidia).

[Spectralis]

I still really like the node based shaders in Octane

iray has node-based shaders too and there are much more nodes available for iray in Shader Mixer than for Octane in NGE. Nobody force you to use universal DAZUberShader, you can make your own in Shader Mixer or even write .MDL and import it as new type of node (see bundled samples from NVidia).

Some of the shaders coming out now for iRAY are excellent. But it still doesn't have a set of skin shaders that can compare to RedSpec for OcDS. But give it time and that will change. OcDS also has much better real time viewport updating especially when working with HDRI's which it handles a lot better than iRAY. But if you want to add spotlights then they're just a click away in iRAY - lighting seems so much easier to set up.

The Achilles heel for me with OcDS atm is the material translation. It's not productive to keep having to post here to find solutions to this problem. As you say, OcDS has some great features but spending a whole day head scratching trying to figure out how to fix a poor conversion is not realistic especially if the fix is a workaround and doesn't really solve the problem. I think t_3 should reconsider whether this release is the last beta. I also think the closed beta policy hasn't proven to resolve problems like this and an open beta would be a much more constructive path to follow.

Once the material conversion system is fixed then OcDS will be almost complete so we're much closer to a final release at least.

[itou31]

With my Titan X by itself, the OcDS images at 500px rendered in ~30 seconds. For the Daz Iray images, it took ~3 1/2 minutes, BUT, the work needed to tweak the image in the first place in OcDS was by far greater than the rendering time in Daz Iray. Just a rant, and I know I'm preaching to the choir, but if Daz's Iray evolves and gets faster render power, for single images, the requirement for little tweaks and workarounds in OcDS becomes a more comparative hassle. Okay, yes, Octane will let me give V7 crazy purple hair in seconds, but I mean, for no thought put in, the Iray shader through Daz, at default, looks great...and even the 3Delight one, looks really good. I could know nothing about rendering parameters, hit a button, and get those 2 images...I am happy we have that, but I want OcDS to do that too!...

Hi Notiusweb.

I agree with you on that some tweak should be made to obtain a good quality.
And also, Iray straight from shader and iray light looks good.
Here are my speedy comparison of V7 (Iray version use different makeup)
Iray/OcDs Mat/OcDs tgx G3F (notice the hair has not the same color !?)