Place Highlight and Octane light normals

[Gestaltdesign]

Hi Jimstar,

I hope I am placing this in the right section now, please comment if I have not and help me report better in the future.
The issue is with Max's Place Highlight function not working correctly with Octane Light as the normal is flipped, is this resolvable or can a reverse normal check box be added for this instance.
Look forward to your comment.

Cheers.

[rodrigotrovao]

Hi GestaltDesign,

im trying to build a small plugin just to set up a scene quickly using place highlight feature.

this was my last thread asking for some help:
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=50566

little by little im trying to make it work but nothing yet.

As i get updates, i'll try to post in octane-3dmax-plugin forum.

[Gestaltdesign]

Hi Rodrigo,

Sounds fantastic, look forward to future developments!!
It saddens me that OTOY do not even comment though, if they cannot fix it or there are other implications then there is no shame in saying so, I thought it was a valid query asked in the right part of the forum.
It's the first software forum I have ever used that ignores or deletes my posts, when I am only trying to offer solid user feedback.....so confused!! Does not bode well

Hope a solution or at least a reply comes soon, I wonder if the issue directly relates to the lack of a target light as well, would make sense.

Cheers

[rodrigotrovao]

Have you seen C4D plugin features? MAYBE the best octanes plugin construction. Looks like a Finished version.

[Gestaltdesign]

Yes. I am drawing the same conclusion......reading between the lines it seems that is where Octane is strategically heading.

[Gestaltdesign]

Good one, thanks for that.
I've just checked - looks like it's 3ds Max itself is screwing this up... Just an example. The normal of this light plane (in 3ds Max system) is (0, 0, 1) - that is positive along Z (in 3ds Max viewport it is marked by normal pointer line of the light planes). So during translation of the plane geometry its normal is properly translated to Octane coordinate system (as (0, 1, 0), that it positive along Y). And you can see that as green on a screenshot.
So, the normals of this light plane are correct both in 3ds Max geometry object and in Octane object and correspond to each other. But for some reason this 3ds Max' "place highlight" functionality does not respect the normal of this plane geometry and during "placing highlight" rotates it so that its normal looks into opposite direction... After using this function you can clearly see in 3ds Max viewport that the light plane geometry is moved such a way that its normal is looking opposite direction.

I could make a hack, reversing the Octane light plane's normal into opposite direction when generating its geometry, and it worked in a few tests I made... But I won't do this for two reasons:
- All existing scenes will become existing Octane plane lights inverted into opposite direction.
- Even after that there is no guarantee that in some circumstances 3ds Max will not screw up this anyway. Because plane actually is symmetrical, I suppose it may depend from the weather on the moon how 3ds Max' "place highlight" will rotate it in different circumstances..."

I thought about it before this release as one of possible solutions... It's not hard to do technically, but it is not a correct way ideologically. Because it would be an ugly hack actually, an additional Octane's excess "feature" the only purpose of which would be sometimes correcting the wrong behaviour caused by 3ds Max bug. This is a wrong way to "fix" bugs - the plugin's settings and objects properties eventually will be full of different "hack" checkboxes and fields to "fix" the 3ds Max bugs. We already have a "hack" checkbox as a reason of 3ds Max' weak gamma settings...
This must be fixed in 3ds Max "place highlight" functionality code, not become a hack in every third party plugin's code. It is an obvious bug: the normal of the plane geometry is not taken into account at all or just screwed up when the plane is moved by 3ds Max. If you really need this 3ds Max' functionality - the proper way would be to report this bug to 3ds Max support...

Hi Jim,

Saw your above comments on the release thread replying to Rodrigo, relating to the exact same issue.
Would it be correct to assume that other render engines are flipping their light normals then for max as the place highlight functionality works perfectly for Vray and Corona for example, just curious to learn.

Thanks

[Gestaltdesign]

Hi Jim or Azen

Do I take it the lack of a reply means that it is not achievable by the Octane team.

[JimStar]

Sorry, the lack of reply means I'm busy by a lot of other tasks. I will see a little bit later if some hacks can be implemented here to overcome this 3ds Max bug...

[Gestaltdesign]

Hi Jim,

Many thanks for your consideration to this feature! Appreciate it!