Octane does not save materials anymore

[abstrax]

Ok, I was able to reproduce it, this is what I did:

I put a mesh of a tree into a new blender scene.
All texturepathes are relative.
I use the Octane Exporter Version 2.2.
I set a Octance projectpath and a Octane projectname.
"Export Camera" is enabled.
I enable "Copy Images" in the "Advanced" Panel.
I hit "render".
In Octane the hole mesh is white (no textures linked, but they should be linked because in Blendermaterials they are set).
I have to choose the Texturefiles for every material again :-/
I play around abit with the cameraposition.
I save the Octanefile.
I go back to Blender.
I add a new mesh and a new material with a texture linked to it.
I disable "Export Camera".
I hit "render" again.
Now in Octane one material which I have set before in Octane has lost its texture. The others are still ok. And the new material I have to set like I did the others before.

I've added all files in the zip.

Sorry for so many ego-"I's"


Does anybody have an idea what's going wrong ?


Kind regards
Alain

Hi Alain,

I had a look at your MTL file and all texture paths are relative, which shouldn't be a problem, as long as your textures are located correctly: In your example they must be stored in the same directory as the OCS file:

Code: Select all

...
newmtl Aeste
Ns 500.000000
Ka 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
Kd 0.800000 0.800000 0.800000
Ks 0.050000 0.050000 0.050000
Ni 1.000000
d 1.000000
illum 2
map_Kd aeste.png
map_d aeste.png
...

Was that the case?

Cheers,
Marcus

[Alain]

Yes they are in the same directory as the Octanefile.

Kind regards
Alain

[abstrax]

Hi Alain,

I did two more tests:

First I created some placeholder textures (with the same names as in the MTL file) and stored them in the same directory as your OBJ file. Then I loaded your mesh into a new scene by creating a new mesh node and choosing your OBJ file. And all materials and textures are loaded correctly. Could you try the same, i.e. create a new scene and then create new mesh node from your OBJ file? Does it work correctly?

Then I created a similar scene in C4D and did an export from there. The exporter plugin always writes relative textures paths whenever possible, which means I got a similar MTL file like your and Octane also loaded the scene correctly and without any problems.

-> I still don't know why it's not working with your setup and we must be missing something important here.

Cheers,
Marcus

[Alain]

Ok, I did a short video of my testing behavior:
http://www.archiviz.ch/download/Octane_ ... 140311.zip

I hope it helps to find out what basics I do wrong.

As you can see all texturefiles are in the same directory as the *.ocs-File is.

Maybe it's an error in the exporterscript ?


Kind Regards
Alain

[yoyoz]

Hi Alain,

what you face is normal behaviour since Octane 2.43/2.44: if a material already exists in the ocs file, it is not updated if you modify it from your 3D application. A quick workaround is to rename the material in Blender if you want your changes taken in account.

Lionel

[Alain]

In other words: It's bug that cost alot of work at the moment ?

Kind regards
Alain

[abstrax]

In other words: It's bug that cost alot of work at the moment ?

Kind regards
Alain

I wrote a longer reply two days ago, but somehow it got lost. Let's try it again...

The first thing is, what yoyoz describes is not a bug, but by design: Materials in different 3D applications work differently. Octane is no exception here, which means you usually can't just export your material from your 3D app to Octane without further tweaking. Because of that, the current workflow is that during the initial OBJ export, the exporter tries to export as much information to Octane as possible, but then you finish your material setup in Octane. You do not tweak stuff in Blender to make it look right in Octane, but you tweak stuff in Octane, which can be done interactively with real time rendering. As a consequence of that, after the initial export the materials don't get changed as long as there are no new materials, which are indicated by a new material name.

What you can change in subsequent exports is the geometry, UV maps, the material to geometry assignment and some other stuff like camera and sun parameters.

These were the first 4 exports in your movie:

- export #1: the cube doesn't have a proper UV map -> no texture is rendered
- export #2: the cube still doesn't have a proper UV map -> still no texture visible
- export #3: you create a UV map -> the texture becomes visible
- export #4: you were creating a new material, assigned it to the cube and exported again -> for some reason the textures in the new and old material got lost

Export #4 doesn't seem to be right, but without an MTL file I can't say much. I tried the same with the C4D exporter and it works there. -> I think it's an exporter problem, but to be sure, could you please repeat your test again (from scratch) and send me the OCS + MTL files after you saved the Octane scene of export #3, plus the OCS + MTL files after you did export #4, but before you save anything in Octane?

Thanks,
Marcus

[Alain]

Ok thank you guys, but this does not explain that missbehaving of Octane (or the Exportscript ?).
I'll do some more tests to analyse the "problem".
Maybe to problem occurs when a object has no UV-coordinates ?
But the exportscript should create UV-coordinates by default (even in Blender there is only "Orco" set in "Map to" Panel) don't you think so ?
I also did some tests in Sketchup and there I've never had such problems yet, so I guess it's because of the Blender Exportscript.

Even we woud find the solution of that missbehaving there is one thing which is not clear for me:
How can I created my own local Octance Materialdatabase ?

For an easy and economic workflow it should work like this:
I set materialnames in Blender for example "Concrete".
I set a Octanefile which stores all materials I've ever set.

When I export the scene Octane should regognize when a material has been set before (in this example "Concrete") and using this (Octane-)materialsettings.

At the moment I can only save materials in a File but I have to relink them in Octane for every new project, right ?

Kind regards
Alain

[yoyoz]

But the exportscript should create UV-coordinates by default (even in Blender there is only "Orco" set in "Map to" Panel) don't you think so ?
I also did some tests in Sketchup and there I've never had such problems yet, so I guess it's because of the Blender Exportscript.

No, this cannot provide consistent results. In blender each texture can have its own mapping, for instance it may be a generated color map, an UV bump map and and global alpha map, all for same object. In Octane you can only have UVs and the same are used for every texture applied to the object. The only way to then have a proper mapping is to manually unwrap your meshes.

If you anyway feel objects should have a default UV, then it would have to be done on Blender's side, not the exporter. I doubt they're willing to implement that, knowing you can unwrap an object with 3 keystrokes.

Cheers,
Yoyoz

[Alain]

I don't unstand why it should'nt be possilbe to automatic generate UV-Maps from for example a Blender "Orco" mapping.
If you just can use one UV-Mapping per Material in Octane then you it is obsolete anyway to add more than one UV-Mapping in Blender. Just take the first UV-Mapping of a Blendermaterial and use it for Octane, I don't see the problem.
I guess code Octanerender is mutch more complex than transforming an "Orco"-mapping to an UV-mapping, for someone like Radiance it should be done by the left hand

Don't you think so ?

I've scenes with about 30 materials (from imported meshed etc.) and I don't want waste my time to assign them UV-Maps if an exportscript can do it automatic.

Kind regards
Alain