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Hi Sighman.

I return from an intense time applying Octane in a variety of Dimly lit situations. My work is here if you are interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPcodf_cACo

Now I am ready to get to grips with your latest version. So far I have only caught up on what OpenSubDiv is. Wow. What a fantastic feature for large scale scenes. I don't really have time to go over the old ones to reduce polys, but I can certainly look to apply this on newer models.

I had trouble in getting the Picture in Picture to work reliably. It's pretty poor anyway in native Carrara to be fair, but I was finding that with the Octane plug in I didn't always get all the frames. It was as if it was skipping a few so as to render lip sync fairly useless. I did get it working in a few occasions. I'm sure you have more urgent priorities but I thought I'd mention it because as things stand I'd probably have to do it in post (After effects or Vegas) for a reliable stress free life.

Going to test out the new features now. Also, I am particularly interested in the fastest way of doing volumetric lighting and spot lighting. I know volumetrics came in in 1.2, but I hear it is slow.

LIVE DB.
Looks great. I figured out you have to double click to see the drop downs. I figured out that you download then APPLY, then when the cursor is over a shader it changes to a pen and you click and apply.

Then I got stuck. I can see the shader, I go to edit it (in this case I went with OTOY, Absolute textures, GRASS, Green Grass), by changing the bump and the tiling and frequency. I just wanted to see it change, but even with a rebuild of the scene it never changes (only changing the texture map makes a difference). I save,exit and come back in - no change.

So then I took a carrara shader, changed the drop down menu to Octane and it now overwrites the entire shader. Before it would add an octane section and the shader would be editable, with items like glow taking effect on the octane shader as well.

Am I missing something here? This has gone backwards imho. The ability to edit shaders is paramount.

Many thanks

Steve



Thanks again for these updates.

@SciFiFunk: I'm not aware of any changes in shader behaviour like the ones you describe. I'll take a look again.

SciFiFunk wrote:Hi Sighman.

I return from an intense time applying Octane in a variety of Dimly lit situations. My work is here if you are interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPcodf_cACo

Yes, I have seen it. Well done, it is very impressive. I wish I had some time to play with Carrara myself. Hopefully, next year.

SciFiFunk wrote: Now I am ready to get to grips with your latest version. So far I have only caught up on what OpenSubDiv is. Wow. What a fantastic feature for large scale scenes. I don't really have time to go over the old ones to reduce polys, but I can certainly look to apply this on newer models.

I would be more impressed with OTOY's implementation if you actually saved memory on the GPU, but you don't. OpenSubDiv gets applied before the mesh gets sent to the GPU so there is no memory savings and it is easy to run out of memory by setting too high of a subdiv level.

SciFiFunk wrote: I had trouble in getting the Picture in Picture to work reliably. It's pretty poor anyway in native Carrara to be fair, but I was finding that with the Octane plug in I didn't always get all the frames. It was as if it was skipping a few so as to render lip sync fairly useless. I did get it working in a few occasions. I'm sure you have more urgent priorities but I thought I'd mention it because as things stand I'd probably have to do it in post (After effects or Vegas) for a reliable stress free life.

It is all about frame rates and setting the frame rate of the video clip to match the frame rate of the animation. Keyframing the start and end of the clip is also essential. It is very tricky to get it right. I haven't had time to play much but you are at the mercy of how Carrara handles video clips.

SciFiFunk wrote:
Going to test out the new features now. Also, I am particularly interested in the fastest way of doing volumetric lighting and spot lighting. I know volumetrics came in in 1.2, but I hear it is slow.

It is slow, you need to use PMC to get the best effects though you can use path tracing too.

SciFiFunk wrote:
LIVE DB.
Looks great. I figured out you have to double click to see the drop downs. I figured out that you download then APPLY, then when the cursor is over a shader it changes to a pen and you click and apply.

Then I got stuck. I can see the shader, I go to edit it (in this case I went with OTOY, Absolute textures, GRASS, Green Grass), by changing the bump and the tiling and frequency. I just wanted to see it change, but even with a rebuild of the scene it never changes (only changing the texture map makes a difference). I save,exit and come back in - no change.

LiveDB textures use the Octane settings for transforms not the Carrara Texture Map. You need to enable "Use Texture Map Settings" in the RGB Image or Float Image shader to use the tiling settings in the Texture Map.

SciFiFunk wrote: So then I took a carrara shader, changed the drop down menu to Octane and it now overwrites the entire shader. Before it would add an octane section and the shader would be editable, with items like glow taking effect on the octane shader as well.

Am I missing something here? This has gone backwards imho. The ability to edit shaders is paramount.

Yes, you need to use "Set Octane Materials" from the edit menu if you want to preserve the Carrara shader. Changing to an Octane Shader in the material room does not preserve the Carrara shader.

Sighman,

Great set of responses. Thanks so much for getting back to me same day. I'll have a go with all your suggestions tomorrow first thing and get back to you.

Ok -I'm up late.

Tested everything. Thanks - some of my questions were learning/forgetting questions but you still answered them. That's appreciated.

It all works as you say, apart from I'm still having trouble preserving the Carrara shader.

I select "set Octane materials" and then it becomes greyed out as a menu option. It worked first time, but after that (for example) I choose a default carrara shader, but whether I apply an Octane shader to it via the old live db tab in carrara (not the viewport), or the viewport pen method, it overwrites it with "set octane materials" greyed out (i.e. selected one time).

Also The "Set Octane Materials", was that defaulted to on before and now it's defaulted to off? Or perhaps I've been working from the same scene file and switched it on many moons ago.

Either way I can move forward with this latest version by biting the bullet and just going with Octane materials only from now on, I guess it's better to just think Octane materials and learn the art of manipulating them anyway. It's just that I'm after as many shortcuts as possible given that I'm fighting for time here.

The Set Octane Materials menu option is only available in the Assembly Room. You need to select an object in the assembly room before the option is enabled. If you have selected something that is not a geometry primitive (such as a light or skeleton) then the option won't be enabled.

Did you mean 'Use Testure Map Settings'? It is on by default when you convert Carrara materials or create a new RGB Image or Grayscale Image. It is off for LiveDB materials.

I hope that helps.

Yeah that helps. Thank you.