Octane standalone is dead?

[pixelrush]

About 5 years ago now there was a volunteer written script evolved for Blender to Indigo use, Blendigo. Initially this was one persons work, a bit like Lionel has done here , a coding angel if you like.
Eventually this ran into similar issues as we have here now. The open community ethic/approach/licencing did not mix so well with commercial endeavour. People expected a lot of the maintainers and did not appreciate the free time they spent on it. The script often broke with Blender API changes and also became a bit of a mess as Indigo developed and was revised. It was hard to know what to allow for in the structure of the script to accommodate everything that would arrive. Direction was unknown and random. The Indigo developer was not good at providing info in the way Octane doesn't come with documentation either. The script got a fair way behind Indigo at various times as scripters had other life duties to attend to. It also didn't receive a lot of refinement in the UI dept either, stuff was just pushed in as best it could be with everything else. There were several concurrent scripts or variations at various times from different coders, each slightly different in features and completeness. Each coder wasn't familiar with the others approach enough to maintain another. All in all the available script deteriorated and founded. Eventually it was taken over and redone by Indigo because they wanted the Blender customers when they went fully commercial.
IMO it needs a bit of thought as to whether we really want to keep going with this Blender based initiative to connect with Octane or whether Otoys plugin is adequate and a more practical solution in the circumstance, and if we choose to keep going I suggest we be adult about it and do it on a paid/organised basis with realistic expectations.

[steveps3]

I am certainly prepared to add to a pot of money in order to pay someone to update the script.

To me it seems quite logical that if Otoy know the format of their .OCS file and they now have someone who is very familiar with the Blender interface (not that this is required) then it wouldn't be that much work for them to update the script. Certainly a lot less work than for a third party who has to reverse engineer the format of the .OCS each time they want to make a change.

In order to show that I am not just moaning with no intention of doing anything about it I will be looking at teaching myself a bit of Python and having a go at the script myself. I have looked at the exporter in the past and do remember thinking to myself that it looks quite alien. Certain when compared to Cobol

[enricocerica]

To be honnest I didn't tried to export any scene from blender to the new standalone version and didn't play a lot with it so far. I'll try to have a test asap to check what are the issues, standalone version is very important for me as for now it seems to be the only way to deal with huge scenes. Integrated scripts are really great and much more user friendly and I must say the blender one is really nice if not the best one but I didn't see any huge scene rendered with any of the integrated plugins.

I thing that the best solution would be to have a alembic exporter for Blender, seems that something is on the way but duno what's the status, hope to have a solution quickly ...

[steveps3]

I've tried using the plugin and it really grates with me. It may be better if, when you change to Octane Render, it got rid of the standard Blender nodes. I keep using the Blender nodes by mistake and this just leads to frustration. I actually find the Octane node system to be better than Blender's. I think the main reason being that you can work with all of your materials in one place. My normal workflow is to just set up completely vanilla materials in Blender and then set them up correctly in Octane. Now that you can group nodes easily the Octane node tree is much nicer.

[voon]

A question that sprang to mind when I read through the thread: Why is the OCS format being kept secret? I understand protecting your code of course, but I'd have thought that's iportant for the renderer etc itself ... what's in a file format worth protecting so? I'm just curious, I don't personally need it to be open.

[steveps3]

Especially when it is only an XML file which can be reverse engineered.

[enricocerica]

I've tried using the plugin and it really grates with me. It may be better if, when you change to Octane Render, it got rid of the standard Blender nodes. I keep using the Blender nodes by mistake and this just leads to frustration. I actually find the Octane node system to be better than Blender's. I think the main reason being that you can work with all of your materials in one place. My normal workflow is to just set up completely vanilla materials in Blender and then set them up correctly in Octane. Now that you can group nodes easily the Octane node tree is much nicer.

Am I wrong or I understand that you are using the export script to generate the OCS files, if so that's something I never done exactely because it is not supported and I knew that sooner or later it wouldn't work anymore. I always limit my exportation to an obj and do manage my materials and everything else in the Octane UI. The reason why the OCS file structure is not documented, at least for now, it's because it is subject to huge changes, once Otoy will reach a stable structure, I'm quite sure they will publish it.

What would be very useful IMO is a way to export the result of the internal blender plugin into a OCS file to be able to switch to the standalone version when the project becomes too huge.

[steveps3]

Yes I am using the export script.

WOW if you are exporting the .OBJ every time then that must be a real pain? How do you link the materials, do you have to relink the pins every time you do a render? Do you render your scenes and a very large group of objects or do you export the whole scene every time. I guess if you were doing the former then it might not be such a pain and it would mean that you could just update a particular object. Still seems like a lot of work when up until version 1.21 the export script was doing an absolutely brilliant job.

I've been taking a look at the difference between what Lionel's script produces and what Octane produces. They are quite different.

If the .OCS is still in flux then surely this is just another reason why Otoy should be in charge of updating it. At least they know when it changes. I really am struggling to understand what is wrong with this scenario. Surely without the exporter then Octane is almost useless. In fact I had a whole speech lined up but your revelation to not using the exporter has sort of thrown a spanner in the works. I will carry on anyway. Octane is only useful when you give it something to render. If there is no way (or only a very complex way) of giving it something to render then what is the point? It is like making the worlds best racing car but forgetting to put any seats in it. Looks brilliant but you can't drive it.

[stratified]

A question that sprang to mind when I read through the thread: Why is the OCS format being kept secret? I understand protecting your code of course, but I'd have thought that's iportant for the renderer etc itself ... what's in a file format worth protecting so? I'm just curious, I don't personally need it to be open.

Hi,

The OCS file format is not a big secret. It's just an XML file that you can open in your editor and you're allowed to look at it.

We just don't want to publish "documentation" about it because we want to change it whenever we want. Recently we changed it to version 2. A bit of things changed there:

• Not everything is an XML tag anymore some things became ids.
• Embedded images aren't supported anymore.
• Empty static pins aren't written out.
• Added support for nodegraphs.
• Probably more than I can remember

Where can I actually download the exporter script, just to satisfy my curiosity. I think the file format is easy enough to fix but it's an ungrateful job maintaining it. Basically you jump to your feet every time somebody complains that something is broken

cheers,
Thomas

[mib2berlin]

Hi stratified, upload the latest version 1.21 here:

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/26172

Rename it to zip.

Cant find this version in forum, hidden in one of the addon threads.
Here is yoyoz original thread:

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=21412

Cheers, mib.