Daz Octane Render Kit (free!)

[IainW]

In case you haven't already spotted this in the Daz store:

https://www.daz3d.com/octane-render-kit

[valzheimer]

Thank you for mentioning it here, I was really happy to be a part of it

For anyone interested what is included is:

Genesis 8 Female Octane Materials:
04 Matte Skin Materials
04 Glossy Skin Materials
26 Partial Materials

Genesis 8 Male Octane Materials:
04 Matte Skin Materials
04 Glossy Skin Materials
18 Partial Materials

Octane Render Kit Light Presets:
03 Standalone Mesh Light Props
01 Shadowcatcher Prop
01 ORK Render Settings - Optimized
01 ORK Render Settings - High
01 ORK Load All Environment and Render Settings Presets

ORK Environments:
04 Daylight Artistic Environments
04 Daylight Realistic Environments
02 Fog and Dust Atmospheric Presets
05 HDRI Environments

ORK Mesh Lights:
06 Key Light One-Click Presets
03 Soft Light One-Click Presets
08 Spotlight One-Click Presets
20 ORK Light Materials

ORK Promo Settings:
08 Scene Preloads with Cameras, Mesh Lights, Environments and Render Settings

Octane Render Kit Shader Presets:
49 Base Shaders
35 Templated Shaders

Video Walkthrough Tutorial: (.MP4)
4 Videos Total Running Time 80 Min

If anyone has any questions I'm around here
V.

[SkatingJesus]

Is the complete Octane free, now?

I am an Octane user for years, now, and a few months ago, I wanted to upgrade my current version (4.2.1.4.4 - February 2019) but I couldn't because it was a step I had to pay for the massive upgrade.
I didn't had money at that time, but I was ready to pay for this upgrade. But now there is this free plungin for Daz, I'm a bit lost!
Is it the great surprise of Octane being totally free for me?
Is it a low grade version, comparing to what I could have with that upgrade?
Will the upgrade do a mess in all my current settings?

Thanks for your help!

[face_off]

Is the complete Octane free, now?

I am an Octane user for years, now, and a few months ago, I wanted to upgrade my current version (4.2.1.4.4 - February 2019) but I couldn't because it was a step I had to pay for the massive upgrade.
I didn't had money at that time, but I was ready to pay for this upgrade. But now there is this free plungin for Daz, I'm a bit lost!
Is it the great surprise of Octane being totally free for me?
Is it a low grade version, comparing to what I could have with that upgrade?
Will the upgrade do a mess in all my current settings?

Thanks for your help!

All your answers are here -> viewtopic.php?f=7&t=73287

Paul

[Banti]

So I watched this tutorial series and downloaded the KIT. I think for people who are completely new to this plugin, it will be fine i guess. Here is my 2 cents:



1) The included render settings are strange at best. The "high" preset sets the render dephts to values of 14, 48 and 256 respectivly. Those are unnecessarly high values that 99% of users will never need for anything and only slows down the render. And the few people who need those values wont use this kit because they know what they do anyway.

The Ray Epsilon value is not set to its minimum value which can introduce artifacts. There is no reason to have it set higher.
GI clamp is set to 1000. There is no reason to have it at anything beyond 10. Then there wouldnt be any need to set the hot pixel removal too.
The response curve is set to linear which is good but the gamma is set to 2 which is wrong. When using linear workflow gamma should be set to 2.2. Not that big of an issue but also no need to set it wrong.

The coherent ratio can be set to .4 for faster rendering without drawbacks. IF you make animations however, it should be set to zero or it can cause problems.



2) The skin material. The included material is for the largest part a specular material with scattering, which is fine, BUT specular material needs a really good amount of light to work. If someone was to build an interior scene with sparse light for example, this material will most likely not work well. It will be very dark and noisy when there is not enough light.

Why not use the random walk on the specular material instead of the scattering? It gives more realistic results while also beeing faster.

Also the matte skin presets sets the bump to a value of .2 is a bit high in my opinion, while the bump on the glossy preset is set to 0.01 which is very very low. You can achieve glossy skin while maintaining a realistic bump. And the IOR value of 1.7 for the glossy skin is also a bit too high in my opinion but I dont know what specific look the creator had in mind here.



3) The included light props are very handy. Especially the cone and cylinder props. It can be a pain to make some spotlight props yourself so this is really nice. Same for the environment and HDRI presets, very easy to use.

The fog preset is also super cool since new people will probably struggle with mediums/scattering in the beginning. It gives a very nice look out of the box.



4) The material presets and templates are really convenient and the materials i have tested all look really good. Nice to have some alternative to the liveDB.




So all in all, a lot of things in the kit are really nice and handy while some other things seems a bit wonky and could need some work. But I am glad to see some Octane related products in the official DAZ store.

[face_off]

+1 for setting the GI Clamp to 10.

Paul

[valzheimer]

Hey Banti,

Thank you for the compliments and the insight of the kit it's very much appreciated, you are right about some settings in the "High Render Settings" preset but those were not really intended for animation, and they are not the fastest settings I would agree with that statement completely. Personally I have been using settings I included in the "Optimized Render Settings" for most of my usage of the Octane Render in general, but there ae some downsides to that too (GI clamp is much lower in that preset as well). Of course users are free to explore and adjust to their own settings as they learn more about the plugin, these two were just some examples how it can be done, and imo settings were a bit more useful than the default, which was my goal

To address the question why I haven't used Randomwalk for the skin, there's a lot of different ways to do one thing, using the specular mixed material is just one of them. I haven't personally discovered the most efficient way to use Randomwalk with skin yet, and was trying to think up one setting that would work with most common Daz characters and the included lights.

Regardless to say, hopefully the Kit opens the conversation and brings more people in with more ideas and more efficient ways to use Octane

V.

[Tugpsx]

Thanks for sharing the techniques and starting point for new Octane users

[joseburgos]

Hello,
So I don't know if I post this question here or on the Daz forum but when I first added the Octane Render Kit and I followed the tutorials, it worked exactly as the tutorial stated. I ran test after test on different Daz characters. I did this for the last three days but strangely, starting last night, when I select the character in the scene and double click on the skin texture, the figure does not turn black. I tried dragging the Octane Render Kit skin texture onto the object and still nothing.
Any ideas as to why this would stop working or any ideas as to how I can manually get this to work again?
Sincerely,

[Banti]

Hello,
So I don't know if I post this question here or on the Daz forum but when I first added the Octane Render Kit and I followed the tutorials, it worked exactly as the tutorial stated. I ran test after test on different Daz characters. I did this for the last three days but strangely, starting last night, when I select the character in the scene and double click on the skin texture, the figure does not turn black. I tried dragging the Octane Render Kit skin texture onto the object and still nothing.
Any ideas as to why this would stop working or any ideas as to how I can manually get this to work again?
Sincerely,

Objects usually only turn black when you forget to apply the texture maps (on templated materials). What does the skin look like when you render it? Does the skin look wrong/different from you previus tests? Or does the material not apply at all? I am not sure what if I understand what your problem is. Can you provide a screenshot of the render and the Nodegraph of the applied skin material? Also i dont know if drag and drop works with octane materials, i actually dont think so.