*** Intermediate DEMO release 0.8 alpha windows & linux ***

Thu Jan 28, 2010 2:56 am

To set the materials in blender so that octane sees it as specular try setting the ztrans button to on (in that material), alpha to somewhere around zero, and then the ray transparent button on in the shader area. Probably dont need all three like that, but I know I had the settings like that in a blender file and it popped up as specular in octane.

Work is almost over. I should be getting my 1.8gb gtx275 soon at which point I will swap my 8800gt out and bring it here so that I can play while I work. Until then I will just have to watch the clock until it hits 8pm and race home. I am really excited to try out this new release.

budiantochen · Thu Jan 28, 2010 3:26 am

the "cannot save scene" limitation is a killer to me, since you need to re import and redo all setting. especially since this is an alpha, there still a lot of bugs in it. and it start to drive me mad when it crash. and i can't close the program also. what a limitation. I hope the developer make this as a consideration to let us save the scene.

Thu Jan 28, 2010 4:23 am

Yeah, that kills me to. Often I will do a render, really like how it turns out, take a screencapture of it, and then go to try another angle. As soon as I go back into octane it crashes, every time. So then I have to try and find the same settings and all that. I have taken to writing every setting down in notepad. Now its just more of an annoyance to have to re-enter everything every time. Oh well, just have to deal with it for now.

Thu Jan 28, 2010 4:28 am

budiantochen wrote:the "cannot save scene" limitation is a killer to me, since you need to re import and redo all setting. especially since this is an alpha, there still a lot of bugs in it. and it start to drive me mad when it crash. and i can't close the program also. what a limitation. I hope the developer make this as a consideration to let us save the scene.

Don't go crazy mate!

Yes it is a pain to reset a scene for each pass, but two things you need to consider, if Refractive Software enabled saving, this product is mature enough right now that a good deal of people would never buy it because the 'alpha' product was good enough for their needs. Second, the term 'Alpha' is synonymous with crashes and a bit of frustration on the part of testers. Alpha (and even Beta) testing is used specifically to identify those issues so the programmers can improve the product. You have to admit, for an Alpha product, this is already a phenomenal product.

Breathe laddie! Good air in, Bad air out...

Thu Jan 28, 2010 7:03 am

I think being able to save the scene and saving the render would be different things. Saving a render would really equal less people actually purchasing the final product, but saving the scene, storing the materials, camera settings, etc. wouldn't effect the purchase amounts as the end user could only do screen captures to save their final renders. As always there are people that will find a way to circumvent having to pay for a software package, but having such a low price should prevent that from being to wide spread. I am sure they'll have some good anti-piracy stuff built into the final release as well.

Thu Jan 28, 2010 7:20 am

To get around the black out with materials, when it happens just grab the model node in the node panel and give it a little nudge. Everything should come back to normal, at least until you load another image texture or something along those lines. Hope that helps.

puppyhouse · Thu Jan 28, 2010 9:47 am

still no notebook driver for win 7 64 bit i see.

radiance · Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:58 am

Hi all,

I think i might have been a bit too hasty putting this one online in it's state,
but i was a bit stressed out yesterday and did'nt want to have the linux users out of the competition...

I'll provide a new release in a few days with these issues fixed.

btw, the octane load/save will be available in the first beta's in about 2 weeks.

Radiance

budiantochen · Thu Jan 28, 2010 12:34 pm

radiance wrote:
btw, the octane load/save will be available in the first beta's in about 2 weeks.

Radiance

This is what I call "Good News" from a good developer. Very nice Radiance. can't wait till that build.
Thanks to this, we'll have even better render for Octane.

d.welshhons · Thu Jan 28, 2010 12:38 pm

radiance wrote:Hi all,

I think i might have been a bit too hasty putting this one online in it's state,
but i was a bit stressed out yesterday and did'nt want to have the linux users out of the competition...

I'll provide a new release in a few days with these issues fixed.

btw, the octane load/save will be available in the first beta's in about 2 weeks.

Radiance

Hey Radiance you guys at Refractive are working your butts off. I know you want to push Octane out ASAP and there have been some new glitches in this latest beta but that is cool because I for one am pushing this software hard, and trying to kill it...

. I mostly do illustrations so a small scene for me is in the hundreds of thousands of polys and work upwards into the millions [having renders that take days]. This app of yours is a dream come true so push the betas out at your lesiure and we will all beat it to death for ya.