OctaneRender for DAZ Studio 2021.1.1 - 62 [OBSOLETE]

[marc_cornette]

I'm on W11, and have no problems.

[Tugpsx]

Has anyone has success with UltraScenery environments in Octane. I still have material conversion issues. Wondering if anyone has success with the grass and ground planes.

BTW people are being told to disable Octane over at Daz3D.
We need to get some of the material conversion issues worked out in order to keep interest.

[Sorel]

Has anyone has success with UltraScenery environments in Octane. I still have material conversion issues. Wondering if anyone has success with the grass and ground planes.

BTW people are being told to disable Octane over at Daz3D.
We need to get some of the material conversion issues worked out in order to keep interest.

I don't own any ultrascenery products, what kind of conversion issues are you having? Can you give examples? Also who is telling who to disable octane?

[Tugpsx]

From the DAZ Forums: ** Things to try if UltraScenery is not working for you **

Uninstall Octane Render (if convenient) - Octane Render has for some people caused freezes and/or extremely long processing times for UltraScenery
Getting a big stack of plants and props in the very center of the scene - that also can be caused by Octane Render and can be resolved by uninstalling Octane.

[Tugpsx]

Here is a auto-converted terrain. The trees and grass could pass but the dirt texture and material just doesn't work.
Good that it was brought into Octane and the iRay version for comparison.

UltraScenery load and render test

UltraScenery load and iRay render test

[Sorel]

Here is a auto-converted terrain. The trees and grass could pass but the dirt texture and material just doesn't work.
Good that it was brought into Octane and the iRay version for comparison.

USCRoadOctane.png

iRayUSCRoadtest.jpg

Does the ground use a special type of layered shader? Also the grass and trees seem to load the same, you of course would need to convert the materials yourself to something that looks good in octane since the shaders are different.

[huakiami]

Has anyone has success with UltraScenery environments in Octane. I still have material conversion issues. Wondering if anyone has success with the grass and ground planes.

BTW people are being told to disable Octane over at Daz3D.
We need to get some of the material conversion issues worked out in order to keep interest.

UltraScenery is amazing, definitely one of the best (if not the best) terrain generation and instancing tools for DazStudio. And you can even edit the JSON files that come with it to use your own meshes or for example swap in Megascans props for the instanced objects/vegetation. Below are two renders I did in 2021 using UltraScenery with the Octane plugin.

Like Sorel mentioned, it's on you to make the materials look good in Octane. That should be the default way of thinking, but I know that's an unpopular opinion here...

As for your specific question on the terrain, what you're seeing in Octane is the same thing the OpenGL preview is showing in Daz. Because the vendor has a basic low res image representing the terrain in the diffuse color output of the material, which they are then overriding with a custom shader (you can view the node structure using the Shader Mixer in Daz). This will never be converted perfectly to Octane because they are using things like worldspace position to determine the water level, which Octane does not have access to (maybe with OSL you could do it, I don't know). So you need to build a layered terrain material yourself.

As a side note thank you for the update to use the 2021 engine @BK. Great to have the energy preserving GGX available to us now.

[Hun73rdk_1]

Has anyone has success with UltraScenery environments in Octane. I still have material conversion issues. Wondering if anyone has success with the grass and ground planes.

BTW people are being told to disable Octane over at Daz3D.
We need to get some of the material conversion issues worked out in order to keep interest.

UltraScenery is amazing, definitely one of the best (if not the best) terrain generation and instancing tools for DazStudio. And you can even edit the JSON files that come with it to use your own meshes or for example swap in Megascans props for the instanced objects/vegetation. Below are two renders I did in 2021 using UltraScenery with the Octane plugin.

hidden_power.jpg

mclaren_girl.jpg

Like Sorel mentioned, it's on you to make the materials look good in Octane. That should be the default way of thinking, but I know that's an unpopular opinion here...

As for your specific question on the terrain, what you're seeing in Octane is the same thing the OpenGL preview is showing in Daz. Because the vendor has a basic low res image representing the terrain in the diffuse color output of the material, which they are then overriding with a custom shader (you can view the node structure using the Shader Mixer in Daz). This will never be converted perfectly to Octane because they are using things like worldspace position to determine the water level, which Octane does not have access to (maybe with OSL you could do it, I don't know). So you need to build a layered terrain material yourself.

As a side note thank you for the update to use the 2021 engine @BK. Great to have the energy preserving GGX available to us now.

I don't know how people only just use the auto generated shader its junk and has not been updated in years and will make everything look like poob.
People need to start learning the node system more and not be lazy.

Also if you have some tips on how to make renders like you can you please post that

[cridgit]

I'm on W11, and have no problems.

Any change you're using the Nvidia studio driver? I have game ready driver installed and wondering whether that might be why its not working on Win11 for me.

[Tugpsx]

Material conversion from one application to another has always been an issue. When writing Daz2Octane several years ago we found a few key similarities with the then new iRay material and was able to implement it in the code. As developers change the conversion has pretty much stayed the same.
There have been a few tweaks but some things still remain. One of the issues was the tagging of a material as specular or diffused. This caused water to sometime be incorrect. A change of material type will usually rectify the problem.

I am curious if the demand is still there for Octane now that iRay has grown up and Octane is losing its edge over Daz3D iRay. I will continue to promote Octane in our webinars, but would also like to get a roadmap of what we can expect, especially with Daz 4.20 now available with volumetric light/clouds/smoke and ground fog.
I can tell you that Octane still renders much faster than iRay especially with the UltraScenery terrains once you find the correct material conversion.
Looking forward to an UltraScenery material section in the LiveDB.

BTW has anyone here been going to the Octane Slack group lately? It's a graveyard there. Ding me and we can share tips.

Daz3d UltraScenery with OctaneRender