My name is Jules. I have 20 years experience in 3D animations and VFX. During the past 5 years I've been producing with Octane render even before Octane was Otoy group. I always promoted the engine as a master peace to employees from Disney, Unit Image, Axis etc... I mostly make character animations. Octane render is not generally used in this market, Arnold, Vray and Redshift are mostly used for Character Animation. But I've been using Octane to deliver sequences during 5 years and when I was heading the all project of course Octane was the main Renderer. Today I've been introducing Octane in many companies and very proud of it.
THE ISSUE : when you build an AAA Character you have many flipped peaces to place inside UV's and a complex soldier could represent around 15 to 20 materials all at 4k or 8k Pbr maps. So to keep quality at the top range you must MIRROR PART INSIDE THE UV LAYOUT. Example : On a helmet, all small details duplicate many times must have the same place inside the UV. Actually OCTANE RENDER DON'T INTERPRET FLIPPED PARTS IN UV'S. Your OpenGL normal maps will be also flipped as DirectX normal in the render on those duplicated polygons having the same place inside the UV Layout.
The only solution is to flip the green channel of every normal maps you have. Then Duplicate all pbr Materials, Opengl Normals for one side and DirectX Normals for the other side. Then manually make a selection set of the polygons that are mirrored and superposed inside the UV. You must find those polygons directly on the model one by one with the live viewer activated and apply the flipped material to see if you fix it. This process can keep you busy for a day per complex object and you will have 15 duplicated pbr materials with 8k, 4k maps. If you have 5 characters on screens with 60 flipped materials.... then you think about contact Otoy to fix it. Many Studios won't use Octane in Character animation because this issue slowdown too much the pipeline. Octane is the only renderer having this issue.
I sent a package to Tom Glimps who nicely does his best to reach Dev team but after investigations they say to him that this is not a priority.... this affect only a small part of the community. Maxon help me on issues related to character animations because they know other Programs control the market, so they help me to introduce C4D the best as they can. I don't understand why Otoy don't... This force us to switch to another Renderer when I promote Octane even in interviews... They nicely give me an opportunity from Maxon to Showcase different projects and describe the workflow on Maxon.net, but tell me... How I suppose to describe it including Octane process when this issue slowdown by 20% the all production.... : So I need your opinion and some help.
THE PACKAGE exemple scene : http://www.mediafire.com/file/lpwg4nhmm ... E.rar/file
Character animations made with OCTANE :
http://www.blackone.es/omen-hp-teaser/
http://www.blackone.es/
https://formacg.es/
https://www.artstation.com/julesfaivre
Thank you for your help.