New Feature Suggestion...

[ockelford]

Dear Blender users (especially Lionel!)

Just a thought perhaps Lionel might be able to help, I would but I can't code at all...

Problem:
One of the bigest problems I have with Octane / Blender Workflow is that changing materials is possible in Blender, but easier in Octane. However, once you've finished setting up materials in Octane, the only way to re-use your materials is to save them using Octane's node system, which is an additional step I think is a bit too much fuss.

Solution?
A button in the exporter which makes blender read the OCS file and copies the material/daylight/misc other settings back to blender and updates the settings in the blender file? It would basically be a 'Write Materials into OCS' button, but in reverse...

Until/Unless the integrated plugin arrives, this would make sharing Octane materials from project to project soooo much better!

Any comments?

Rob.

[matej]

I don't think this is worth the effort. (but I have nothing against it, if people think this is needed and Lionel up to coding it)

I don't see the point in setting the materials in Blender if you will be rendering (only) with Octane - because you will have to re-tweak them in Octane anyway. As I see the Blender<>Octane workflow, Blender is only for modeling & setting UVs, shading & lighting is done separately and entirely in Octane.

Even if you won't render only with Octane, translating material setups between Octane-BI-Cycles-whatever-else-people-use is difficult to automate and still requires major input from the artist. The only thing that is 100% reliable to translate are texture paths for various standard shader parameters; diffuse, specular, alpha... So maybe having an "update texture paths" button is worth it.

Also, a lot of us don't use the default "in-mesh" embedded material node, but material macro nodes or macros from LiveDB, which offers more control & flexibility - extracting & translating materials back to Blender form that is practically impossible.

There are also other questions;
* what to do in case of procedural textures
* what in case of texture parameters (like gamma) that don't exist in Blender
etc, etc

[ockelford]

Its interesting, but I've really not gotten into the whole node thing.... I should really!

My only thought is that if you have most of the material settings set up before you start, i.e. basic inputs for diff spec and opacity, plus textures, then tweaking in Octane is all that's needed, however I see you point - if you'reusing the .ocm method, saving node setups etc, this would be redundant.

I may just invest some time in looking at nodes today....

Thanks for the reply!

R

[matej]

My only thought is that if you have most of the material settings set up before you start, i.e. basic inputs for diff spec and opacity, plus textures, then tweaking in Octane is all that's needed,

Isn't that how it already works now? IIRC, Lionel put some effort into proper material translation. (I never used any exporter material settings inside Blender, so I don't really know to what extent the materials are translated)

We all have different workflows, so while I don't find this option useful, others may.

[steveps3]

I don't think it would work anyway. The Octane material settings are way more extensive than the Blender settings. So most of your settings wouldn't have anywhere to live inside Blender.

What we really need is some sort of local live DB so that you can just store your own materials which are easily accessed in a similar way to the live DB.

[matej]

What we really need is some sort of local live DB so that you can just store your own materials which are easily accessed in a similar way to the live DB.

Yea, that request has a long beard...

Thankfully the last version has introduced "save without embedded tex.", so we can build a rudimentary macro material library ourselves.

[ockelford]

I agree, we all work differently...

One thing I like to do, is to open up the basic scene in Octane, start tweaking (just the settings which are available through the bledner exporter). Then when they're looking really good, it'd be nice to be able to save back so this stage doesn't need to be repeated.

The thing which brought it to the fore was a tricky swimming pool material I've been working on and I just thought it would be a shame to have to spend ages re-working that material every time!

I will definitely look into the other workflow though, especially as there are more options available using nodes...

Rob

[matej]

@ockelford,

I'm not sure I understand what you do, but I for example I don't bother with the "embedded" nodes that the exporter produces. For every material, I create a material macro node and do my stuff in there. This macro than stays the same every time you re-export your scene and you can save it in an .ocm file & import it into another project.

This way you have much more freedom & speed to replace / tweak your materials.

[aLeXXtoR]

I am totally agree with matej and don't think that this feature is useful even through it possible (which I think isn't).
It is quite logical to set dummy materials in Blender and adjust them in Octane, where you can see the results.

[yoyoz]

I agree, there are too many differences between Octane and Blender materials for making a decent conversion.

On the other hand what I'd like to do is import camera settings from Octane into Blender in case you played with it into Octane, but I'm still very reluctant interfering with ocs files at the moment given we've been promised a new file format for exchanging data (that was supposed to be available early in October, with instancing support). It seems that due to the focus on integrated rendering for other 3D software it may never happen