Octane MODO issues

[Greg]

Yes - mix material nodes are the best way to simulate MODO's group masking feature. Although I noticed today that edge rounding doesn't work with mixed materials (edge rounding has been a little iffy it seems...maybe it's the normal map vmaps that most CAD files have that is goofing it up).

Seth - I would decide at the outset of a project if you're going to go all 'Octane Override' or all 'On-the-fly'. Regarding your 'one item with many variations' issue it would probably be easier to just duplicate the Octane override of the materials you know are changing (like the color of a plastic shell) and key the visibility on and off on the timeline. I'm guessing a lot of the materials don't change (screws are still stainless steel...wires are still black plastic...etc). Then you can just go through the timeline to render out the variations (frame 1 is red shell/blue accents, frame 2 is white shell/pink accents...etc). That's what I'd do at least.

Paul - I did notice if you go back in and re-name a material group in the shadertree (and change the name of the ptag in the process) you will get a bunch of errors. I'm guessing the ovveride is looking for a schematic workspace with the old name of the material group (or something like that).

I'm also noticing a some HUGE 'loading scene into Octane' rendertimes. 5 minutes of loading a CAD file into Octane while rendering for 30 seconds is a bad tradeoff. It (afaict) has everything to do with the number of items in the scene. So if I take a scene with 300 items and convert all the instance into meshes and merge a bunch of meshes the 'loading into Octane' time will go down from 5min to 15 seconds. I'm guessing this is a MODO issue since MODO is horrible at everything that relates to a large number of items.

-Greg

[face_off]

Although I noticed today that edge rounding doesn't work with mixed materials (edge rounding has been a little iffy it seems...maybe it's the normal map vmaps that most CAD files have that is goofing it up).

Edge rounding on geometry sourced from Modo is not really viable at the moment.

Seth - I would decide at the outset of a project if you're going to go all 'Octane Override' or all 'On-the-fly'. Regarding your 'one item with many variations' issue it would probably be easier to just duplicate the Octane override of the materials you know are changing (like the color of a plastic shell) and key the visibility on and off on the timeline. I'm guessing a lot of the materials don't change (screws are still stainless steel...wires are still black plastic...etc). Then you can just go through the timeline to render out the variations (frame 1 is red shell/blue accents, frame 2 is white shell/pink accents...etc). That's what I'd do at least.

You can animate colors in Octane Overrides. You can also drag Modo Material channels into an Octane Override and connect them to an RGB or Float node, so some of the Override values can be sourced from the Modo material.

Paul - I did notice if you go back in and re-name a material group in the shadertree (and change the name of the ptag in the process) you will get a bunch of errors. I'm guessing the ovveride is looking for a schematic workspace with the old name of the material group (or something like that).

I will investigate this...

I'm also noticing a some HUGE 'loading scene into Octane' rendertimes. 5 minutes of loading a CAD file into Octane while rendering for 30 seconds is a bad tradeoff. It (afaict) has everything to do with the number of items in the scene. So if I take a scene with 300 items and convert all the instance into meshes and merge a bunch of meshes the 'loading into Octane' time will go down from 5min to 15 seconds. I'm guessing this is a MODO issue since MODO is horrible at everything that relates to a large number of items.

Yes, Modo is taking some time to return the Mesh Item data, so multiply that by 500 and you can get some very slow load times. Using a Relicator solves this, or if they are all a little different, merge them. In general, scenes with lots of Mesh items will load faster if Live Geometry Update is OFF for those items.

Paul

[Greg]

Hey Paul, any chance MODO's render cache (when it's fully functional) will help with the 'many item' problem? It's pretty typical of decent sized CAD models to have hundreds or thousands of items. While I usually try to optimize them it can take a lot of time and you never know what you're going to screw up - and the way things are now it's a necessary 1st step before you can really start to work with Octane.

One other note (while you're reading this). I don't think Octane can 'see' the results of the FX section of the shader tree. I can send you a simple scene if you want to check it out (for instance, using textures in the FX section to move a replicator's particles around). This (I suppose) would maybe be a non-issue if the render cache was being used.


-G

[face_off]

Hey Paul, any chance MODO's render cache (when it's fully functional) will help with the 'many item' problem? It's pretty typical of decent sized CAD models to have hundreds or thousands of items. While I usually try to optimize them it can take a lot of time and you never know what you're going to screw up - and the way things are now it's a necessary 1st step before you can really start to work with Octane.

I don't think the Render Cache will help with this. If you are using 2.24.1.87, re-download and install the plugin, since it looks like the first version I posted of that build was the debug build (which will iterate through the mesh items slower) rather than the release build.

I don't think Octane can 'see' the results of the FX section of the shader tree. I can send you a simple scene if you want to check it out (for instance, using textures in the FX section to move a replicator's particles around). This (I suppose) would maybe be a non-issue if the render cache was being used.

Can you send me a sample showing this pls? It's not an issue I was aware of.

Thanks

Paul

[Greg]

Hi Paul - regarding pMods and the ShaderFX section of the ShaderTree - looks like if you 'load all frames into Octane' in the Animation prefs it will work (basically you have an animated texture locator responsible for the animation...so maybe that wasn't being seen before). Or it was some other user error - anyway, it work.

-Greg