Hi,
So I couldn't figure out why my lights were so dark even though I had the scene scale set to 1 = 1 meter in settings. Lo and behold a found a separate thread talking about this exact problem. Turns out their workaround solution was to just multiple every light by 10,000... Not exactly an elegant work around.
Making this even more complicated is the fact that adjusting to scale radically alters the depth of field on the camera.
In Maya, if you want to work with dynamics, it's extremely helpful to work in meters as you can leave the physics engine on default and not mess with it. But since Octane seems to handle scale so poorly it seems like working in cm is the better choice and just go through the hastle of changing the physics properties instead.
Am I missing something here? Is there any solution to this?
Maya Octane scale affects lights and cameras differently.
Hi Xander,XanderLust wrote:Hi,
So I couldn't figure out why my lights were so dark even though I had the scene scale set to 1 = 1 meter in settings. Lo and behold a found a separate thread talking about this exact problem. Turns out their workaround solution was to just multiple every light by 10,000... Not exactly an elegant work around.
Making this even more complicated is the fact that adjusting to scale radically alters the depth of field on the camera.
In Maya, if you want to work with dynamics, it's extremely helpful to work in meters as you can leave the physics engine on default and not mess with it. But since Octane seems to handle scale so poorly it seems like working in cm is the better choice and just go through the hastle of changing the physics properties instead.
Am I missing something here? Is there any solution to this?
Thanks for the post.
So, if you have "1 unit = 1 meter" set in settings, then if Maya unit is set as "1 meter", then for example 10 meters long object will be translated by the plugin exactly to 10 meters long object inside the Octane rendering engine.
Also, Octane for Maya has a warning message to consider working the same unit (meters) as Octane engine.
Could you please share a sample scene or steps for us to replicate?
cheers
Kind Regards
bk3d
bk3d
-
XanderLust
- Posts: 4
- Joined: Thu Jun 27, 2019 7:10 pm
Sure so here are some photo examples below.
In the first image the Maya scale is set to centimeters. Creating a poly cube at 1 x 1 x 1 creates a cm cube. Creating a light that's 1 x 1 x 1 creates 1 cm sphere. With the Octane scale set to 1 = 1 meter, everything works fine. This is makes everything function as if 1 cm is 1 meter.
However, I come from a film background and would much prefer to work in real scale. Having proper measurements for everything just makes me feel sane. So if you go and set the Maya scale to meters, the scale of the camera and textures change, but the lights do not. If you then create a cube at 1 x 1 x 1 it comes in as a 1 meter cube. But creating a 1 x 1 x 1 light STILL creates a 1 CM light. The only way of making the light behave correctly is to times everything by a hundred.
Well here's where the problem comes in. This actually requires more power out of the light. If you want to do 500 watt light (as in your documents it says just set it 500) you would need a power of 500,000. You have to set an expression to do this, because the light slider wont even go that high.
Nowhere in the docs does it explain this or say that this happens. Also having worked in several other renderers I haven't seen this happen either. I'm just kind of assuming I'm missing a button somewhere or something? Because I can't figure it out.
In the first image the Maya scale is set to centimeters. Creating a poly cube at 1 x 1 x 1 creates a cm cube. Creating a light that's 1 x 1 x 1 creates 1 cm sphere. With the Octane scale set to 1 = 1 meter, everything works fine. This is makes everything function as if 1 cm is 1 meter.
However, I come from a film background and would much prefer to work in real scale. Having proper measurements for everything just makes me feel sane. So if you go and set the Maya scale to meters, the scale of the camera and textures change, but the lights do not. If you then create a cube at 1 x 1 x 1 it comes in as a 1 meter cube. But creating a 1 x 1 x 1 light STILL creates a 1 CM light. The only way of making the light behave correctly is to times everything by a hundred.
Well here's where the problem comes in. This actually requires more power out of the light. If you want to do 500 watt light (as in your documents it says just set it 500) you would need a power of 500,000. You have to set an expression to do this, because the light slider wont even go that high.
Nowhere in the docs does it explain this or say that this happens. Also having worked in several other renderers I haven't seen this happen either. I'm just kind of assuming I'm missing a button somewhere or something? Because I can't figure it out.
Hello Xander,
Thank you for the screenshot.
The Octane Size parameter is just to increase/decrease the geometry of the light.
Could you please try changing the Scale value from Maya transform node and see if it works for your scene?
We recommend using a custom geometry emitter with Octane Diffuse>Emission> Blackbody/Texture Emission.
Cheers
Thank you for the screenshot.
The Octane Size parameter is just to increase/decrease the geometry of the light.
Could you please try changing the Scale value from Maya transform node and see if it works for your scene?
We recommend using a custom geometry emitter with Octane Diffuse>Emission> Blackbody/Texture Emission.
Cheers
Kind Regards
bk3d
bk3d
XanderLust
Could you please let me know: did you only change the scale in the Octane settings, or did you change the units in Maya preferences too?..
You wrote here that you had "cm" units in Maya and "1=1" in Octane settings, but on your screenshot I see the "1=0.01" - so I just want to be sure that I understood correctly what you are doing...
Thank you!
Could you please let me know: did you only change the scale in the Octane settings, or did you change the units in Maya preferences too?..
You wrote here that you had "cm" units in Maya and "1=1" in Octane settings, but on your screenshot I see the "1=0.01" - so I just want to be sure that I understood correctly what you are doing...
Thank you!
XanderLust
Just some additional info for you to consider...
Octane rendering engine does not have such "light source" object like you see in the Maya plugin - from the point of view of a physically correct renderer the "light source" is just a mesh geometry with a light-emitting material assigned to it (you can see it in Octane standalone). So, just for the convenience of users - this is exactly what the Maya plugin does under the hood of its "fake" light source helper-object: it just generates a (in your case sphere) geometry directly inside of the Octane engine, attaches the diffuse material with emission to it, and sets some of their attributes according to the values set in this fake-light object - and you don't see any of these as part of Maya scene, they exist only inside of the Octane rendering engine...
You could achieve the same (and much more) by just creating the native sphere geometry directly in Maya scene and attach an emitting Octane diffuse material to it: in this case this geometry would be Maya scene's native geometry and will be scaled together with the Maya scene settings, and you will have access to any settings of this light-source. And I would suggest (as Bikram already mentioned here) to use this approach as much more flexible and more Maya-native. The light helper-object is not so flexible and hides many details under the hood - e.g. in the case of this Octane's internally generated mesh geometry - this light-mesh is not a part of Maya scene geometry and it has a fixed size, not bound to Maya's currently selected units. So if you use these light helper-objects instead of native light-emitting geometry directly - then you need to be setting the correct size of these light sources according to the size of the rest of the scene...
I will consider to perhaps improve the functionality of the light helper-objects in next versions where it would be possible, but in current versions this is how the things work...
Just some additional info for you to consider...
Octane rendering engine does not have such "light source" object like you see in the Maya plugin - from the point of view of a physically correct renderer the "light source" is just a mesh geometry with a light-emitting material assigned to it (you can see it in Octane standalone). So, just for the convenience of users - this is exactly what the Maya plugin does under the hood of its "fake" light source helper-object: it just generates a (in your case sphere) geometry directly inside of the Octane engine, attaches the diffuse material with emission to it, and sets some of their attributes according to the values set in this fake-light object - and you don't see any of these as part of Maya scene, they exist only inside of the Octane rendering engine...
You could achieve the same (and much more) by just creating the native sphere geometry directly in Maya scene and attach an emitting Octane diffuse material to it: in this case this geometry would be Maya scene's native geometry and will be scaled together with the Maya scene settings, and you will have access to any settings of this light-source. And I would suggest (as Bikram already mentioned here) to use this approach as much more flexible and more Maya-native. The light helper-object is not so flexible and hides many details under the hood - e.g. in the case of this Octane's internally generated mesh geometry - this light-mesh is not a part of Maya scene geometry and it has a fixed size, not bound to Maya's currently selected units. So if you use these light helper-objects instead of native light-emitting geometry directly - then you need to be setting the correct size of these light sources according to the size of the rest of the scene...
I will consider to perhaps improve the functionality of the light helper-objects in next versions where it would be possible, but in current versions this is how the things work...
Nice, I didn't know that. I thought that, like ray tracers, a fancy light node would be cheaper than objects with emissive materials. So the advantage of the light node (besides simplicity/organization) is IES, right? No way to map an IES profile to a blackbody emitter. That AI light will work with emissive objects the same?
@JimStar BTW, after reading this I went to test and was finding lights were brighter than equal objects. Turns out, the attribute "Efficiency" for the light is default at 0.25 and for blackBodyEmission is default at 0.025. Setting both to the same then I saw what you said. Is that difference intentional?
@JimStar BTW, after reading this I went to test and was finding lights were brighter than equal objects. Turns out, the attribute "Efficiency" for the light is default at 0.25 and for blackBodyEmission is default at 0.025. Setting both to the same then I saw what you said. Is that difference intentional?
GTX 1080 8gb, GTX 970 4gb, I5 4590, Z97-E, 32gb RAM, Win 10 64bits, Octane for Maya
ivankio
The only sometimes helpful feature of the Maya plugin's fake-light helper - is the ability to visualize the IES light source's distribution directly in Maya's viewport: the Maya plugin implements reach visualization capabilities where you can choose the "wire-frame" visualization or the shaded shape, change the shaded opacity, show the max. candela value, tune its font size: this functionality is not available in the Octane rendering engine itself... I've developed the custom library doing this firstly for 3ds Max, and then improved it and integrated into Maya too...
But other than that - there are no advantages in using a fake-light helper, and you lose a lot of flexibility in tuning of your light sources. This is not only about your ability to tune any parameter (including the one you've mentioned above), but even fine tune the geometry of the light source itself. For example if your light-emitting geometry is big enough and must be visible, you could want to make it much more smooth by increasing the number of polygons, or even make the light-source in a shape of the light-emitting spiral inside of a light-bulb (overkill of course, but it shows an example of how flexible you are when using the light-emitting geometry directly).
And NO, you are not restricted in using IES files when using the light-emitting geometry directly. Here is an example of Octane's native nodegraph utilizing the IES file - that reflects what you get under-the-hood when using the fake-light helper with its simple sphere and an IES file. But in this case (if you have the similar shading-graph of Octane-plugin's nodes assigned to some Maya-native light-emitting geometry) - you can fine-tune any parameters you want in any parts of this light-emitting shading-graph, plus you can have any light-emitting geometry shape you like...
The only sometimes helpful feature of the Maya plugin's fake-light helper - is the ability to visualize the IES light source's distribution directly in Maya's viewport: the Maya plugin implements reach visualization capabilities where you can choose the "wire-frame" visualization or the shaded shape, change the shaded opacity, show the max. candela value, tune its font size: this functionality is not available in the Octane rendering engine itself... I've developed the custom library doing this firstly for 3ds Max, and then improved it and integrated into Maya too...
But other than that - there are no advantages in using a fake-light helper, and you lose a lot of flexibility in tuning of your light sources. This is not only about your ability to tune any parameter (including the one you've mentioned above), but even fine tune the geometry of the light source itself. For example if your light-emitting geometry is big enough and must be visible, you could want to make it much more smooth by increasing the number of polygons, or even make the light-source in a shape of the light-emitting spiral inside of a light-bulb (overkill of course, but it shows an example of how flexible you are when using the light-emitting geometry directly).
And NO, you are not restricted in using IES files when using the light-emitting geometry directly. Here is an example of Octane's native nodegraph utilizing the IES file - that reflects what you get under-the-hood when using the fake-light helper with its simple sphere and an IES file. But in this case (if you have the similar shading-graph of Octane-plugin's nodes assigned to some Maya-native light-emitting geometry) - you can fine-tune any parameters you want in any parts of this light-emitting shading-graph, plus you can have any light-emitting geometry shape you like...
-
roy_orengo
- Posts: 65
- Joined: Tue Nov 06, 2018 9:06 am
Hi Jim Star,
I would like to ask you about the shape of the polygon I must use with an IES black body emitter in Octane.
A plane square, rectangular, a sphere? how the dimensions of the polygon affect the light distribution if I use the IES?
Thanks,
Roy
I would like to ask you about the shape of the polygon I must use with an IES black body emitter in Octane.
A plane square, rectangular, a sphere? how the dimensions of the polygon affect the light distribution if I use the IES?
Thanks,
Roy