OctaneRender 2 for DAZStudio [STABLE] [OBSOLETE]

[face_off]

Concerning network rendering and out of core memory I think that's still being developed as part of the ongoing beta development process so it's difficult to guarantee that all the functions you need will work flawlessly at this point in time.

Network rendering and Out of Core textures should be working perfectly (I have had no reports of problems on the latest release).

So quick question, would the users of OCDS now recommend 'on the fence' purchasers to jump on board, or are there still some major issues with the plugin that need addressing. i.e. does the out of core memory function work well. Is network rendering working, are all of the benefits and enhancements of the latest release of OR supported in the plugin.

As soon as a fix a few more annoying bugs, the plugin will be out of beta, so the price will increase. So I recommend you get in prior to that time.

Render Layers are not yet supported in OcDS.
This means with OcDS you can catch shadows on a matte object but you cannot yet also catch reflections.

This should be trivial to implement - I will add Render Layers to the next release.

Object motion blur and ORBX export of animationed vertices is a little trickier - and the later provides the former in Octane Standalone - so I will probably try to implement that first.

Paul

[face_off]

4. Now, turn off the visibility of the Dress in DAZ Scene .
5. Change the Mesh Smoothing iteration count a bit. Say whatever value you had chosen before + 1.
6. Turn the Dress visibility back on, OR Viewport will start rendering again and so will the apply Mesh Smoother in DAZ.

You will see the DAZ Viewport will update but the Octane Viewport will not. This issue seems to happen only after the visibility is turned off, mesh smoothing iteration count is changed and then the visibility is turned back on on an object that has the Mesh Smoothing applied.

Hi Rajib - I'm sorry, but I can't see any different in the Octane Viewport between the unsmoothed and smoothed mesh. I was using G2 and Basic Wear->Shorts to test.

Paul

[face_off]

One other thing I noticed, if you look at the 2nd image (MaterialIssue2), Look at the expanded view of the DATM_Jumper (The top used on the first image) and Arleya Dress (Used in the second image) surface (Right side of the image), there seems to be a separate 'Diffuse' node for DATM_Jumper whereas for the Arleya Dress, it is part of the General node. I think whichever dress the diffuse is a separate node in the original DAZ material, Octane gets it as a Mix Material with the Diffuse set to off white on the first material. In the diffuse node for the DATM_Jumper, there is only one entry and that is the Diffuse Color with texture set.

Regards,
Rajib

Hi Rajib - thank you for sending me the ArleyaDress-Material-Shader.duf file. The reason this material converts to an Octane material mix SSS shader is because it has the Cloth Surface->General->Subsurface Active property ON. So it is an issue in the DAZStudio material. If you turn Subsurface Active OFF, the material will convert correctly.

Paul

[rajib]

One other thing I noticed, if you look at the 2nd image (MaterialIssue2), Look at the expanded view of the DATM_Jumper (The top used on the first image) and Arleya Dress (Used in the second image) surface (Right side of the image), there seems to be a separate 'Diffuse' node for DATM_Jumper whereas for the Arleya Dress, it is part of the General node. I think whichever dress the diffuse is a separate node in the original DAZ material, Octane gets it as a Mix Material with the Diffuse set to off white on the first material. In the diffuse node for the DATM_Jumper, there is only one entry and that is the Diffuse Color with texture set.

Regards,
Rajib

Hi Rajib - thank you for sending me the ArleyaDress-Material-Shader.duf file. The reason this material converts to an Octane material mix SSS shader is because it has the Cloth Surface->General->Subsurface Active property ON. So it is an issue in the DAZStudio material. If you turn Subsurface Active OFF, the material will convert correctly.

Paul

Thanks Paul. Will give it a try.

[rajib]

4. Now, turn off the visibility of the Dress in DAZ Scene .
5. Change the Mesh Smoothing iteration count a bit. Say whatever value you had chosen before + 1.
6. Turn the Dress visibility back on, OR Viewport will start rendering again and so will the apply Mesh Smoother in DAZ.

You will see the DAZ Viewport will update but the Octane Viewport will not. This issue seems to happen only after the visibility is turned off, mesh smoothing iteration count is changed and then the visibility is turned back on on an object that has the Mesh Smoothing applied.

Hi Rajib - I'm sorry, but I can't see any different in the Octane Viewport between the unsmoothed and smoothed mesh. I was using G2 and Basic Wear->Shorts to test.

Paul

Hi Paul, I will try with the basic wear to recreate the issue. Will post the steps for it.

[linvanchene]

@ Render Layers

Render Layers are not yet supported in OcDS.
This means with OcDS you can catch shadows on a matte object but you cannot yet also catch reflections.

This should be trivial to implement - I will add Render Layers to the next release.

This is great news. It seems parts of the feature were already implemented.

In the Render Passes Tab you can find ON / OFF switches for
- Shadows
- Black Shadows
- Colored Shadows
- Reflections

- Layer ID

The only thing that seems missing is a way to actually choose on which Layer an Object is.

As far as I remember the original plan might have been to add Object related settings in the Materials tab.
There seems a button prepared A</B next to Standard, Color, Hidden.
Another place to add Object related options may be in the DAZ Studio Parameters tab where Visibility Control and Shadow Visibility settings are.

- - -
- - -

Unrelated but came to mind:

In both the Render Settings and the Environment Tab there is also a grayed out A</B Button next to the presets pull down menu.
Maybe the plan there was to have a quick option to delete the unused render or environment presets?

In any case for some reason that button was actually clickable at some point during one of my last test sessions.
Clicking on it resulted in an instant crash of DAZ Studio.

I just recall it happened on the environment tab and I did have about 6-7 duplicate presets in the pull down menu at the time.
"Unfortunately" I was not able to reproduce this a second time. That button stayed grayed out... I have no clue what exactly triggered it to become selectable.

[rajib]

4. Now, turn off the visibility of the Dress in DAZ Scene .
5. Change the Mesh Smoothing iteration count a bit. Say whatever value you had chosen before + 1.
6. Turn the Dress visibility back on, OR Viewport will start rendering again and so will the apply Mesh Smoother in DAZ.

You will see the DAZ Viewport will update but the Octane Viewport will not. This issue seems to happen only after the visibility is turned off, mesh smoothing iteration count is changed and then the visibility is turned back on on an object that has the Mesh Smoothing applied.

Hi Rajib - I'm sorry, but I can't see any different in the Octane Viewport between the unsmoothed and smoothed mesh. I was using G2 and Basic Wear->Shorts to test.

Paul

Hi Paul, I will try with the basic wear to recreate the issue. Will post the steps for it.

Hi Paul,

I managed to create it using the basic wear top.

Steps to recreate the issue.
1. Load G2F.
2. Select G2F.
3. Go to Shaping Tab.
4. Change Breasts Cleavage (Chest->Real World) to 1. This will help to show the issue more prominently.
5. Load the basic wear Top.
6. Open the Octane Viewport. Following screen should show. As you can see the top is kinda shrink wrapped around her breasts.

G2F with Basic wear Top

7. Select the Top.
8. In the Parameters Tab change the Mesh Smoothing to 200. Wait for the 'Apply smoothing...' to complete. You should see the following screen. The cleavage area of the Top will be slighting smoother.

G2F with Basic wear Top with Mesh Smoothing set to 200

9. In the Scene tab, turn off the visibility of the Top.
10. In the Parameters Tab change the Mesh Smoothing to 199. Important step otherwise you will not see the effect.
11. In the Scene tab, turn on the visibility of the Top.
12. Octane Viewport will start rendering.
13. Wait for the 'Apply smoothing...' to complete.
14. You should see the following screen. The cleavage area of the Top in DAZ Viewport will be smoother, but in the Octane Viewport it still show as shrink wrapped. No amount of waiting will restart the render. Assumption here would have been that the moment Apply smoothing... finished, there would be a trigger to the Octane plugin the update the geometry.

Update did not happen in Octane Viewport

15. After doing Rebuild Forced, it update showed in the Octane Viewport

Ok after 'Reload forced'.

Hope this helps.

The reason I found this issue is because when I build scenes, I sometimes have multiple hairs and dresses loaded on the character with smoothing applied (even to the hair). So something while switching between the dresses/hairs I would notice the smoothing suddenly didn't seem to reapply and then had to to a Reload Scene or Reload Forced to get the Octane Viewport to update.

Best regards,
Rajib

[rajib]

One other thing I noticed, if you look at the 2nd image (MaterialIssue2), Look at the expanded view of the DATM_Jumper (The top used on the first image) and Arleya Dress (Used in the second image) surface (Right side of the image), there seems to be a separate 'Diffuse' node for DATM_Jumper whereas for the Arleya Dress, it is part of the General node. I think whichever dress the diffuse is a separate node in the original DAZ material, Octane gets it as a Mix Material with the Diffuse set to off white on the first material. In the diffuse node for the DATM_Jumper, there is only one entry and that is the Diffuse Color with texture set.

Regards,
Rajib

Hi Rajib - thank you for sending me the ArleyaDress-Material-Shader.duf file. The reason this material converts to an Octane material mix SSS shader is because it has the Cloth Surface->General->Subsurface Active property ON. So it is an issue in the DAZStudio material. If you turn Subsurface Active OFF, the material will convert correctly.

Paul

Thanks Paul. Will give it a try.

Thanks Paul ! It worked .

[face_off]

In both the Render Settings and the Environment Tab there is also a grayed out A</B Button next to the presets pull down menu.
Maybe the plan there was to have a quick option to delete the unused render or environment presets?

In any case for some reason that button was actually clickable at some point during one of my last test sessions.
Clicking on it resulted in an instant crash of DAZ Studio.

I just recall it happened on the environment tab and I did have about 6-7 duplicate presets in the pull down menu at the time.
"Unfortunately" I was not able to reproduce this a second time. That button stayed grayed out... I have no clue what exactly triggered it to become selectable.

Looking at the code, the tooltip for the A</B button is "Toggle between this environement and the current clipboard environment (if any) for quick A/B comparison". I couldn't find a way to copy the environment into the clipboard, so it was disabled for me. My preference would be to delete this button if no one is using it.

Paul

[face_off]

I managed to create it using the basic wear top.

Steps to recreate the issue.
1. Load G2F.
2. Select G2F.
3. Go to Shaping Tab.
4. Change Breasts Cleavage (Chest->Real World) to 1. This will help to show the issue more prominently.
5. Load the basic wear Top.
6. Open the Octane Viewport. Following screen should show. As you can see the top is kinda shrink wrapped around her breasts.

Hi Rajib, my preference would be to put this issue on hold until, since it seems low priority, and there are some more pressing issues I would like to address. I'll add it to the long-term list though.

Paul