Material Issues - Stonemasons Wintercastle - IRAY

[TRRazor]

Stonemason has always been DAZ3Ds go-to-guy when it comes to using features that only work correctly in DS.
He designs these texture maps with layers, as already mentioned here, and then assigns alpha maps to the individual layers to blend them.

I cannot mention often enough that from a technical pov there is absolutely no reason for doing this.

Although OctaneRender isn't supporting this at this point, you can easily look at the material structure in DS and then reproduce it in Photoshop (or any other imaging software which supports layers).
Then create a single big texture from it, save it, and there you go.
Will this look as nice as the Iray version? Unfortunately not, because since you're only using one material now, you can't assign different shaders to the individual material zones, but it gives you an idea, how it works.

[DrHemulen]

It'll also save you some VRAM to combine maps in that manner.
To get around the single material, can't you use mix materials, mixing vis lo-res versions of the original transparacy maps? Kinda like you do with your shaders and SSS levels.

[Zay]

I don't have Wintercastle, but if it's the same thing he did with Desert Outpost you can blend it with a Mix. Load the textures into the 2 materials and set the Amount to Greyscale Image and load the alpha map.

[TRRazor]

Sure, using several Mix Materials you could also reproduce this.

[face_off]

I tried now for the second time to point out that new products are not working properly.

I understand you are having issues where the plugin is not converted some DAZStudio materials correctly. However the way Octane and IRay specify materials is completely different (and they are not compatible with each other). I don't think any of the Octane plugins will 100% accurately convert the host materials to Octane materials 100% of the time. There will always be some tweaking to accommodate special cases. I can build additional rules into the DAZStudio plugin material converter to cope with these special cases, but you need to provide those rules, or a copy of the material that is not converting.

Paul

[rajib]

And that is wrong.

I understand that Paul has difficulties to catch up the problems without test scenes , but as these issues are in new products i will not forward my bought product for easy. This issue for example is not reproducable with some cubes and lights.

I think you need to forward the product to him to help him pin point the issue and solve it. I have done the same a couple of times with a simple ask from Paul that he deletes the product from his content library after he has solved the issue and I believe he has done so for earlier problems I have reported and will do so for another product after he resolves with the current issue that I have reported to him. You have to believe in a honor system and give him the product to solve the issue you are facing. Take the example of issue with instances and UltraScatter. In the UltraScatter thread Paul had asked for a scene file to be given to him in August. No one did and hence the issue remained. In November I bought UltraScatter without having read that thread. Then I faced problems with it in Octane and searched the forum. Once I came across the thread and saw the last message was an ask for the scene, I created the test scene Paul had asked for and started sharing info with Paul on my findings and he shared his findings and now that issue is almost resolved and UltraScatter can be used and environmental props like The Harpwood Trail from DAZ can be used without issue. And Paul was able to find the issue and able to resolve it in within 2 to 3 weeks since I first provided him the test scenes. Currently there is one last issue I believe is there regarding instances and target child nodes and that is visible in the Mayan Ruins environmental prop and I have passed him the same and also pin point the issue I faced with which node / instance details, etc. and I believe he will be able to solve that soon too.

So my point is simple, if you have an issue, share as much info and test scenes and props as needed to help Paul find the issue under debug and get it resolved. Don't post your product zip in the forum. Send through PM to him and ask him to delete it after he has done solving the issue you reported. Also if the product zip is too big, delete the textures folder from the zip and pass to him. Textures take up most of the size and are not needed unless your issue is with the materials. Give him these things and it will help him to get your issue resolved fast and benefit everyone here.

[Hubby72]

I understood that for sure.

I was close to do so.
But during this discussion i started an Excel list with my lastest bought products and checked them one by one and wanted to write down what issues come up.
After checking around 30 products which i bought around in the last 3 month, i had 17 products with issues from minor to major ones.
So my personal conclusion was that even when i forward my package there will be so much more already and not getting better in future that for me it is sure that this will never work.

Also my intention was to point that out as i already said.
I am not a fulltime CGI User. I only have time to work 1-2 evenings a week with DAZ mostly weekeends. Status now is the work to keep produts running somehow as intended in OCDS as major time consumption.
As i started with OCDS it was more like optional to improve materials not it is mostly necessary. I also always wanted to work in simply one tool. I never used standalone. And i will not rebuild any materials in Photoshop only because the plugin can not keep track.
If i would want to build everything up from scratch i would not work with a content driven tool like DAZ Studio.

The second thing i was not happy with is that OCDS did not come forward with any new features. Not even the ones from Octane Standalone not the requested one like LMAH support etc. I only see bugfixing and even in that i can not hold up to date with DAZ Developement.
As long as octane development is not going more deeply with DAZ Devs it will always run after. This needs usually be driven by third party team which is not the case here.

After almost three years of working with octane now I am already started learning back to basic the Iray render and workflow and i am quite happy with it. And to be honest my new renders look also a lot sharper. For sure i needed to buy some shaders packs so i will no longer miss the live DB.
I do not say it the better for anyone but it the best decision for me.

[rajib]

I do understand it has taken a long time to get things done for the Daz Octane plugin specially under t_3. But under Paul I think there is a marked improvement. I hope that once Octane 3.1 is released and like Goldorak from Octane team mentioned in viewtopic.php?f=44&t=57905 thread, Octane will add support for MDL after that, though they have not given any ETA. If that happens all the material issues should go away and I think the plugin should be also able to handle the MDL. Like you and others I am also really waiting for this to happen because like you have mentioned not everyone has the time to go fiddling in Photoshop and other tools to fix the materials. So far I have managed but hoping for a permanent fix and hearing about potential MDL support gives me hope.

If you want to use LAHM with the current version of Daz Octane Plugin, you can. Look at the render below. I have loaded 3 animals with LAMH hair in the scene. Total of close to 4 milllion fiber hairs rendered in DAZ Octane plugin.

LAMH Fiber hair with Octane

For LAMH to work you need to download the latest version of the LAHM plgin (1.5.15 or above. 1.6 is the latest but somehow I only get 1.5.15 from the Daz Download Manager). You need to export the hair as Fiber hair and there is an auto import feature. So after the auto import, the hair will be visible in Octane and it will render. You if need help on the steps, let me know I will put up a small tutorial with steps. I used a specular node for the hair.

Also to me the lack of proper instances and group instances was a major issue but like I mentioned that should be fixed in the next stable release. I am hoping as we close the list of issues one by one, we will have a bug free plugin and then new features can be requested and added. I have a list of things I want the plugin to support like the standalone does. But for now I am willing to wait and get the bugs resolved first.

[Hubby72]

If MDL will come and when it will be included in OCDS then i will perhaps take a look again.
But i am very sceptical. I would guess it will be Standalone only like all the other new octane features. There is not much hope i have for that.
For now OCDS is uninstalled - same as LMAH as it was not supported by ocds. Last info was something like would be difficult , need more time etc. somewhere in the posts.. So thanks for the info from you.

[Leonides02]

I understand the frustration of the OP. OTOY and Octane don't make it clear anywhere that your DAZ scenes will look significantly worse if you use their product compared to the free rendering system that comes with DAZ. It's a little deceptive. True and accurate iray conversion support is a critical issue.

I'm a new user. I don't know why you guys have not been raising hell about this?