Octane Sketchup Exporter - 1024-01
Did reformat my HDD did a fresh install of octane 1024 and latest exporter but still no luckTIG wrote:Have you tried it with a fresh OCS name - there might be something in the 10243 version that's messing with the smoothing in 10244 OCS if it's a continuation of the same OCS ?


Hi guys,
abstrax pointed me here, regarding smoothing issues,
we did not make any changes to this area between releases, so i am pretty certain this is an exporter issue...
can someone please export a working smoothed object with the older one, and a broken one with the newer and post it here (the OBJ/MTL files) so we can have a look at the exported data ?
octane by default reads vertex normals for smoothing from the OBJ file, this can be disabled in the preferences (you can either recompute them during loading in octane, with our without smoothgroups),
but it's always best to have these come from the 3d app, as you will get smoothing problems on edges of your mesh, which the 3d app should solve.
Radiance
abstrax pointed me here, regarding smoothing issues,
we did not make any changes to this area between releases, so i am pretty certain this is an exporter issue...
can someone please export a working smoothed object with the older one, and a broken one with the newer and post it here (the OBJ/MTL files) so we can have a look at the exported data ?
octane by default reads vertex normals for smoothing from the OBJ file, this can be disabled in the preferences (you can either recompute them during loading in octane, with our without smoothgroups),
but it's always best to have these come from the 3d app, as you will get smoothing problems on edges of your mesh, which the 3d app should solve.
Radiance
Win 7 x64 & ubuntu | 2x GTX480 | Quad 2.66GHz | 8GB
Hi Radiance,radiance wrote:Hi guys,
abstrax pointed me here, regarding smoothing issues,
we did not make any changes to this area between releases, so i am pretty certain this is an exporter issue...
can someone please export a working smoothed object with the older one, and a broken one with the newer and post it here (the OBJ/MTL files) so we can have a look at the exported data ?
octane by default reads vertex normals for smoothing from the OBJ file, this can be disabled in the preferences (you can either recompute them during loading in octane, with our without smoothgroups),
but it's always best to have these come from the 3d app, as you will get smoothing problems on edges of your mesh, which the 3d app should solve.
Radiance
Thanks for looking into this,
Here I send you 2 files as asked above.
Hope it get solved soon

- Attachments
-
- Newer exporter with mesh not smoothed.zip
- Newer exporter with smooth not working
- (77.73 KiB) Downloaded 271 times
-
- Older exporter with smoothed mesh.zip
- Older exporter with working smooth
- (80.26 KiB) Downloaded 270 times
I was also coming round to the idea that it is perhaps an exporter issue... there is some recoding regarding smoothed edges in it to fix rare reversed face glitches... BUT I can get good results with the latest Octane version and latest exporter - using pjalbert's example SKP - so I am confused - did get an un-smoothed version ONCE but was unable to repeat it when I retried with exactly the same versions and settings - weird?...
I'll come back once I've made a few more tweaks to see what I can 'break'...
I'll come back once I've made a few more tweaks to see what I can 'break'...
Last edited by TIG on Fri Mar 18, 2011 3:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
TIG
I have tested Octane 1022 1023 10243 and 10244 with both the latest exporter and the previous one.
I get identical rendering results with perfect smoothing as expected - so I can see no issues ?
Here's a zip containing most of the permutations... Here is also a screenshot of MY settings that work in case someone else has other settings that don't
I get identical rendering results with perfect smoothing as expected - so I can see no issues ?
Here's a zip containing most of the permutations... Here is also a screenshot of MY settings that work in case someone else has other settings that don't

TIG
cool I'll give this a go - I never really messed aroun with SketchUp much but I do find it interesting the workflow/way of thinking it makes you use
http://www.soundcloud.com/raytrace ------------------- http://myspace.com/raytrace
Hi TIG,TIG wrote:I have tested Octane 1022 1023 10243 and 10244 with both the latest exporter and the previous one.
I get identical rendering results with perfect smoothing as expected - so I can see no issues ?
Here's a zip containing most of the permutations... Here is also a screenshot of MY settings that work in case someone else has other settings that don't
Just want to report my findings.
I downloaded the zip and opened each scene in octane. Everything with old exporter smooth fine but not with the new one. I still get no smoothing with new exporter as stated in previous posts

Did you check that your various versions of Octane all had their options set to be as shown for mine ?pjalbert wrote:Hi TIG,TIG wrote:I have tested Octane 1022 1023 10243 and 10244 with both the latest exporter and the previous one.
I get identical rendering results with perfect smoothing as expected - so I can see no issues ?
Here's a zip containing most of the permutations... Here is also a screenshot of MY settings that work in case someone else has other settings that don't
Just want to report my findings.
I downloaded the zip and opened each scene in octane. Everything with old exporter smooth fine but not with the new one. I still get no smoothing with new exporter as stated in previous posts
When I open ANY of those scenes in the appropriate version of Octane I get identical correct smoothing every time

Very strange...
There were some changes to how smoothed edges are processed in the new version [to avoid a rare 'flipped face' glitch], BUT nothing that should ultimately change the OBJ file's contents - indeed if you trawl through two OBJ files made with the two versions of the exporter every line looks identical to me ??? Also they ALL smooth properly for me anyway... Which suggests it's maybe an Options setting in Octane itself for your particular setup ?

TIG
Hi TIG,
can you test your smoothing with the default octane OBJ import settings ?
These are:
- import per material smooth value = ON
- use OBJ vertex normals if supplied = ON
- interpolate using smoothgroups = OFF
I think the issue is that if you enable the last parameter (interpolate using smoothgroups),
octane will simply recompute the vertex normals based on groups/edges and you don't end up using propper supplied vertex normals from sketchup.
As all users have these settings by default, it's important that the exporter writes out vertex normals propperly so that it works like all the other exporters,
otherwise users will end up with several problems, for example you will lose control of normal direction which can cause artifacts in renders with transmissive materials like glass...
Radiance
can you test your smoothing with the default octane OBJ import settings ?
These are:
- import per material smooth value = ON
- use OBJ vertex normals if supplied = ON
- interpolate using smoothgroups = OFF
I think the issue is that if you enable the last parameter (interpolate using smoothgroups),
octane will simply recompute the vertex normals based on groups/edges and you don't end up using propper supplied vertex normals from sketchup.
As all users have these settings by default, it's important that the exporter writes out vertex normals propperly so that it works like all the other exporters,
otherwise users will end up with several problems, for example you will lose control of normal direction which can cause artifacts in renders with transmissive materials like glass...
Radiance
Win 7 x64 & ubuntu | 2x GTX480 | Quad 2.66GHz | 8GB