OTOY Forums

Ryan - this is fixed in the next release (which I will upload in the next 24hrs).

I will need to talk to McNeel regarding animating Octane materials - however my current guess is that it will be a significant amount of work to implement - so if you can make do with Rhino materials for any material that needs to be animated - go with that. But I will ask the McNeel devs and get a definite answer

Thank you Paul! And I'm about to PM you a Bongo animation with both object and camera animation.

Hi Paul ..

I can't find it either. But if I look at Canyon Oak, or Red Gold or aluminum red or Douglas Fir, and others, I get a material window identical to the screen shot I sent.

cheers,
eric

(edit) I just tried a simple experiment. I opened my template (full of materials) with Rhino and all is well ... all the materials are available for full edit.

I opened the same template in MoI and built a few simple shapes, saved it ... opened it in Rhino and lost the edit details ... the materials windows look like the screenshot. So saving the drawing in MoI kills some information. I'll explore this further in the days to come. Maybe I can import objects from MoI into Rhino without screwing up my basic materials template.

(edit 2) Yes, I can import MoI objects into Rhino without screwing up my materials template.

cheers,
eric

Hi Eric

Octane Materials in Rhino cannot be exported to external applications like MoI. They will instead be exported in whatever format you are using to transfer info between Rhino and MoI (ie. OBJ materials, or Rhino materials).

Paul

Right.
MoI is a 3dm generator so Rhino can read MoI native files with no problem but the material specs are not attached and MoI will not read Rhino blocks. I started a discussion with Michael Gibson the developer of MoI. In the meantime the work around I mentioned works well.
thanks,
eric

(edit) Michael Gibson created a patch for me ... now I can work back and forth with Rhino/MoI and not lose my material definitions.
cheers,
eric

I have refreshed the installers at the top of this thread with:

2.16.0.27
- Fixed issue when input from the LocalDb was not working for materials downloaded from the LiveDb
- Fixed exception being raised when saving a Rhino file when the plugin was not open
- Fixed issue where rendering proxies in the Rhino Render panel was raising a "Singular Matrix" Cuda error

Ryan - still working on Bongo motion blur - should be in the net release.

Paul

Awesome, than you Paul. I'll download and start testing this latest release this afternoon when I return from my morning meetings.

One question -- does the Octane plugin have the capability to either animate camera focus, or to animate between saved Render Targets? The reason I ask, is that I was trying to create an animation where the camera changed where it was focused, and the only way I was able to achieve it was to do 2 separate animations (one focused on one object, and one focused on another object) and then crossfade between the two in the video editor. It's a bit of work. I'm trying to achieve something like what you see here, when the camera changes focus from the flowers to the building in the background in the beginning of this animation, around second 8 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDhrvUeC5XE

Thanks,
Ryan

does the Octane plugin have the capability to either animate camera focus, or to animate between saved Render Targets? The reason I ask, is that I was trying to create an animation where the camera changed where it was focused, and the only way I was able to achieve it was to do 2 separate animations (one focused on one object, and one focused on another object) and then crossfade between the two in the video editor. It's a bit of work. I'm trying to achieve something like what you see here, when the camera changes focus from the flowers to the building in the background in the beginning of this animation, around second 8 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDhrvUeC5XE

At the moment the OctaneRender for Rhino plugin has no facility to sync the Octane focus distance to the Rhino focus distance (and the Rhino renderer does not appear to have any DOF feature - so there is no focus distance to sync to anyway). And I don't see a straightforward way to animate a single Octane field in Rhino. But some ideas for you....

1) http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=41365 - this excellent LUA script for Octane Standalone allows you to do camera animation - however it does not appear to support keyframing the focus distance - so the author would need to tweak the code to do this.

2) Create a camera flythru (with animated focus distance) in another modelling app, save as Alembic (ABC) and import into Octane Standalone and render.

3) Use OctaneRender for Nuke - which allows you to import an OCS/ORBX and animate any of the camera settings and render.

Sorry there is not a simpler solution.

Paul

Thanks for the suggestions Paul. The Lua Script might be the best solution. Nuke is awesome, but VERY expensive, so that's definitely out of the question for me, at least for now!

I've actually been surprised at how easy Bongo has been to use. It can do more than I expected, and it's really been pretty easy to start using. And the Rhino Octane Plugin is working VERY well with it overall.

I do have a couple of other questions, if you don't mind.

So, just wondering, and I don't know how all of this works, but, since motion and object blur are possible via the Octane render window with the animate button, what would it take from Rhino's end to make animating camera parameters work? I ask, because I can certainly create a post on the Bongo forum and make camera animation a wish for Bongo 3. So, if the camera parameters were able to be animated in Bongo/Rhino, would that mean that the Octane plugin could also animate them? I'm not sure how all of this works.

Also, I'm asking this for a colleague, but also curious for myself. I've been training a group of my clients in Rhino and Octane. The use Blender and now Rhino and Blender. One of them asked me today if the purpose of the ORBX format was so that a model could be set up in one program with materials and lighting, and then "seamlessly" transferred over to another modeling platform supported by Octane, like Blender or Modo. Is that the purpose? If so, that really intrigues me, because I'm a big fan of both Modo and Blender. But I need Rhino to create most of the model because a lot of what I do is manufactured. But . . . if I could create a model in Rhino, create lights and materials, do the still shots and hi res stills with Rhino and Octane, and then bring the model with all of it's materials and lighting into another package when an animation is needed that requires something more complex than Bongo can handle . . . well, that would be pretty awesome.

So, just wondering, and I don't know how all of this works, but, since motion and object blur are possible via the Octane render window with the animate button, what would it take from Rhino's end to make animating camera parameters work? I ask, because I can certainly create a post on the Bongo forum and make camera animation a wish for Bongo 3. So, if the camera parameters were able to be animated in Bongo/Rhino, would that mean that the Octane plugin could also animate them? I'm not sure how all of this works.

In (hopefully) the next release of the plugin, there will be an option to export the Bongo animation to OCS/ORBX format. This will allow you to render in Octane Standalone, and will have camera and vertex motion blur. This can be achieved WITHOUT the Rhino plugin needing to access the Bongo SDK (which is C++, and the Octane plugin is C#). If Bongo were to support animated camera parameters - these would not be accessible to Rhino, so the Octane plugin would need to use the C++ Bongo SDK, which is substantially more work that what is planned for the next release. Plus, I doubt the Bongo devs would add a parameter like Focus Distance to the camera, if Rhino were not able to use that parameter (although perhaps Rhino6 will have DOF?). So in summary....I think you are getting to the point where you are hitting the limits of Rhino/Bongo, but which are fully supported in a dedicated animation package (like Modo). For example, the OctaneRender for Modo plugin allows the animation of the Focus Distance.

Also, I'm asking this for a colleague, but also curious for myself. I've been training a group of my clients in Rhino and Octane. The use Blender and now Rhino and Blender. One of them asked me today if the purpose of the ORBX format was so that a model could be set up in one program with materials and lighting, and then "seamlessly" transferred over to another modeling platform supported by Octane, like Blender or Modo. Is that the purpose? If so, that really intrigues me, because I'm a big fan of both Modo and Blender. But I need Rhino to create most of the model because a lot of what I do is manufactured. But . . . if I could create a model in Rhino, create lights and materials, do the still shots and hi res stills with Rhino and Octane, and then bring the model with all of it's materials and lighting into another package when an animation is needed that requires something more complex than Bongo can handle . . . well, that would be pretty awesome.

No, an ORBX package exported from Rhino cannot be opened in OctaneRender for Modo/3ds/Blender/etc. That is not the intent of the ORBX format. However, an ORBX file CAN be opened for the Nuke (and perhaps AE) plugin. However, if you export an animation from Rhino as OCS, there will be an ABC file, which CAN be loaded into Modo/3ds/Blender, and you could then bring across the materials from Rhino (via the LocalDb). Its a bit of work, and the cameras would not come across, but you get the idea.....

I think I would be tempted to modify the Octane Standalone camera animation script to do what you want - since that solution allows you to bring across the entire Rhino scene with Octane materials.

Paul

Thank you Paul, this is really good information, and very helpful. I know I'm asking a lot of questions, but I don't want to make a bad purchase decision. Thank you for your time.

Bongo does MOST of what I need now, but I'm concerned that if start doing more animation work, then clients will start requesting things that Bongo's not capable of. The group that I've been training Rhino and Octane Plugin on, have been using Blender. There thoughts were to create the models in Rhino, render stills in Rhino with Octane, then bring the models over to Blender for any complex animation, using Blender and Octane Plugin.

So, now I'm wondering if I'd be better off purchasing Modo (which I really like) or testing out Blender instead of purchasing Bongo. That way I'd have all my bases covered for anything I'd need to do. However, it seems like a bit of work to get the materials and lighting into those packages. I know the Rhino models transfer over to both of those packages VERY well. Often a client will ask for nothing but still shots in the beginning, then may ask for an animation later in the project. It would be important to get the look the same. I'd be concerned about doing that mainly because of lighting. Plus, a lot of the textures we use are NDA, (logo's trademarks, etc), so I can't share them on the Local DB to transfer over the materials.

With that being said, I think your option of being able to export a Rhino file as OCS/ORBX (I'm not sure what the difference is between the two) and bringing it into the Octane Stand Alone may do the trick. There's really only two features I'm missing in Bongo that I can see being asked to do, and the camera animation focus distance is one of those. So, just so I'm clear:

1) will exporting a Rhino file via OCS/ORBX into the Octane Stand Alone bring over ALL materials and lighting? So a rendering would look the same whether it was rendered in the Rhino Plugin or the Octane Stand Alone package? I think this is the case but want to make sure.

2) I know you'd have to test this, but is your plan to make the Bongo Animation data ALSO transfer into the Octane Stand Alone? It sounded like it was from your previous post. If so, will anything animated in Bongo Transfer over? Object animation, camera movement, sun animation,video textures, etc? So an entire animation set up in Rhino with Bongo could be rendered in Octane Stand Alone utilizing the features that Rhino won't support like the camera focus and motion blur? I thought animation data transfer was done by Alembic files? Is this not the case?

3) if a model was exported as OCS/ORBX into Octane Stand Alone, does that mean that I could render fur, since OCtane now supports fur? I know that can't really be done in Rhino right now.

4) I tried to find a list of what animation features and parameters Do you know if there are any plans for the Octane Stand Alone to increase it's animation capabilities? I'm not sure why they'd do this, other that those of us that occasionally need more complex animation, but don't have the tools.

Thanks Paul.