OctaneRender for DAZ Studio 2021.1.5 - 70 [OBSOLETE]

[toby_a]

This is the recommended thread for downloading, and posting any questions, suggestions or support queries for OctaneRender for DAZ Studio - TEST (ie. pre-release) and STABLE releases.

SOLUTIONS TO COMMON ISSUES

1) Make sure your NVIDIA drivers are up to date.

2) Make sure you are running the latest version of the OctaneRender for DAZStudio plugin.

3) If you experience a DAZStudio crash - deleting C:\Users\[username]\OctaneRender\Data\OctaneRender_settings.oczdb may resolve the issue.
This also resolves the "COULD NOT INITIALISE IN-MEMORY DB!" error on startup and a number of other issues.

4) If the Save button is disabled when using the Final button - disable the Final button and in Render settings select the SuperScope (2:1) Size / aspect ratio and drag the Viewport height or width until you reach required resolution.

5) If rendering an animation fails after 11 frames - make sure the DAZStudio viewport is visible when you render the animation.

6) If Octane materials are not loading when you load a previously saved scene - tick Preferences->Load OctaneRender materials from .duf user presets. If ticking this option does not stick between DAZStudio restarts, delete OctaneRender_settings.oczdb as per NOTE 3 above.

7) If you get a "Could not save a frame for X times!" - please refer to the thread at
for potential solutions.

8) If you get a "Bogus Scene Path" error - this is due to having an apostrophe in the filepath of a texturemap (so store your textures in foldernames which do not have apostrophes).

9) Octane panel title bar is off the screen and cannot be closed - click anywhere on the Octane panel and then press Alt-F4.

10) Rendering animation results in the scene emitter intensities changing - this is because rendering animations is done in "Final" mode, where meshes are merged. To resolve this, UNTICK the Preferences->Use Combined Mesh, or ENABLE the Surface Brightness pin on each of the emission materials in the scene.

11) Denoiser is not working - make sure you have a graphics card selected for Denoising in the System tab->Open Device Settings window, and that you are using the Path Tracing kernel.

12) Render artifacts near eyebrows - this is due to the eyebrow geometry going inside the head mesh surface. So morph, move or scale the eyebrows so they do not intersect with the head mesh.

13) Octane panes do not appear on the screen (ie. they open off the screen) - Main Menu Bar->Window->Workspace->Select Layout->Accept (you might choose a different layout to the current layout to make this work).


KNOWN ISSUES AWAITING RESOLUTION

1) Custom LUT, Panoramic camera and OSL nodes are not currently supported.

2) Templating is not currently working for specular and roughness maps from Iray materials. - FIXED (please report any issues)

3) UDIM Tiles are not currently supported.

4) Some of the newer OctaneRender material and texture types are not supported. - Most are now supported

DAZ Studio Version
DAZ Studio 4.8 or later on Windows 8, 10 or 11 64bit

To use this version, you need a GPU of compute model 3.0 or higher. Support for Fermi GPUs (like GTX 4xx and 5xx) has been dropped.
Also, make sure you use an Nvidia Studio driver of version 451.xx or higher.

Network Rendering

For Network Rendering, you must use the OctaneRender Enterprise Node release from the Octane Standalone forums/download page which matches the exact Octane version of the plugin you are using. This version matches OctaneRender Enterprise 2021.1.5 Render Node builds.

Support Issues
If you have a support issue, pls provide the following information:
- Operating System (ie. Win 8, 10, 11)
- Amount of RAM
- Graphics Card(s) - model (ie. GTX 580, 3GB)
- Nvidia driver version
- DAZ Studio version
- OctaneRender for DAZ Studio version (e.g. 2021.1.5_70)

- The most important part of resolving a problem is being able to reproduce that problem. So pls provide as much detail as possible in order for me to do this, and if the problem is specific to the scene, send me the scene.


Change logs since 2021.1.5 - 69 [Test]

• Add support for Visible Environment
  • Please see the OctaneRender Standalone documentation for what this does: https://docs.otoy.com/StandaloneH_STA/S ... onment.htm
  • To change the Visible Environment, change the new drop down in the Environment tab from "Normal" to "Visible"
• Allow "Smart unfold" (again) for material nodes in the nodegraph editor
  • The sharing of identical nodes during Smart unfold has been disabled - please let me know if this was useful to you
  • Fix corruption of connections when smart unfolding produces connections that already exist
• Add some missing node types for use in the nodegraph editor
  • Added selectable materials:
    • Null Material
    • Clipping Material
  • Added selectable textures:
    • Iridescent
    • Smooth Voronoi Contours
    • Tile Patterns
    • Procedural Effects
    • Chainmail
    • Moire Mosaic
    • Color Squares
    • Stripes
    • Flakes
    • Fractal
    • Hagelslag
    • Glowing Circle
    • Cell Noise
    • Gradient Generator
    • Floats to Color
    • Float3 to Color
    • Float to Greyscale
    • Curvature Texture
    • Ray Direction
    • Normal
    • Position
    • Relative Distance
    • UV Coordinate
    • Z Depth
    • Surface Tangent dPdu
    • Surface Tangent dPdv
    • Sample Position
    • Chaos Texture
    • Random Map
    • Range
    • Binary Math Operation
    • Unary Math Operation
    • Spotlight Distribution
    • Channel Picker
    • Channel Merger
    • Ray Switch
    • Channel Inverter
    • Channel Mapper
    • Capture to Custom AOV
• The organization of node types in the nodeograph editor has been aligned with OctaneRender Standalone
• Fixed some issues with Daz cameras with "Use Local Dimensions" enabled
• Fixed locating images containing XML-special characters in the Daz content library

Download Links

• For users with an Enterprise subscription license
  • - OctaneRender for DAZ Studio 2021.1.5 - 70
  For users with a Studio subscription license
  • - OctaneRender for DAZ Studio 2021.1.5 - 70
  For users with a Prime/Free Tier license
  • - OctaneRender for DAZ Studio 2021.1.5 - 70

Please feel free to report any issues you encounter.



Happy rendering
Your OTOY team

[huakiami]

Incredible update - thank you Toby!

Did not expect to get all of those texture nodes - these will be very helpful in re-creating some of the more complex MDL materials used on some Daz products (i.e. using worldspace normals to add a layer of snow only on the tops of objects).

For those searching for an equivalent to "Iray Section Planes" - you may find the Clipping Material helpful.

Visible Environment is also working well, and the dropdown to switch between the environments makes sense.

[SiliconAya]

Some good additional nodes! Specifically I've been wanting the channel picker node for quite a while, not having to split packed textures manually in Photoshop is going to save me quite a bit of time!

Are you going to be adding more of the missing nodes/features?

My personal wish list would be:

• Better layer(s) support. Being able to add more than one layer, like dirt, blood, grease, sweat etc, to skin and clothing for example would be great.
• Being able to make materials that support UDIM would be nice too, specifically skin materials as Genesis figures have used UDIM for years now.
• Octane lights. Mesh lights are fine, but Spectron lights would be a lot better!
• A properly working Gradient/ramp node would be nice, although it's been mentioned before that it probably isn't possible in Daz Studio.

While I'm on a wish list, being able to use random walk and displacement together would be nice, as currently using displacement in a material that uses random walk results in the material tinting red. For example, if I add a displacement map to my random walk based skin material that adds wrinkles to the bottom of G8Fs feet, so they're not just flat, the entire leg surface/material tints red.


Great work and update!

[MyRho]

Installed it and tested it using some old scenes or loading a new one.

"Building geometry" - that's all.
Won't render any scene here.

GTX 3060/Win 10 Pro, newest drivers

Going back to the old version.

[RGUS]

Installed it and tested it using some old scenes or loading a new one.

"Building geometry" - that's all.
Won't render any scene here.

GTX 3060/Win 10 Pro, newest drivers

Going back to the old version.

Yes, can confirm the same crash with old scenes, gone back to the earlier version and all works fine with old scenes.

[toby_a]

Installed it and tested it using some old scenes or loading a new one.

"Building geometry" - that's all.
Won't render any scene here.

GTX 3060/Win 10 Pro, newest drivers

Going back to the old version.

Yes, can confirm the same crash with old scenes, gone back to the earlier version and all works fine with old scenes.

Hi @MyRho and @RGUS, thank you for trying it out and reporting this problem. Are you able to share a scene that doesn't work in the new version? The scenes I've tried seem to work OK. Feel free to DM me if you don't want to share publicly.

Thanks,
Toby.

[toby_a]

Some good additional nodes! Specifically I've been wanting the channel picker node for quite a while, not having to split packed textures manually in Photoshop is going to save me quite a bit of time!

Are you going to be adding more of the missing nodes/features?

Yes. But. The remaining features and node types pose significant technical challenges with the way the plugin is architected, which is why there is a seemingly random selection of features that keep getting left out.

Not trying to make excuses, just letting you know that some features are going to take longer than others.

My personal wish list would be:

• Better layer(s) support. Being able to add more than one layer, like dirt, blood, grease, sweat etc, to skin and clothing for example would be great.

Right, I see that the nodegraph editor basically has no support for layers. I've made a note to look into this.

[*]Being able to make materials that support UDIM would be nice too, specifically skin materials as Genesis figures have used UDIM for years now.

Just to make sure I'm understanding what you want here - you'd like to have a single Octane material (which would use UDIM textures) for the skin of a figure rather than having one for arms, one for legs, one for face, etc.?

[*]Octane lights. Mesh lights are fine, but Spectron lights would be a lot better!

One of the next big features will be support for defining arbitrary Octane geometry, and this will include the ability to define Volumetric spotlights. I expect to have this ready in an experimental form in the next few weeks.

[*]A properly working Gradient/ramp node would be nice, although it's been mentioned before that it probably isn't possible in Daz Studio.[/list]

Do you mean support for the Gradient generator and Gradient map nodes? Or something else?

While I'm on a wish list, being able to use random walk and displacement together would be nice, as currently using displacement in a material that uses random walk results in the material tinting red. For example, if I add a displacement map to my random walk based skin material that adds wrinkles to the bottom of G8Fs feet, so they're not just flat, the entire leg surface/material tints red.

Are you able to share an example material, maybe in a simple scene, that shows this issue?

Great work and update!

Thanks!
Toby.

[huakiami]

[*]Better layer(s) support. Being able to add more than one layer, like dirt, blood, grease, sweat etc, to skin and clothing for example would be great.

Right, I see that the nodegraph editor basically has no support for layers. I've made a note to look into this.

[*]Being able to make materials that support UDIM would be nice too, specifically skin materials as Genesis figures have used UDIM for years now.

Just to make sure I'm understanding what you want here - you'd like to have a single Octane material (which would use UDIM textures) for the skin of a figure rather than having one for arms, one for legs, one for face, etc.?

These two are at the top of my wish list as well. Even just a temporary solution of hard-coding the existing materials to have 4 layer slots (or some other arbitrary number) instead of just 1 would be a huge help if implementing the layered material properly requires significant re-architecture of the plugin.

And not to speak for SiliconAya but I believe you understood their request about UDIM correctly. Given the majority of us Daz artists are doing character artwork of some type and skin is notoriously difficult in 3D art in general, a lot of us spend a large amount of time just tweaking the skin materials. In Daz Studio, you can select multiple materials at once on the Surfaces pane and edit them all at the same time. If we had something like that in the plugin that would also solve this problem, but I imagine implementing UDIM is probably easier than adding a multi-edit function for materials.

[SiliconAya]

[*]Being able to make materials that support UDIM would be nice too, specifically skin materials as Genesis figures have used UDIM for years now.

Just to make sure I'm understanding what you want here - you'd like to have a single Octane material (which would use UDIM textures) for the skin of a figure rather than having one for arms, one for legs, one for face, etc.?

I believe the way it works in Octane standalone is with the "Image Tiles" node.

[*]A properly working Gradient/ramp node would be nice, although it's been mentioned before that it probably isn't possible in Daz Studio.[/list]

Do you mean support for the Gradient generator and Gradient map nodes? Or something else?

The "Gradient Map" node, currently we have a "Color Gradient" node, but that only supports a start and end colour.

While I'm on a wish list, being able to use random walk and displacement together would be nice, as currently using displacement in a material that uses random walk results in the material tinting red. For example, if I add a displacement map to my random walk based skin material that adds wrinkles to the bottom of G8Fs feet, so they're not just flat, the entire leg surface/material tints red.

Are you able to share an example material, maybe in a simple scene, that shows this issue?

I've attached a super simple scene with a test displacement texture, you'll probably have to relink the texture in the arms material as I just chucked it in the zip.
The scene contains G8F with a basic flat colour random walk universal material applied and a copy of that material with the displacement added applied to the arms. In this case the arms are darker looking, but depending on the skin textures used it often looks both darker and red tinted.

Things I've noticed:
- I exported it as a orbx and opened it in standalone and the issue persists their, so maybe it's more of a Octane issue than a plugin issue.
- In the "texture displacement" node, the "level of detail" settings changes how strong the effect is, with smaller resolutions being stronger.

[huakiami]

I've attached a super simple scene with a test displacement texture, you'll probably have to relink the texture in the arms material as I just chucked it in the zip.
The scene contains G8F with a basic flat colour random walk universal material applied and a copy of that material with the displacement added applied to the arms. In this case the arms are darker looking, but depending on the skin textures used it often looks both darker and red tinted.

Things I've noticed:
- I exported it as a orbx and opened it in standalone and the issue persists their, so maybe it's more of a Octane issue than a plugin issue.
- In the "texture displacement" node, the "level of detail" settings changes how strong the effect is, with smaller resolutions being stronger.

I've seen this as well. Unfortunately as you mention I think it's a core Octane issue with Texture Displacement + Random Walk Medium, not a Daz plugin specific problem. You may have better luck with the Vertex Displacement node instead (see images below). The caveat being that Vertex Displacement will require a high level of subdivision to look good.

Texture Displacement

Vertex Displacement