Introducing the Octane for DAZ Studio plug-in

[t_3]

and here is a compilation of changes and improvements completed since mid december:

• material applying between one or more daz materials and an octane material by drag & drop;
  also live db thumbnails can be dragged onto one or more daz materials to apply them;
  dragging octane materials onto other octane materials will replace them.
  .
• in addition to the octane viewport picker tools, also the node- and mat pickers from studio are supported
  to select corresponding octane materials or filter the materials trees.
  .
• auto materials are updated (if activated) whenever new material sets are loaded onto an object
  .
• as long as the live geometry mode is on, this also happens for morph/pose sets
  .
• also for auto materials it can be chosen to skip specific maps (i.e. to save vram by not using specular or bump maps).
  .
• the node type (diffuse/glossy/specular) can be changed for one ore more octane materials at once
  without the need to go into the materials settings (while keeping all appropriate settings of course).
  .
• the nodegraph editor supports copy & paste for nodes, and it is also possible to paste node settings only.
  .
• it can be chosen to use only base meshes for rendering (in favor of the subdivided meshes),
  mainly to speed up rendering while tweaking a scene.
  .
• octane's set of hdri studio maps and ies lights are embedded and can be selected from the maps list
  without the need to browse the disk (for valid nodes = texture environment power and emission distribution).
  .
• of course the new sunlight model is already included, and in addition the location
  can be set via an integrated google maps browser (fun to use and useful too).
  .
• full support for orthogonal cameras; the view cameras (top, front, left, ...) do use this by nature of course
  (thus the octane viewport replicates the daz viewport also for this cameras),
  and in addition the "perspective" on/off switch of standard daz cameras also translates to octane.
  .
• to free up resources for rendering, switching off windows 7 aero is most recommended;
  this can be done from within the plugin, and even chosen to turn aero off on every startup.

[Sighman]

Drool, drool, drool!

I just have to keep reminding myself, "Patience is a virtue, patience is a virtue..."

[t_3]

Drool, drool, drool!

I just have to keep reminding myself, "Patience is a virtue, patience is a virtue..."

i'm really thankful for that i know how it feels if you get shown all the goodies over and over and just can't get yer hands on...

[rojharris]

Oh wow this looks fantastic. I'm doing a lot of work in Daz at the moment, doing illustrations for publishing etc. and I'm currently fast approaching image number 500!
(the're only small, but quite complicated). Anyhoo, at the moment I'm having to export the whole scene over to modo for rendering. I've been watching this thread with great interest
and have already bought Octane in anticipation (although haven't used it for anything as I'm waiting for this).
My only panic now is that the job will finish before the plugin comes out and I'll never get to use it.

Mind you, from the look of the videos/screenshots, I can see myself using Daz to render models from modo, so I may be using it every day!

[rcallicotte]

@t_3, this looks great. What, if any, animation controls or animation tools will be in place to move animated or BVH scenes into this new package?

[larsmidnatt]

A lot of those features sound sweet. Can't wait.

[Sighman]

@t_3, this looks great. What, if any, animation controls or animation tools will be in place to move animated or BVH scenes into this new package?

Animation has already been demonstrated earlier in this thread. If you are not familur with DAZ studio you should check it out at www.daz3d.com (it is free right now). DS supports key frame animation as well as aniblocks and importing BVH and Poser animation files.

[bodenarr]

wow,
that sounds great
what will be the price for the plugin ?

[itou31]

Hello,
I just bought a package with 3dsmax plugin. After testing demo and compare octane with corona, keyshot and reality for DAZ, I choose octane for its feature and many plugins.
now I use max to do animation issued from DAZ but not perfect.
I'm waiting for Daz plugin too. Thanks for the development.

[t_3]

@t_3, this looks great. What, if any, animation controls or animation tools will be in place to move animated or BVH scenes into this new package?

animation rendering is straight forward. the plugin recalls the timeline frame by frame and renders out whatever there is. this works with bvh and aniMate2; keyMate needs to be yet tested. in addition a simple animation cue is included, which allows to switch cameras, render settings and environments. the idea is to automate rendering non-animated sequences, which might require some different settings; switching cameras could be helpful for animation rendering too. fully animatable octane parameters (lights, materials, etc.) is on the todo list, and will be part of a later update.

the animation dialog of the plugin:

a note about voxelizing: since this can be done multi-threaded (object based), the voxelizing time inbetween frames can get pretty low. in addition the modifier state is generally cached, thus only objects which geometries did actually change are voxelized anew. pos/rot/scale transformations can be done by using octane's placement nodes, means such simple changes won't need voxelizing at all. and of course otoy is still working to make voxelizing even faster