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I'm not sure what a render target is or how/where to find it in the standalone.

Update / Edit:
removed some information to keep this answer short
and
added another post in the linked "exporting to standalone" thread

Spectralis wrote:I'm not sure what a render target is or how/where to find it in the standalone.

When you export from OcDS to OctaneRender standalone the "Render Target" node is called

"default Rendersetting"

or the name you gave your rendersetting in the OcDS rendersetting tab.
You can find some additional general information in the thread:

Exporting to Stand Alone

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=52847

information about imported "Default Rendersetting" / Render targets nodes, group items / ungroup

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=52847&p=278396#p278396

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You can find information about the Graph Editor in the standalone manual:


https://docs.otoy.com/#60The%20Graph%20Editor

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Thanks linvanchene! That was very clear. I've managed to open the animated scene in the standalone now. The only problem is that the scene had a few different cameras and I want to set it to the one I finally used. How do I assign the correct camera to the render in the standalone?

Minor standalone frustrations: is there a way to prevent the standalone from opening full screen? It reverts to full screen very time I open it. Also, a frame that took 48 secs to render in OcDS takes 3min 28s in the standalone with no improvement in render quality. I'm probably doing something wrong by not setting up the standalone correctly but not sure how to improve this.

I much prefer the tabbed layout of the plugin to the standalone.

EDIT: I edited the DAZ scene and deleted all the cameras except the one I needed and now the scene opens in the standalone using the correct camera. My problem is that I don't know how to get the standalone to render the animation. It renders the first frame ok but I can't find the control that renders the whole animation automatically. I hope I don't have to render each frame manually! I'd also like to know how to assign the folder where the animation will render to.

Glad to hear you were able to get started.

Spectralis wrote:- How do I assign the correct camera to the render in the standalone?
- My problem is that I don't know how to get the standalone to render the animation.
- I'd also like to know how to assign the folder where the animation will render to.

I put together a short guide for those 3 questions in this post:

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=52847&p=278519#p278519

Spectralis wrote:
Also, a frame that took 48 secs to render in OcDS takes 3min 28s in the standalone with no improvement in render quality. I'm probably doing something wrong by not setting up the standalone correctly but not sure how to improve this.

I can only speculate.
Afaik if you are setting limits in the OcDS animation tab those override the samples set in the OcDS rendersettings for still images.

In any case in OR standalone
- check all the pin connections between the render target and the kernel node
- check if the sample values and limits per frame match those you had selected when rendering in OcDS.

Spectralis wrote:
Minor standalone frustrations: is there a way to prevent the standalone from opening full screen? It reverts to full screen very time I open it.

IDK. Maybe if you ask that question in the "General Discussion" forum section some of the standalone staff can assist with pointing out a solution.

Once again, thanks so much. One last question, does PNG8 = 32bits or is it GIF quality? Does it also retain transparency? I normally render to PNG16 in OcDS but maybe that's overkill for animation?

Spectralis wrote:Once again, thanks so much. One last question, does PNG8 = 32bits or is it GIF quality? Does it also retain transparency? I normally render to PNG16 in OcDS but maybe that's overkill for animation?

Afaik png 8 = 8 bits.

So you only have to decide if you are going to do a lot of post processing so it is worth to render out at png 16 bit.

An interesting article about this topic is:

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/essentials/16-bit/

Saying to always render out the best possible quality and choosing png 16 bit might be one argument.

Nevertheless, I would be happy to read some other thoughts about it.

Thanks, I went for PNG8 as I won't be doing much post editing.

I started rendering and all seemed fine until I checked some of the frames and many of them have some kind of motion blur which is not what I want. The motion blurring is probably due to the camera moving through a room. In OcDS there's no blurring when rendering these as single frames so I need to switch off something in the standalone but I don't know what. I've stopped rendering in the meantime.

I only upgraded to v3 because v2.25 can't render animated de-formers and now that animation is broken in v3 I'm stuck with the standalone. I've wasted so much time trying to work out the standalone which I'll probably never use again and now a couple of hours into the render I spot this blurring that's ruined a lot of the rendered frames so far. Why can't we have build 3.0.20.20 back until the new build is released?

EDIT: I tried to load the rendered images as a sequence into Vegas Pro 13. Apparently VP won't load frames that are numbered in parenthesis (), e.g. frame (1), frame (2), etc. So that's another thing to avoid when using the standalone. I stopped the render at 55 frames due to the blur otherwise I would have needed to rename over a thousand frames.

Also, in the batch render pane of the standalone there seems to be no way to render from a specific frame only from a specific time. And the naming of files follows a template. It doesn't appear possible to name the files as I would like. Another reason why the plugin is much easier for me to use.

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You can find the manual entry about the batch rendering script here:

https://docs.otoy.com/#60Batch%20Rendering

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I started rendering and all seemed fine until I checked some of the frames and many of them have some kind of motion blur which is not what I want. The motion blurring is probably due to the camera moving through a room. In OcDS there's no blurring when rendering these as single frames so I need to switch off something in the standalone but I don't know what. I've stopped rendering in the meantime.

Select Render target node / Render settings / Animations Settings / Adjust the Shutter Time to zero

EDIT: I tried to load the rendered images as a sequence into Vegas Pro 13. Apparently VP won't load frames that are numbered in parenthesis (), e.g. frame (1), frame (2), etc. So that's another thing to avoid when using the standalone. I stopped the render at 55 frames due to the blur otherwise I would have needed to rename over a thousand frames.

The (1) or the (2) are probably the name of your current render target node.
- Either rename the render target node to a name of your choice.
or
- remove the %n and any other values you do not want in your filename from the Filename template
or
- use this simpler filename template

projectname_%F.%e

Just add your preferred file name instead of projectname.
%F will add the frame number with a 0 before it.
. adds the dot before the
%e = file extension
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I updated the post about "FAQ: Rendering animated OcDS scenes in OR standalone" in the thread "Exporting to Stand Alone" with some more information, screenshots and links:

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=52847&p=278519#p278519

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o.0 This thread made quite some excursions but in any case it seems the latest test release solved the original described bug:

3.0.22.23 Test Release

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=51808&start=380#p278563

Animations in OcDS render again with the selected dimension values.

- Tested with the scene "Animation Test Cube y translate"

Thank you for solving this!

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Thanks linvanchene. You've given me a lot of help using the standalone which is very useful in case I use it again in the future. Also useful for others too. I've gone back to the plugin and the latest build seems to be rendering fine so far.