Pre-Beta 2.42: Some Fixes/Changes That Are Needed

[GeoPappas]

1. It would be great if Octane would allow the MaxSamples to be changed without restarting the render.

Here is my proposal: If Octane reaches MaxSamples, then it should just act like the user hit the Pause button. For example, if a user has the MaxSamples set at the default (16,000) and the render reaches 16,000 samples, then it should just act like the user hit the pause button. This way, if a user needs to increase the MaxSamples it won't restart the render from the beginning (and save the user lots of time). Conversely, if the MaxSamples is set way too high (e.g, 64,000) and the user realizes that rendering should probably be done much sooner, then it would also be great if the user could set the MaxSamples to a lower number without restarting the render. In other words, it would be nice if a user could set MaxSamples to one number and then change it hours later to another number without restarting the render.

2. Currently, there seem to be issues with changing the Mesh Preview Resolution.

It seems that if you change the X resolution, tab, and then change the Y resolution, there are many times where it doesn't take the change in the Y (or worse, Octane refuses to work anymore). For example, the default resolution is 1280 x 800. If you need to change this to 800 x 600 by clicking on the Mesh Preview Resolution icon, entering 800 into the X resolution, hitting the tab key, and then hitting 600 in the Y resolution, there are many times when Octane won't take the change in the Y resolution (and the image will then end up as 800 x 800). As a matter of fact, if you make the changes fast enough, Octane will stop functioning properly or you can end up getting "Cuda Renderer" errors (see below).

It seems that the only way to change the resolution without issues is to first enter the X resolution, hit Enter, wait a few seconds for Octane to successfully make the change, and then enter the Y resolution and hit Enter (in other words, you need to do it as two separate actions).

3. If you open Octane and then immediately open an OCS project, a dialog box asks "Save changes to current project before closing?" There is no need for this since nothing has been changed. Since nothing has changed, and there is no need to save an empty project, it would be nice if this question could be removed.

The same thing is true if you are working on a project and want to save the project (by hitting File menu -> Save or Save As) and open another project. Even though you just saved the project, when you try to Open another project, Octane will ask "Save changes to current project before closing?"

It would be nice if Octane could detect if there were any changes made, and if there aren't any changes, then there is no need to ask whether or not you want to save the project.

[GeoPappas]

I found another small issue that should be fixed:

4. When saving an image file (PNG), there are times where it is possible to accidentally overwrite an image file without Octane verifying that is what you want to do.

For example, if you hit the "Save Render to Image File" button (at the top of the window), type "test.png" in the File name field, and hit the Enter key, you will have created a new PNG file by that name.

If you now do it again (a second time), Octane will provide the following dialog:

"test.png already exists. Do you want to replace it?"

But if you do it again, but instead type "test" (without the extension) in the File name field, and hit the Enter key, it will overwrite the existing file without verifying that is what you want.

Octane should always provide a verification dialog when the file already exists.