OctaneRender® for Maya® beta 3.03c [OBSOLETE]

[JimStar]

JimStar, thanks for all of your great work and speed for getting this plug-in so functional so quickly!

Today is my first time trying out any of the 3.xx versions, as I was mid-project earlier and didn't want to change anything. I have a scene I've been waiting to render for a long time since it contains 5.5 million polys worth of instanced pennies via particles. While the scene successfully renders and looks exactly as hoped, I noticed it takes a looooong time from hitting the IPR icon until the renderview begins showing Octane samples. Furthermore, there is only one non-instanced penny on the screen, and one hidden as a template for the several thousand instances - in this case GPU memory usage should be at a minimum, should it not? Unfortunately I'm getting over 1gb of RAM used out of my 1.25GB GTX 470.

The samples per second are surprisingly fast once I get past that initial loading period, so kudos to that.

Please let me know if this is something already noted, or if I'm a rare case here. (and if you need additional info I'm happy to share). Thanks!

p.s. Using Maya 2013 x64 on Windows 7, Octane for Maya beta 3.03c

I think the reason is you just have not set the "Movable Proxy" attribute in all instanced meshes. In this case all these instances are loaded as parts of one big common mesh, which is then voxelised... If this mesh having all these instances becomes huge, it may take a huge time to build this mesh from all scene objects, and huge time to voxelise it... But in this case - you have a rendering speed improved a lot in comparison to rendering the instances as instances. I already wrote about differences in these two strategies in previous threads...

[renmaxhb]

Where set the "Movable Proxy" attribute in all instanced meshes?

[arh-osa]

Thank you Jim! I found my problem. My mistake was that I selected groups but not meshes in Outliner and put them into a render layer. In this case Maya displays meshes of that groups in the render layer, but the layer is "empty".
I added meshes into a render layer and now it works fine.
This Maya bug (or feature) misleads the users, imho render layers must display only geometry that will be rendered.

As you can see render layer displays all meshes inside the group that I associated with current render layer, but renders only meshes that I included in layer.

[JimStar]

Thank you Jim! I found my problem. My mistake was that I selected groups but not meshes in Outliner and put them into a render layer. In this case Maya displays meshes of that groups in the render layer, but the layer is "empty".
I added meshes into a render layer and now it works fine.
This Maya bug (or feature) misleads the users, imho render layers must display only geometry that will be rendered.

As you can see render layer displays all meshes inside the group that I associated with current render layer, but renders only meshes that I included in layer.

No, I think it is not Maya's problem. It is rather already discussed plugin bug bound to it. Not the fact, but I will check it... I'm working at it.

[JimStar]

This Maya bug (or feature) misleads the users, imho render layers must display only geometry that will be rendered.

Can you please check on the same scene - is it the same in e.g. "Maya Software"?.. I mean, where you rendered the groups and they are unvisible if you don't include the meshes in layer...

[MTECH]

JimStar, thanks for all of your great work and speed for getting this plug-in so functional so quickly!

Today is my first time trying out any of the 3.xx versions, as I was mid-project earlier and didn't want to change anything. I have a scene I've been waiting to render for a long time since it contains 5.5 million polys worth of instanced pennies via particles. While the scene successfully renders and looks exactly as hoped, I noticed it takes a looooong time from hitting the IPR icon until the renderview begins showing Octane samples. Furthermore, there is only one non-instanced penny on the screen, and one hidden as a template for the several thousand instances - in this case GPU memory usage should be at a minimum, should it not? Unfortunately I'm getting over 1gb of RAM used out of my 1.25GB GTX 470.

The samples per second are surprisingly fast once I get past that initial loading period, so kudos to that.

Please let me know if this is something already noted, or if I'm a rare case here. (and if you need additional info I'm happy to share). Thanks!

p.s. Using Maya 2013 x64 on Windows 7, Octane for Maya beta 3.03c

I think the reason is you just have not set the "Movable Proxy" attribute in all instanced meshes. In this case all these instances are loaded as parts of one big common mesh, which is then voxelised... If this mesh having all these instances becomes huge, it may take a huge time to build this mesh from all scene objects, and huge time to voxelise it... But in this case - you have a rendering speed improved a lot in comparison to rendering the instances as instances. I already wrote about differences in these two strategies in previous threads...

I'm sorry I missed that in the previous thread. I turned on Movable Proxy for the source geometry for the instances and as you said, voila, the scene voxelizes much faster at the expense of a few samples/sec. Overall this method seems to be faster so I'll use it. Thanks for the information and loving this plug-in so far.

[arh-osa]

This Maya bug (or feature) misleads the users, imho render layers must display only geometry that will be rendered.

Can you please check on the same scene - is it the same in e.g. "Maya Software"?.. I mean, where you rendered the groups and they are unvisible if you don't include the meshes in layer...

Maya Software works fine without included meshes. They are visible.

[JimStar]

Maya Software works fine without included meshes. They are visible.

Thanks!
It is definitely the plugin problem. I will fix it...
So far you can just do as you did - add the meshes to layer...

[jmfowler]

jimstar - even though animated textures are working properly in Maya - when I render out a sequence the texture is not updating with octane renders- whether i have update mesh on or off ???

Has anyone else been successful with having animated textures render out properly in an animated sequence?

I need this ASAP please - currently having to create a command line for each frame inside my .bat file in order for the next animated texture file to be used.

cheers,
JF.

[TBFX]

Has anyone else been successful with having animated textures render out properly in an animated sequence?

Assuming you are talking about file sequence animated textures. I just tried my old test scene I made for this in 3.03c and it worked fine in a batch render, haven't tried doing animated textures on any instances though.

T.