Material Editor/Preview

[haffy]

Hi,
When working on only one or a few GPUs it's a pain to tweek the materials in a larger scene. Is there (have I missed it) a preview screen like in the standalone that can be activated only for the selected material when editing. Or is it possible to import materials from the standalone, using the standalone like Maxwells Material Editor... In some way.

And were is the Material Library/LiveDB in Modo, is there none or is it hidden for me? If it's not yet ready, when ? This would be a huge timesaver..

[face_off]

A material preview panel is not really viable at the moment for some technical reasons. However you can easily import materials from Octane Standalone via the Windows clipboard. 3:45min at https://youtu.be/P2JjcrXNQ6U and https://youtu.be/CcBW2ybf-0w.

And were is the Material Library/LiveDB in Modo, is there none or is it hidden for me? If it's not yet ready, when ? This would be a huge timesaver..

You can download the presets (they are a little out of date now) at https://docs.otoy.com/manuals/products/modo/v3/livedb/.

Paul

[haffy]

Could it not be made this way:

Make a ball and add it to a new mesh item, and when material is selected in Octane Render View that ball will get the shader and be activated in Render View?

[face_off]

Make a ball and add it to a new mesh item, and when material is selected in Octane Render View that ball will get the shader and be activated in Render View?

Yes, in theory that would work (with a lot of effort). But it means adding new geometry to the Octane scene, which is not particularly desirable. And I'm not sure what lighting users would want for the preview.

You would be better off having a simple Modo .lxo which is pre-setup with a material ball geometry, a material, and the lighting you want for setting up materials. Then use the copy or paste buttons to transfer the material from your material ball scene to you production scene. You could even write some python code to automate this process.

Paul

[haffy]

Thanks, it's an solution. But would love a more hmm.. professional/built in solution. Why can't the small previews in the editor update/shor the material?

[face_off]

Why can't the small previews in the editor update/shor the material?

The current Octane preview system blocks the thread it is called on, and only returns the completed preview image once it has finished rendering, so it does not work like the material preview in Octane Standalone. I have implemented the material preview in a couple of my plugins, but IMO is it a bit awkward to use because a) it lags the UI (while it renders) and b) it takes a few secs to render, so you are not getting the instant feedback you are used to with Octane Standalone. The solution could be to have a separate Octane nodegraph with it's own sphere for doing the preview, but then when you flip back to the main scene Octane would need to voxelize again - so I think that would not be a good solution either.

Paul