OctaneRender™ Standalone 3.05 Rounded Edges Test [OBSOLETE]

[abstrax]

Hi all,

Before we release the proper 3.05, we would like to have the updated rounded edges feature tested by those people who are interested. The fundamental implementation is still the same, but the edge detection and the rendering was improved as much as possible. We are also trying out a completely new approach, but it's not clear yet, if it's going to work or not.


Changes since version 3.04.5:

• Overhauled the rounded edges compilation and rendering.
• Fixed treating of meshes with partial normal/UV definitions as invalid (see viewtopic.php?p=296280#p296280).
• Fixed un-do of changes after a re-do of an un-group command.

OctaneRender Standalone downloads

Windows
- commercial version (installer)
- commercial version (ZIP archive)

Mac OS X
- commercial version (DMG image)

Linux
- commercial version (ZIP archive)


Happy rendering,
Your OTOY NZ Team

[calus]

Wo, impressive change on the rounded edges, nothing to do with the previous version.
On a few tests it just works for me.

On more tests, I can say it's very nice even on difficult cases.

[funk]

I'm just doing a very quick test (orbx attached), and while I see an improvement I think there are still undesirable artifacts (top of cylinder)

P.S. It seems that rounded edges need joined geometry to work. You can see modo works on unjoined geometry too (smaller cube penetrating larger cube), which would be nice to have in octane.

[calus]

I'm just doing a very quick test (orbx attached), and while I see an improvement I think there are still undesirable artifacts (top of cylinder)

oh right, I can't believe I missed the cylinder case.

Still, the situation is much improved,
but yes round edges on cylinder cap edges just doesn't work.

[milanm]

@calus ummm.. it works here!

I triangulated everything ( for no reason at all ) and unchecked "Use Edge Breaks" in C4D. That's something like smoothing groups... I used the 'Angle Limit' (automatic) option with the Phong Angle at 80 deg. in the Phong Tag and I sent everything to SA using Edit In Standalone option.

cylinder.orbx

(95.69 KiB) Downloaded 242 times

EDIT: Ok. Here's what works great for me in Cinema 4D:

- Triangulating everything first did the trick for some reason, quads would produce artifacts or no rounding at all.
- Disable edge breaks in the phong tag.
- Separate polygon groups to individual elements
- Optimize geometry to eliminate any overlaping vertices or 'invisible holes' in geometry
- Make sure the scale is not too small
- Keep the 'Rounded edges radius' to a relatively small value. Big values could introduce artifacts.

Here's a random STL file I imported. No changes other than the things I mentioned above.

@abstrax Thank you for this update!
I'm serious. This is huge.

Regards
Milan

[abstrax]

...

@abstrax Thank you for this update!
I'm serious. This is huge.

Regards
Milan

The thanks goes to Arturo (aka mojave) who did pretty much all the work here

And we hope, we can get rid of the residual artifacts with the second overhaul.

[calus]

- Triangulating everything first did the trick for some reason, quads would produce artifacts or no rounding at all.

Triangulating from Maya didn't do the Trick for me

But then I just disable the "load vertex normal" in the import setting and let Octane set the max smoothing angle,
and this have fixed the cylinder problem also for quad faces

So I guess it's fixable either in Octane or following some rules for imported normals.

[JakubRupa]

Yeah, thanks! Can't wait to test it.

[mojave]

Always happy to help guys!

Those artifacts you see near the cylinder caps seem to show up just when no normals are provided or when they they are not loaded, so for the moment make sure that's the case and I'll take a look at it as it should not be happening.

Regarding merging non-joined geometry, we have thought about this and at least in this version and the next one we'll release will not be supported. The reason for that is that the way these render engines usually implement that feature is by tracing a number of rays near the corners/occluded areas, similar to how AO or dirt is calculated. However, in for the rounded edges application the number of rays necessary to get a decent result is way higher and will considerably slow down render times and at the same time produce a noisy output, making look glossy materials rough in the corners. If there's enough users requesting this feature we can probably invest some extra resources investigating a solution though.

Thanks for your feedback.

EDIT: Also note that render times are pretty much the same as when you don't use rounded edges at all

[Refracty]

Wow great feature !
I can smell 3.1 comming with ATI support around the corner.
Great job with the round edges improvements.