Environment Texture nodes disappearing

[pegot]

I found an issue whereby one or more Environment texture nodes will disappear upon re-opening the blend file when more than one environment texture is used (say for Octane environment and Octane visible environment).

This issue also occurs with volume medium nodes when more than one environment texture is used or created.

Sometimes the nodes completely disappear; other times just the path to the HDR image is broken.

I found that only by moving all environment source texture into the livedb/127.0.0.1/textures directory will the nodes be saved when re-opening the blend file.

Is this a bug, or an intentional tequirement, that we place ALL our environment HDR images within that hard coded path?

Tested on OS X 10.11.6 with Octane Blender 11.2 - 7.78

[pegot]

Wow - even if I place my textures into the Octane Blender created textures directory my environment nodes fail to be saved the next time I open the blend file. This seems to occur if more than one environment nodes had been created, or if a Volume Medium node was added.

[pegot]

Attached is a screen recording .mov showing what is happening when environment node and volume medium node is created, the file saved, and then re-opened: The environment node disappears from the file . Maybe I am doing something wrong and not creating these nodes properly?

[JimStar]

Thank you! Will check it...

[JimStar]

OK, I see the problem... You need to enable the "Save this data-block even if it has no users" switch in Blender's texture UI for any textures referenced by Octane environments:

[pegot]

Thanks JimStar, works as expected now. Never knew what that button was for.

[J.C]

Using this function allows unused materials, environments etc. to be saved in the blender project. If it has no uses (it is marked with 0) and will be deleted on next file opening.

[pegot]

Thanks for the further explanation J.C.