Octane Render for SketchUp 2018.1rc4.6 Test Release

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SketchUp Integrated Plugin (Integrated Plugin maintained by OTOY)

Octane Render for SketchUp 2018.1rc4.6 Test Release

Postby CaptainCrowbar » Thu Feb 21, 2019 3:18 am

CaptainCrowbar Thu Feb 21, 2019 3:18 am
Release Notes for Octane Render SketchUp Plugin 2018.1rc4.6

This is a test release of the Octane Render 2018.1 version of the SketchUp plugin. This build is based on the most recent Octane 4 plugin release; it includes all of the new features in Octane 2018.1rc4, but no user-visible changes specific to SketchUp have been made.

2018.1 will be available for those with a version 4 licence for a limited time. In order to try 2018.1, you need to upgrade your version 3 licence to a version 4 licence. You can do this for free via our web shop.

A new release compatible with SketchUp 2019 will be available shortly.

As with all experimental releases, please do not use this for production purposes.

We recommend updating your Nvidia driver to version 417.22 or higher; this driver fixes an issue with some CUDA API functions.

Known issue: You should avoid updating your Nvidia driver to version 418.81 for the moment; this driver has issues with Octane Render. We are working with Nvidia to fix this.

Known issue: SketchUp's advanced camera feature is not compatible with the Octane Render plugin. This is due to a bug in SketchUp; when an advanced camera exists, it frequently fails to pass vital information about changes to the scene on to the plugin. It may be possible for us to find a workaround for this, but for the moment, avoid creating advanced cameras in scenes intended for use with the Octane Render plugin.

Manuals and Reference Information

* Octane 2018.1rc4 release announcement
* Octane Documentation Portal
* SketchUp plugin manual
* Octane Render standalone manual

SketchUp Plugin Introduction Video



Requirements

Software (Windows version):

* SketchUp 2016, 2017, or 2018 for Windows x64; SketchUp 2018 is recommended
* Microsoft Windows 7, 8, 8.1, or 10 for x64
* The plugin is not compatible with any x86 (32-bit) version of SketchUp or Windows

Software (Mac version):

* SketchUp 2017 or 2018 for MacOS; SketchUp 2018 is recommended
* MacOS 10.11 (El Capitan), 10.12 (Sierra), 10.13 (High Sierra), or 10.14 (Mojave)
* The plugin is not compatible with any version of MacOS earlier than 10.11

Hardware:

* 64-bit Intel or AMD CPU
* One or more recent model Nvidia GPU cards
* Nvidia drivers version 387 or later; CUDA 9.1 support is required
* The plugin is not compatible with AMD or Intel GPUs

Installation

There are separate installers for the SketchUp 2016, 2017, and 2018 versions of the plugin. You can install more than one of these on the same computer; they are treated as separate applications. We recommend uninstalling all previous versions of the SketchUp plugin before installing the latest version.

If you are having any problems, the first thing you should check is that you do not have different versions of other Octane products installed.

Support Information

If you have a support issue, please provide the following information:
- Operating system (e.g. Windows 8.1 x64)
- CPU type (e.g. Intel Core i7)
- Amount of RAM
- Graphics cards - model (e.g. Nvidia GTX 690 with 4GB)
- Nvidia driver version (e.g. 390.77)
- SketchUp version (e.g. SketchUp Pro 2017 version 17.2.2555 64-bit)
- Skatter version, if you have it installed (e.g. Skatter 1.2.0)
- OctaneRender for SketchUp version (e.g. 2018.1rc4.6)

The most important part of resolving a problem is our being able to reproduce the problem, so please provide as much detail as possible!

Download Links

* Windows plugin for SketchUp 2016
* Windows plugin for SketchUp 2017
* Windows plugin for SketchUp 2018
* Mac plugin for SketchUp 2017
* Mac plugin for SketchUp 2018
* Windows demo plugin for SketchUp 2016
* Windows demo plugin for SketchUp 2017
* Windows demo plugin for SketchUp 2018
* Mac demo plugin for SketchUp 2017
* Mac demo plugin for SketchUp 2018

Earlier Changes

These changes were made in earlier 4.x releases of the plugin, and are still relevant in the latest release:

* Bugs involving textures showing up as transparent, or as textures from a previously loaded scene, have been fixed.

* Object visibility tracking has been greatly improved. Visible and invisible layers, and hidden and unhidden objects, will now be fully tracked in the Octane render window.

* The new Universal Material has been added to the default material options.

* Handling of the Octane workspace layout has been changed slightly. Loading a new scene that doesn't have a layout saved with it will now revert to the default layout, and there is a new menu option to reset the layout to the default.

These changes were made in earlier 3.x releases of the plugin, and are still relevant in the latest release:

* The new instance based textures in Octane are now supported. These can be used in conjunction with the third party Skatter plugin to create scattered objects with variable textures.

* There is a new Settings dialog, available from the Extensions menu in SketchUp (Extensions > Octane > Settings). This currently has only one setting, a drop-down list that allows you to select the default material type used when converting SketchUp materials to Octane. The available choices are Diffuse, Glossy, Metal, Specular, Toon, or Universal; Glossy is the default if you have not chosen one. Changing this setting does not affect anything in an existing Octane version of a scene; it only controls the choice of material type when new SketchUp materials are imported into Octane in the future.

* Environment settings are now automatically transferred from the Octane view of a scene to SketchUp. When you adjust the sun position in the Octane environment node, SketchUp's sun follows (you need to have shadows enabled in SketchUp to see this, of course). This feature has a couple of limitations: (1) SketchUp's lighting model is much simpler than Octane's, so there are many settings on the Octane side that are not copied to SketchUp simply because SketchUp has no way to reproduce them. (2) We don't yet support different lighting models on the Octane and SketchUp sides. This means that, if you set the Octane lighting to anything other than Daylight, you will see inconsistent behaviour as the plugin tries to reconcile the Octane and SketchUp versions of the scene. Full support for other lighting models will be added in a future upgrade; for the moment, we only fully support the Daylight model.

* The plugin is now available for Mac as well as Windows. The Mac version has all the same features as the current Windows build, and the two versions will be kept synchronised in future releases. Please note that, like the Windows version, the Mac plugin requires an Nvidia video card compatible with CUDA 9.1. Most recent production Macs have AMD or Intel GPUs; to use this plugin you will need an older Mac with an Nvidia card, a desktop Mac Pro that has been upgraded with an Nvidia card, or a system with an external GPU.

* There is now an option to "pause" the connection between SketchUp and Octane. When paused, changes to the SketchUp scene will not be copied to Octane; this allows you to make complex changes to the SketchUp scene without the Octane scene being updated for every step, and then update it all at once when you unpause. There are toolbar buttons for the Pause and Rebuild actions.

* When you add a new camera view in SketchUp, a corresponding render target node will be created in Octane. The camera position and render settings are tracked separately for each render target, and will be saved with the SketchUp model in your .SKP file. When switching cameras, the corresponding render target is selected in the scene outline.

* There are no longer separate menu options for converting a SketchUp material to an Octane one, or for creating a new Octane material from scratch. These are no longer necessary since the new GUI window provides equivalent functionality. Converting a material from SketchUp to Octane is not a separate operation now; it happens automatically as soon as the material is used.

* All information about Octane materials is now saved with the SketchUp scene in the .SKP file. Unlike earlier versions, all texture graphics are included in this; textures are no longer saved in a separate directory. The saved scene also records any changes you make to the material nodes through the node graph editor. This means that you can now transfer a scene file to another computer, or send it to another user, without losing the texture information. However, it also means that scene files containing Octane plugin data are necessarily larger (sometimes much larger) than they were as plain SketchUp scenes, since they now contain all of the image files needed to reconstruct the Octane textures.

* Like the Octane 4 standalone version, the SketchUp plugin uses the new single sign-on system. You still need to have purchased a license for the SketchUp plugin, but it will now be checked automatically when you log in using your Otoy account credentials; you no longer need to keep track of user IDs and passwords for individual licenses. The new authorization management window is a modal dialog where the user can sign out and sign in. It also informs the you under which name you are signed in and if that sign-in was in offline or online mode. When a user signs out, all of your licenses which were activated on this computer will be deactivated. This requires that all these licenses are currently not in use by other Octane processes; if that is not the case the sign out will fail.

* Because most rendered images are now stored in your computer's main RAM instead of your video card's RAM, all Octane 3+ applications, including the SketchUp plugin, will frequently use a good deal more memory than their Octane 2 equivalents, especially for high resolution renders. You should keep this in mind when upgrading.

* Support has been added for the Skatter plugin's Render Only mode.

Known Issues

We hope to fix these in a coming update:

* When the Octane window is closed and reopened, node positions in the node graph may unexpectedly change, and unconnected nodes may be lost. This is our next priority for fixing.

* The Mac installer is not signed yet. For the moment, if Finder gives you an error when you run the installer, you can override this and run it by right-clicking on the installer and selecting Open from the popup menu.

* Custom resolution in the material preview does not work.

* Once a texture has been copied from SketchUp to the Octane version of the scene, any changes made to either version of the material are not reflected in the other version. (This is a simplification applied to ensure the two versions of the material are handled correctly in this version of the plugin; we intend to add automatic transfer of changes from one to the other in future, where the different properties and behaviour of Octane and SketchUp materials allows it.)

The following are SketchUp bugs that we have no control over, although we will try to find a workaround if possible:

* Advanced cameras are not compatible with this plugin (see above).

* Re-applying the same texture after an undo may fail to work.

* The toolbar buttons on the Mac plugin sometimes show incorrect pressed-vs-unpressed states.

* The status bar text is not reliably updated in the Mac version.

Release History

2018.1rc4.6 - Current test release.

2018.1.1 - Initial Octane 2018 test release.

4.00.0.20 - Official Octane 4.0 release.

4.00.0.17 - Fix missing texture and persistent texture bugs.

4.00.0.14 - Full object and layer visibility tracking.

4.00.0.12 - Synchronize with Octane SDK RC6; better window layout persistence; Mac build compatible with Mojave.

4.00.0.3 - Initial Octane 4 test release.

3.08.1.0 - Synchronize with final Octane 3 SDK.

3.08.0.11 - Fix compatibility issues with other plugins; reinstate the Mac build.

3.08.0.9 - Support SketchUp 2018; fix proxy and Skatter issues; support instance-based textures; add settings dialog.

3.07.0.14 - Fully suppress scene conversion when no Octane window is open; automatic transfer of environment settings from Octane to SketchUp; fix material picker and LiveDB bugs.

3.06.4.10 - Better isolation when Octane is paused; bug fixes to Mac toolbar and installer.

3.06.4.5 - New Mac build.

3.06.4.0 - Highlight render target when changing camera; add pause and rebuild buttons.

3.06.2.5 - Track separate render targets for each SketchUp camera; add menu command to rebuild the Octane scene.

3.06.1.4 - Fix slow geometry transfer when render window is not open; add scene outliner to default view; save workspace layout with scene file.

3.06.1.2 - Initial public test release with the new user interface.
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Re: Octane Render for SketchUp 2018.1rc4.6 Test Release

Postby _qmvc3WkfIhgYS » Wed Feb 27, 2019 9:02 am

_qmvc3WkfIhgYS Wed Feb 27, 2019 9:02 am
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