New nodes feature discussion towards v1.0 final

[radiance]

Good, as expected a lot of replies and suggestions.

Maybe it would be helpful if some extra pair of more experienced eyes can suggest some possible mergers and eliminations from the large list we supplied, and maybe some more essential low level nodes.

I think the only way we can make most people happy is not to implement anything high level right now, but supply all the required low level building blocks for experienced users to create macro prototypes, share them and when they prove useful and popular, they are quickly and easily hardcoded by us, with this system even if we don't have the time to add your specific node, you can at least create it yourself, and we can hardcode nodes that we already know will be used a lot, as the prototypes will be in use already.

I will interpolate the suggestions of the community on Monday and try to eliminate everything that can be created by users with macros for a start, then probably add some more base concepts like fresnel, camera distance and incidence, dot, cross, normals, etc...

Regarding shadows, it's not possible in a path tracer, as you basically have many shadows along a path, it will create very tricky and inneficient situations...

I think core building blocks, and render concepts/types such as fresnel, and full fledged logic nodes will take priority at this time here...

Edit: regarding adding voronoi, I don't think we will be able to do it right now, or the kernel will get too large for older gpus, we will need to do some refactoring first.

Radiance

[radiance]

On a side note, this might require some changed that could cause the next version to be released with these new nodes and concepts to not be backwards compatible anymore with previous OCS projects... would that be a big issue ? I thi the added large amount of functionality should make up for it.

And if we do that, I might make some changes to names in currently existing nodes too, some things have evolved with strange names that don't make much sense anymore, especially to new users.

For example, i would rename floattexture, floatimage to greytexture and greyimage, or greyscaletexture/image.
Also, the 'camera' name of our tone mapper is very ambiguous with the camera node. So this can be renamed too.
If anyone has any other suggestions (not inputs, like the mentioned index/ior, this i already thought of and indeed needs changing too), but actual node type names... Please post here...

I would also like to remove some current nodes and break them into macros, for example, remove the camereresponsedistribution, and make a macro with a comboboxint front end, and many data spectrum nodes connected to a multiswitch) speed here is not an issue, but you will be able to open the macro and change the list, remove and add new distributions yourself.
We can't always go to such a low level due to restrictions and performance reasons, but i can think of several more areas where we can do similar things, and allow the community to heavily modify octane, and through the livedb his can yield a lot of functionality.

Radiance

[Elvissuperstar007]

We can pay now version 2.0?
and how much it will cost, all for the sake of rapid development octane!
sorry for bad english

[radiance]

We can pay now version 2.0?
and how much it will cost, all for the sake of rapid development octane!
sorry for bad english

Heh, we haven't even reached v1.0 final... Lets get there first and then we will thnk about v2.0

Radiance

[Elvissuperstar007]

We can pay now version 2.0?
and how much it will cost, all for the sake of rapid development octane!
sorry for bad english

Heh, we haven't even reached v1.0 final... Lets get there first and then we will thnk about v2.0

Radiance

Think of my question) who want to help in the development of pre-buys 2.0 a donation to the development of)) good luck

[Jaberwocky]

Please tell me if i'm crazy but:

How about a pass through node.

Example:

materials created , let's say matt or gloss or satin varnish

then materials for different types of wood.

People could then download and link different varnish's to different woods as an example.


also

in programing terms a case node with a drop down so that again in the exmple above

different colours could be linked to one pattern to select various procedural woods/marbles etc.

[PeterCGS]

On a side note, this might require some changed that could cause the next version to be released with these new nodes and concepts to not be backwards compatible anymore with previous OCS projects... would that be a big issue ? I thi the added large amount of functionality should make up for it.

No... Just go ahead and change! If people want backwards compatiblity they just have to use a older release of Octane. Added functionality is far more important than backwards compatiblity. Every other manufacturer breaks their previous implementation sooner or later, don't feel afraid to do the same!

[PeterCGS]

*Shadow Receive on/off node.

*Shadow cast on/off node.

I don't know if I would want these options. They are biased which doesn't fit very well with Octane's unbiased nature. I guess it's a matter of opinion, but I want the shadows to fall as they would in the real world.

Grimm

Well, I was thinking in terms with that you don't want glass panels to receive/cast shadows sometimes, and a blackbody doesn't need to receive shadows for example... I love unbiased rendering, but for some instances you can avoid trouble by turning on/off some stuff Of course, if it isn't possible to implement thats another question.

[matej]

* Decompose RGBA
&
* Compose RGBA

For splitting textures into float channels, doing work on them and then reconstructing back to a texture

* Material input pin

For passing a material datatype into a macro (if macro specific mixing between materials is needed)

[ttaberna]

I think a random assign color node and a random texture node could be great.
I explain. You can load up to X numbers of colors and assigning this node to lets say diffuse of the material it gives those colors randomly by object id.The same with textures.