Octane 3 / DS Plugin - Features

[Laticis]

Hi,

I will be having my first play with Octane 3 over the weekend but for interest sake I was just wondering what features
Octane 3 Standalone has that is not incorporated into the DS Plugin please.

Cheers Ady

[face_off]

The voxel rendering, and the second environment.

Paul

[linvanchene]

Compare:

new features of OctaneRender™ 3.00 (updated 24.5.)

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=51679


Based on that list:

- OpenVDB support
DAZ Studio does not have OpenVDB support.

Visible environment

This would make a huge difference when rendering images and offers a lot more possibilities to light with a different environment than shown in the reflection.

- Photoshop compositing extension
Update / Edit:
As far as I understand it the OcDS plugin can export each layer as individual .exr but currently there does not seem to be the option
- to export an .ocprj file that then could be read by the photoshop extension.

- Animated image textures (sequences)
What you can do is animate a single texture.
But afaik you cannot add a sequence of multiple images as "animated texture sequence".

- Texture baking with Baking Camera
So far OcDS has not been able to support additional cameras like the panorama camera. Texture baking is camera based.


- - -

What features are still missing from OctaneRender 2?

- Object Motion blur

- Render Layers

- Panoramic Camera
Rendering scenes for VR...

- Hair splines rendering support (LAMH)

- - -

Side Note - other known limitations or challenging workflows

- Animation Export to OR Standalone as .ORBX

There may or may not be some remaining challenges with animation export from OcDS to OR standalone.

Animated OR values can be exported as .ORBX.
Pose changes or morphs cannot be exported as .ORBX

As a workaround we can export as .OCS
I do not know if we can upload .OCS files to OctaneRender Cloud so we will see at ORC release how big of a challenge this is.

- Animated Camera Export to OR standalone
Just retested with OcDS 3.0.20.22 and OR standalone 3.00
Animated cameras are still not included in the scene export when using either .ORBX or .OCS

workaround: Export Cameras separately as .abc

-> To summarize:
You can export all kind of animated information from OcDS to OctaneRender standalone but you may need to export them as individual elements as .ocs and .abc. In OctaneRender standalone you will then have to combine the individual elements by dragging pin connections.

Remaining Question:

I still do not understand if it is a general limitation of the ORBX file container that some animation information is not carried over to OR standalone
or
if this is an OCDS specific issue that can be addressed in time?

- - -

[face_off]

This would make a huge difference when rendering images and offers a lot more possibilities to light with a different environment than shown in the reflection.

Yes. I will probably be able to add support for this Octane 3 feature in the future.

- Animated image textures (sequences)
What you can do is animate a single texture.
But afaik you cannot add a sequence of multiple images as "animated texture sequence".

Correct. I'm unsure if animated textures will be able to be implemented in the DAZStudio plugin.

- Texture baking with Baking Camera
So far OcDS has not been able to support additional cameras like the panorama camera. Texture baking is camera based.

I would really like to add the Panoramic and Baking cameras to the plugin. But at the moment you need to export to Octane Standalone to do this. The current architecture of the DAZStudio plugin does not allow for different camera types, is implemented the baking camera in the plugin would not be easy, but I will be investigating it in in more detail in the future.

- Object Motion blur

Whilst there is a checkbox in the Animation tab for this, it appears to do nothing. So I'm not sure if it can be done or not. Regardless, because DAZStudio (and Poser) are predominantly used for figure rendered, object motion blur is not a lot of use - you really need vertex motion blur.

- Render Layers

I have this half implemented in the code, and would really like to get it done in the near future.

- Panoramic Camera
Rendering scenes for VR...

See above.

- Hair splines rendering support (LAMH)

I have all the info and support to implement this, but it's a big job. So on-hold until other more pressing issues have been resolved.

Pose changes or morphs cannot be exported as .ORBX

These should be exported in the ABC file saved in with the ORBX file. If they are not, I need to fix this.

- Animated Camera Export to OR standalone
Just retested with OcDS 3.0.20.22 and OR standalone 3.00
Animated cameras are still not included in the scene export when using either .ORBX or .OCS

You need to export as ABC, and then open the resulting OCS file in Octane Standalone, and the current camera track should be embedded in the ABC file. I probably need to remove all export option /except/ the animation export to remove some confusion about this.

Paul

[Laticis]

Great information guys, thank you very much.
Really looking forward to testing Turbulence FD / Lightwave and Octane.....should be very interesting especially if the speed is there.

Render layers will be very handy once implemented.

Ooh shivers...hair spline rendering, this could be a great thing especially if we can incorporate export fibermesh curves from Zbrush as base.

[swipswap]

- Render Layers

I have this half implemented in the code, and would really like to get it done in the near future.

Forgive my ignorance but is this different from Layer IDs?

[face_off]

Forgive my ignorance but is this different from Layer IDs?

Same thing - it needs the Render Layer node to be implemented.

Paul

[larsmidnatt]

- Hair splines rendering support (LAMH)

I have all the info and support to implement this, but it's a big job. So on-hold until other more pressing issues have been resolved.

If this ever happens I'd probably starting using LAMH again. I haven't touched it in years, it would be an amazing feat that I think many of us would appreciate.

[erik-nl]

In the mean time, someone would very much like to see object motion blur fixed.
DAZ users like myself may very well spend most of their render time on images featuring figures, but those figures don't always just quietly sit pretty looking into the camera, a lot of them are quite active!
A giant sword hacking away at a dragon might as well look as if it is moving at speed, and what about all those fancy post-whatever vehicles driving and flying about?
My own subject matter may generally be quite different from all that dramatic stuff, still I can't understand why so few people ask for this feature?

Erik

[linvanchene]

TLDR version:

To give an estimate of priorities:
1st visible environment
2nd object motion blur - It is very important for rendering artistic still images of figures in motion
then the rest whenever there is time.

- - -

In the mean time, someone would very much like to see object motion blur fixed.
DAZ users like myself may very well spend most of their render time on images featuring figures, but those figures don't always just quietly sit pretty looking into the camera, a lot of them are quite active!
A giant sword hacking away at a dragon might as well look as if it is moving at speed, and what about all those fancy post-whatever vehicles driving and flying about?
My own subject matter may generally be quite different from all that dramatic stuff, still I can't understand why so few people ask for this feature?

Erik

In December 2015 Face_off wrote that he would address object motion blur and all the other remaining issues after OctaneRender 3 was released.
I assumed that the importance of Object Motion blur as an artistic tool even for rendering still images was acknowledged.

- Object Motion blur
Whilst there is a checkbox in the Animation tab for this, it appears to do nothing. So I'm not sure if it can be done or not. Regardless, because DAZStudio (and Poser) are predominantly used for figure rendered, object motion blur is not a lot of use - you really need vertex motion blur.

I do not properly understand the reasoning behind this statement.
Object Motion blur is extremely important for artistic renderings of figures in motion.
Choosing the proper shutter speed is a basic photography technique when capturing human subjects in motion.

Maybe part of the confusion is that there are several different names being used for motion blur effects.

Maybe computer graphics uses other terms than photography?

What exactly is Vertex Motion Blur?

In order to have a discussion about the importance maybe we first need to make sure we all mean the same when we use the terms object and camera motion blur.

- - -

Let's look at a photograph of a moving train.

F stop was at 5
Exposure was 1 sec (Shutter speed)

This means the shutter of the camera was open for 1 second.

The image shows
- all the movement of the train during that 1 second.
AND
- the movement of the camera during that 1 second.

This distinction is important. The end result is caused by two different effects. Object Movement. Camera Movement.



Object Motion Blur


If an object is moving during the time the shutter of the camera is open you will notice this as a blur in the direction of the object movement.

-> This is the reason why we see a light streak and a blurred train.

If you wanted no blured movement you would have to reduce the time in which the shutter is open to a fraction of a second.
like: 1/250, 1/1000, 1/4000

It is an artistic choice if you want a completely sharp picture of a high speed movement

or

If you want to convey to the viewer of the image that there was movement be intentionally selecting a shutter speed that creates object motion blur.

Object Motion blur at shutter speed 1/2500
Fast enough to have the man sharp in his running pose
still slow enough to have the water drops blurred to give the impression of water movement
The camera is fixed on a tripod.

Camera Motion Blur

Camera Motion Blur is caused by the movement of the camera even if the object is standing still.

In the train example the camera was hand held and therefore shacking a bit.

-> This is the reason why you see up and down movements in the light streak that follow the camera movement.

With Camera Motion Blur the only thing in the image that is sharp would be objects that move exactly at the same speed and the same direction as the camera.
Camera Motion Blur is mainly used as an artistic tool to simulate effects like an earth quake, an explosion, cheating in high speed action scenes.
Example: Punches not really hitting people are not that obvious when camera motion blur is used.

Example of just camera motion blur:
The bottle is standing still. The only thing moving is the camera

- - -

As far as I know Iray is able to simulate Object Motion blur.
But afaik DAZ Studio Iray still also does not support it (yet).
-> Maybe there is indeed a current limitation with the way DAZ Studio processes animated data that prevents object motion blur to be introduced?

Or maybe there simply was not enough time left to finish to implement Object Motion Blur in OcDS?

But in any case both on the DAZ Studio and the OctaneRender forum there are a lot of people waiting for Object Motion blur to be finally introduced so we can start to create artistic still images of figures in motion.

- - -