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Tutorial on using the new Dial linking feature.

You just deserved a Big Hug. Great !! Thank you.

Dial based material animation! Nice!

Here's a quick sample of using the dial linking on the amount node of the material mix to switch between two completely different shaders:
http://www.thetagraphics.com/octane/tes ... hange2.swf

Sorry, its a bit fast...

Here's a quick sample of using the dial linking on the amount node of the material mix to switch between two completely different shaders:
http://www.thetagraphics.com/octane/tes ... hange2.swf

Oh - very nice! Thanks for sharing.

Paul

hi folks, new question.

I made a large scene A including an Octane setup, lighting, materials and so one and a small scene B with various props in the proper hierarchical and spacial relationship. B was not dealt with in Octane yet.

Then I imported B into A, and that made all my existing Octane settings, material definitions etc disappear ! I guess I experienced something like this before, and then the existing Octane settings and material defs were replaced by the imported ones - deleting the defs for already present but not imported object.

Hence my question: what's the proper way to merge two scenes, including their Octane settings and material defs? And what happens at merging in the first place? Should I import the big total scene into the small props-setup scene instead of the other (more natural) way around? I cannot export and re-import all materials for a scene in one go, and I'm facing hundreds of figure-parts, objects and emitters so doing them one by one won't be the best way forward either.

Thanks for feedback.

aRtBee wrote:hi folks, new question.


Hence my question: what's the proper way to merge two scenes, including their Octane settings and material defs? And what happens at merging in the first place? Should I import the big total scene into the small props-setup scene instead of the other (more natural) way around? I cannot export and re-import all materials for a scene in one go, and I'm facing hundreds of figure-parts, objects and emitters so doing them one by one won't be the best way forward either.

Thanks for feedback.

There is a way around it (and good practice if you use large scenes).
In the Settings tab you can Export All Octane settings (right click), then after merge do an Import All Octane settings
I have had a few occasions where the settings were lost and I was able to load a previous version of a scene and use that method to get the octane materials back in to my new scene. Or you can use it the save the materials for a series of props and figures in one go

wim, thanks for that, it might help me with repairing things.
I am saving scenes with successive version numbers while developing, so I can try to pick the Octane stuff from an earlier version.

Nevertheless, it still leaves the question: how to merge two scenes including their Octane stuff? Export Octanesetting for A, export for B, then merge Poser scenes, then import A and B such that the last one imported contains the required camera / render / imaging settings and overrides the first imported ones?

Simply because it makes sense to build sub-scenes to get the materials right (and even saving them for later re-use) and then merge them to a final result.
How do individual Props do by the way when saving them into the Library, or retrieving from it, does the Octane info go with them?

I hope someone knows, otherwise I'll have to reserve a day in Muppets Lab to find out.

I am not really sure what happens with merge. Paul is the one who can answer that. I assume it is a similar problem as double clicking on a scene file which also removes the octane data (unless that particular problem has been solved, that was a poser/python bug/limitation if I remember correctly)

You can save props and figures with octane materials to the library and load them afterwards. Have not tried it with single materials, but I think that will work as well

Regarding aRtBee's question....I think the workflow Wim provided is optimal. Because Poser renames the internal names of all the figures and props when you merge scenes this create problems for the plugin tracking which Octane materials are assigned to which figures/props. The best option is to save the Octane materials back to the Poser Materials for the figure/props, but I understand this might be a time consuming operation on a large scene.

Paul