OctaneRender™ 3.0 for LightWave™ - Alpha build 3.00.6.0

[juanjgon]

This is a new alpha build of the OctaneRender™ 3.0 for LightWave™ plugin. This 3.00.6.0 release is available for Lightwave 10.1, 11.6 and 2015.3 Windows x64 and OSX.

Alpha and beta version disclaimer
In contrast to v2 we want to do the alpha and beta testing publicly, to get more feedback earlier and to have changes tested more thoroughly. The plan is to let all users with a valid v2 license use the v3 alpha and beta versions until we decide that the beta period has ended and we release the first stable v3. After that you will have to upgrade to v3 or will not be able to use any v3 versions (including alpha and beta versions) anymore. We don't know yet, when that will be, but we will give you a warning a few weeks in advance so you can prepare.

This is an alpha release, so please consider this more a test or development release which may not be stable enough for a production environment. All the new 3.0 features are under development.

Alpha release 3.00.6.0
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... indows.zip
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... .0_OSX.zip

Standalone version for the network rendering nodes
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... _6_win.exe
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... _macos.dmg

New features of OctaneRender™ 3.00
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=51679

How to install the plugin
- (Only for Windows) Remove all the old Octane plugin 2.2 files (octane.dll, octane.dat and the .p plugin file), or add a new LightWave installation to your system to test Octane 3.0
- (Only for Windows) Copy the octane.dll, tbb.dll and octane.dat files into you install Lightwave/bin directory. You must overwrite the LightWave tbb.dll file.
- Add the plugin to the Lightwave Layout.
- Install the custom menu bar to get access to the Octane features.


=============================================
RELEASE 3.00.6.0
=============================================

* NEW PLUGIN FEATURES:
- Full support of NGons, including polygons with holes.
- The Octane properties and volumetrics custom object plugins can now be disabled using the native LW check mark.
- Async image file save functions. All the passes, multilayer EXR and deep image image files will be saved on a background thread.
- New settings in the TFD volumetrics pannel to render always a fixed volume simulation frame.
- Load from disk one or several objects, or clone one or several objects in the scene, no longer fire a full scene reload while working with the IPR.
- Replace a not null or instanced object no longer needs a full scene reload while working with the IPR. This feature is also used when the Layout objects are updated from the Modeler.
- New command "Octane_IPR_ReloadSelectedObjects" to reload the selected objects while working with the IPR without reload the full scene.
- Support of layer maps in the volume objects, so now the visibility and layerID features are also available for volumes.

* NEW OCTANE FEATURES:
- The two gradient nodes now support the new Octane three interpolation modes: constant, linear and cubic.
- Added new parameter "invert absorption" to all medium nodes which inverts the absorption channel and effectively converts the absorption channel to a transparency channel, which seems to be preferred by most users.
- Changed the label "scale" of the volume node to "density", because that's what it defines.
- Added new parameter "gamma before response" to the camera imager node. Enabling this option brings back the old behaviour of versions < 3.00 alpha 4, where the imager gamma got applied before the camera response curves.
- Added two parameters "minimum" and "size" to the baking camera to specify the offset and size of the UV region to bake.
- Added new medium node "Octane Volume Medium" which is similar to the "Octane Scatter Medium", but allows you to additionally specify gradients via new volume ramp nodes.
- Added the new "Octane Volume Ramp" node, which map the volume channel values to a colour that is multiplied with the channel colour.
- The render priority is working again. The performance hit is roughly 20% for medium priority and 40% for low priority.
- Support of coloured masks. Added the controls in the render layers panel to support the new object layer color feature, rendered as new channel in the infochannel kernel and as new info pass in the render passes node.

* LWSN CONFIG FILE UPDATE TO SUPPORT THE TFD VOLUMETRICS:
- The LWSN nodes need to know the TFD plugin path, so the Octane LWSN config file must have now a new line with the TFD path (even if you don't use TFD)
- The new config format is:
“UserID”
“UserPassword”
Out-of-core enabled (0 or 1)
Out-of-core RAM usage limit [GB]
Out-of-core GPU head room [MB]
"X:\path\to\TFD\TFD_loader_64.p"
GPU0 enabled (0 or 1, optional)
GPU1 enabled (0 or 1, optional)
GPU2 enabled (0 or 1, optional)
GPU3 enabled (0 or 1, optional)
…

- For example:
"82310293842"
"ieurqwpeoiuhjruyer"
1
8
300
"M:\LW_Plugins\TurbulenceFD_LW_v1-0_1401\TFD_loader_64.p"

* PLUGIN BUGS FIXED:
- Crash using large IES paths in the Octane lights. Fixed.
- Other fixes related to large file paths.
- Large volumes crash the plugin. Fixed replacing some variables from int to size_t.
- Load a second material using the LiveDB function crash the Layout. Fixed.
- Objects with 0 or negative displacement ammount are not rendered at all. Fixed to render them as flat objects.
- The plugin error message if the TFD container is not found for the current frame has been replaced with a warning message.
- The ortho scale input in the thinlens camera doesn't work. Fixed.

* OCTANE BUGS FIXED:
- Fixed a bug that built the UV acceleration structure even if no baking camera is used.
- Fixed issue causing the baking camera to generate incorrect outputs when baking transparent surfaces.
- Revert baking does not ignore transparent or invisible objects anymore.
- Fixed kernel crash when a volume is rendered in a scene that has a (mostly) black environment.
- Fixed orientation of the tangent vector when the UV coordinate system is left-handed. This can affects normal mapping.
- Fixed rendering of volumes that have only the emission channel enabled.
- Fixed rendering of overlapping volumes with multiple root nodes (which are usually large data sets).
- Fixed loading of volumes, reducing the memory consumption in some cases.
- Fixed unnecessary sampling of portals that are switched off.
- Fixed incorrect rendering of the object layer ID pass/channel.
- Fixed picking of volume media and object layers.
- Fixed bug that caused motion blur not being disabled when a motion vector pass/channel is rendered.
- Fixed a crash when the rendering is saved as 16-bit OpenEXR.
- Fixed massive memory leak in net render slaves
- Fixed some performance issues with large scenes.
- Fixed incorrect UV mapping if the second or third UV set was degenerated.
- Fixed incorrect importance sampling of completely black environments.
- Fixed missing objects in animations exported to Alembic when a mesh node is empty the first frame it appears.



-Juanjo

[jabbathekid]

Really exciting news!!

Been seeing a lot of updates being demonstrated through Lightwave. Probably a silly question - Octane 3 is going to be available as a plugin for all programs Octane 2 is currently available to, right? (Maya, C4D, etc)

keep up the awesome work

[juanjgon]

Yes, Octane 3 should be available for all the programs that are supported now in Octane 2.2

-Juanjo

[Lucas]

"- The ortho scale input in the thinlens camera doesn't work. Fixed."

I'll give it a try! Thanks Juanjo!

[FrankPooleFloating]

Beautiful. Thanks again J!

So nice to have Priority back. My 780Ti thanks you too J.

NGons support is really nice, and this will definitely speed up workflow.. however, just for the hell of it, I made a cylinder and turned on Octane OpenSubDiv, and the results were strange. Not that I would normally subd an ngons mesh, but it appears to subdivide the bottom half of the cylinder and not the top.. try this. Weird.

[Mastoy]

Excellent ! Thx Juanjgon
I made some test renders and I got something weird with a light setup :
My scene is only lit by a HDR image, pathtracing kernel, and the V3 render is darker than the V2.25 render.
To get a similar result (but not identical), I had to set the power of the environment texture between 1 and 1.1, instead of 0.65 in the original scene.
Is that a normal behavior ?

[BorisGoreta]

Super update, thanks Juanjo.

I don't understand what is this exactly:
- The Octane properties and volumetrics custom object plugins can now be disabled using the native LW check mark.

[FrankPooleFloating]

Boris, like that OpenSubDiv that is in LWOctane Object Properties Options.. you can uncheck it in Object Properties and it disables OpenSubDiv.. and, presumably, everything else in LWOctane Object Properties Options... Same applies to LWOctane Volumetrics Options I guess.

[juanjgon]

NGons support is really nice, and this will definitely speed up workflow.. however, just for the hell of it, I made a cylinder and turned on Octane OpenSubDiv, and the results were strange. Not that I would normally subd an ngons mesh, but it appears to subdivide the bottom half of the cylinder and not the top.. try this. Weird.

Weird, I will check it. Perhpas the tessellated geometry is not valid to be used as OpenSubD surface. If this is the case I could add a parameter in the object properties to disable the ngons mesh tessellation.

-Juanjo

[juanjgon]

My scene is only lit by a HDR image, pathtracing kernel, and the V3 render is darker than the V2.25 render.
To get a similar result (but not identical), I had to set the power of the environment texture between 1 and 1.1, instead of 0.65 in the original scene.
Is that a normal behavior ?

I remember that at some point there was a change in the daylight environment power parameter, but not in the texture environment node and anyway while back in Octane 2.1. Do you have this problem loading old scenes or also with new ones?

-Juanjo