OctaneRender® for Poser (Windows/OSX) 3.03.3 [OBSOLETE]

[aRtBee]

okay, Wim & Paul, thanks for this, I''ll start figuring out the details (and let you know, of course).

Another question: when I turn a somewhat complex shaped object into heavy glass - especially with some dispersion - I get shiploads of hotspots / fireflies. What are good ways to get proper render results in proper render times - except from just taking more samples, and nullifying internal objects like tongue and teeth when irrelevant ? Of course tactics may differ for testing and for final result.

Before I start looking into all sorts of combis of: kernel to PMC, increasing specular depth, reducing GI clamp, increasing caustic blur, lower hotpixel removal value and even modifying the glass properties themselves, what are your opinions and experiences in this area?

feedback appreciated.

[face_off]

Before I start looking into all sorts of combis of: kernel to PMC, increasing specular depth, reducing GI clamp, increasing caustic blur, lower hotpixel removal value and even modifying the glass properties themselves, what are your opinions and experiences in this area?

I think you listed the important ones.....GI Clamp, caustic blur and hotpixel.

Paul

[wimvdb]

In my experience if I get lots of fireflies with lots of specular materials, it can be fixed with increasing samples on the light emitters. In some cases, I increase the size of the light emitter or add a new one on the same location ( lowering intensity if needed).
PMC is also better in handling speculars.

I also increase the specular depth if I have lots of internal reflections in glass (like a diamond).

Another setting helps with reducing noise is to increase the caustic blur.

Low light conditions are the most difficult ones to solve

[aRtBee]

okay, did some time figuring out. First the issue on the hotspot / fireflies on especially highly refractive materials.

Specular Depth (from 24 to 48) increases render time to 130% but does not really improve the result. As is according to the manual, for values over 16. Just using the default setting 24, and allowing for 130% of the preset Samples/pixel rendered in the same time (of course) while providing a seriously improvement on results.

GI Clamp does not affect render time, but vastly reducing the value (around 1.0 or even 0.1) does really improve results.

Caustic Blur produces false big size caustic effects on higher values (might be fun artistically), but reducing it to 0 does improve results while also creating nice caustic spots. No effects on rendertime.

Hotpixel removal (reducing it to 0.0) especially eliminates the spread of the fireflies onto surrounding surfaces, like the floor. It does not really handle the hotspots on the object itself.

Render Kernel set to PMC increases rendertime with 500% to 1000%, while responding in a same way as described above to the parameters mentioned. PMC however produces a much better color shifting due to higher dispersion values, as for diamond. So it’s fine for final renders with caustics, heavy-glass shapes and the like.

Material dispersion itself affects the coloring of the object surface, and extreme (artistic) values require longer render times, even larger than 150% of the time needed for a normal, low setting. Physically realistic values (0.015 (glass) .. 0.045 (diamond) .. 0.065 (zirconia)) however hardly affect rendertime.

And the winner is…

Material roughness is the firefly / hotpixel killer for glassy materials. Values above the 0.005 default produce them all over the object, but from 0.0005 and below, they’re almost gone. Render time is not affected, so it really pays off to smooth your glasses and fluids. So do apply bump and displacement, but keep the roughness really low.

Interesting: setting both roughness and caustic blur to exactly 0 (not: 0.00001) halves (in PMC even quarters) the rendertime while still producing a nice result for glasses. Great for testing.

For metals:
Most parameters do hardly have effect for opaque materials. Roughness does have effect but noticeably affects the appearance (reflection) of the surface. Usually, just hotpixel removal (down to 0.0) does the job.

[aRtBee]

second, on the Merging Poser Scenes issue.

Props, Figures and complete Scenes (including lights!) can be saved into the Library via the Library pane. They all will include Octane settings, which will be read back in when no Octane info is available yet. When any Octane info is around already, the respective imported Octane info will be ignored. Octane info also will get lost when the scene already has a figure / prop with the same name of anything imported, as such a figure / prop gets renamed on import.

So, when scene B is imported into Scene A via the Library, the Scene A Octane settings will hold.

This is different however when importing B into A via the File > Import menu. In that case all Octane settings from Scene A will get wiped and all settings from the imported Scene B will take their place.

Octane setting scan be saved first separately, and imported later. This will simply wipe all existing settings in the scene, and replace them with the ones imported. So this is the way of retrieving the Scene A settings back again after losing them on import, but that will lose the settings from B. And vice versa, re-importing the B-settings will lose all A ones.

Things become different however when the Octane materials are exported into the Poser Material Room. Those MatRoom info remains attached to the correct object, when saving into the Library, when saving as a scene file, when retrieving from the Library, and when importing via the File > Import menu, and when renaming at any stage of the flow. And even when the pure Octane info itself got lost in translation, the MatRoom info for that object remains in place and will fill the Octane pins the moment the plugin is opened on the merged scene.

Merger tactics therefor are:

For scene B, to be merged from

• For figures / objects: export all Octane material defs into the Poser MatRoom, and save into the Library.
  For scenes (groups of figures/props): export all Octane material defs into the Poser MatRoom, eliminate any light emitters created in an earlier Octane use (if any), save into Library or as a separate scene.

For scene A, to be merged into

• For figures / objects: load from Library.
  For scenes:
  Either load from Library, and eliminate all duplicate lights (and their emitters, if that’s forgotten in the first step).
  Or save all Octane settings first, import via File > Import, also eliminate duplicate lights and their emitters, and re-import the saved Octane settings back in again.

[aRtBee]

from the latter, I can dream up some feature requests:

o Save all materials (for the entire scene) as Poser Materials
an extention of the existing menu, looping through all figures/props
o On closing the plugin panel (including when closing the Poser scene or the Poser program)
 * Save the Octane settings (auto: same file name as Poser, man: separate file name)
 * Save all materials as Poser Mats (auto, man: say yes/no)
o Erase all Octane-generated Poser mats
this is the Remove Detached Nodes – with Shift pressed for entire object / figure, but then looping through all objects / figures in the scene
So this is a script from the Poser menu
o Erase all Octane info from Poser scene file – can be a script too, but…
well, a quick way is to create an empty Poser file, do not open Octane on it, and import it into your actual scene. That will wipe.
or create an empty scene, export Octane settings (default), and import that for Octane settings.
This will erase indeed, except when the Poser mats themselves contain Octane info. That’s why the Erase-all command above.

That was fun.

[wimvdb]

Using the PMC kernel settles differently from the Path Tracing kernel. I have not seen much time difference in render times. If any, the PMC kernel settles faster so would need less samples

The Rougness in the specular by itself does not produce any fireflies in the scenes I have done.
There are many factors involved and it could be different for any given scene

For me the culprit has always been low light condition or small light emitters in combination with lots of specula materials


With regards to the specular depth - yes, it does make a real difference in props like diamonds. If there no few internal reflections it does not make a difference and you will increase rendertime without benefit

[face_off]

o Save all materials (for the entire scene) as Poser Materials
an extention of the existing menu, looping through all figures/props
o On closing the plugin panel (including when closing the Poser scene or the Poser program)
 * Save the Octane settings (auto: same file name as Poser, man: separate file name)
 * Save all materials as Poser Mats (auto, man: say yes/no)
o Erase all Octane-generated Poser mats
this is the Remove Detached Nodes – with Shift pressed for entire object / figure, but then looping through all objects / figures in the scene
So this is a script from the Poser menu
o Erase all Octane info from Poser scene file – can be a script too, but…
well, a quick way is to create an empty Poser file, do not open Octane on it, and import it into your actual scene. That will wipe.
or create an empty scene, export Octane settings (default), and import that for Octane settings.
This will erase indeed, except when the Poser mats themselves contain Octane info. That’s why the Erase-all command above.

You can to the "erase all" part of this already. http://poserphysics.blogspot.com.au/201 ... -data.html

Paul

[aRtBee]

hi Paul,

yes I know, but for lots of people there is a huge difference between "it may be in some blog post somewhere" and "I have it as an entry in the Scripts > Octane menu in my Poser program".
So this last option is less about the magic and more about the accessibility of it. Just my point of view.

Thanks anyway, see ya!

[face_off]

I will add the Clear All Octane Data script to the scripts menu in the next release.

Thinking some more on this topic...

At the moment all a scene's Octane data is stored in a single python dictionary variable (thus making it easy to clear, and also efficient to store in the pz3 file). The downside to this is that if Poser changes the internal name of a figure or prop, the link back to the python dictionary is broken (because the links are by Internal Name). In almost all cases the plugin detects when a figure or props internal name changes and automatically adjusts the python dictionary containing all the Octane data. However when you merge two Poser scenes this is not possible. So merging scenes is a special case where you need to save the Octane materials back to the figure and prop Poser materials.

Another way of handling this would be to NOT store all the Octane scene data in a single dictionary, and instead store ALL Octane Material data in the Poser Material (as it does currently when you save the Octane material to the Poser material). If Octane materials were automatically stored this way, merging scenes would be easier. The downside to this approach is that storing all the Octane materials in the dictionary is far more efficient than storing them in the Poser material. And having them in the Poser material means there is a risk the user could accidentally delete one of the Material Room nodes for an Octane material, causing that material to become corrupt.

Paul