OctaneRender for Carrara 2.06.0047 [Stable]

Mon Aug 25, 2014 10:27 pm

Lol, Steve (Sorry, Sci Fi Funk).. Funny you should mention that! I was just sending Sighman a PM to let him know the files have been uploaded to Dropbox (Physics sync issue) and are now available. Anyhow, I mentioned how I would like to see object motion blur and also the option to load/reload render target settings default values (for starting new projects with out restarting Carrara)

Plz keep your eyes open for this one to confirm/reproduce for Sighman also guys n gals..

I am still getting the 'random side effect' where the image file browser opens up after clicking on the button to open up render target settings! as soon as you close the image file browser the render target settings pop up! Just reminding you about it Sighman!

PS: Good to see this team so widely extended and so rich with talent

Tue Aug 26, 2014 9:52 am

Large Scene TEST #1

Ennis house interior.

Attached Screenshots show size of scene. This one took about 3 minutes to Load from C8.1 to Octane after opening the viewport for the first time. It can render (NB I'm not looking at any issues apart from can the scene load atm - so ignoring lighting / textures etc).

This is using my low Rez Aztec Tile. As you can see the lack of replication (all were made via the DUPLICATE command) means it's taking up a lot of memory. It would definitely collapse under the weight of the full rez tile.

As things stand then this is a SHOW STOPPER for this scene, which is a great shame as I was hoping to render out my 2 mins 30 secs tour as a C8.1 to Octane demo reel.

Would be very grateful if the CTRL-D instancing was put in place (note they are all straight dupes, no variations).

Thanks.

Tue Aug 26, 2014 10:08 am

Large Scene TEST #2

Apartment 2115 interior (Blade Runner style apartment).

Shot of the drinks area. Note the Glass bottles (alpha/transparency) didn't convert as transparent. I can supply more info on this as well if you like.

This scene is smaller than the first, still uses the loz rez Aztec Tiles (I will want to use my hi-res ones which look way better), but has a lot higher texture use. I may reduce these btw.

It renders! (ignore lighting pleaaase!) However the same issue is true. I think it would struggle with the hires tile without replication. This time it started rendering in less than 20 seconds. (There is a lot less replication in this scene).

Tue Aug 26, 2014 10:45 am

Large Scene TEST #3

Again please ignore the picture look. The scene is enclosed so not suitable for Octane at this time, but a great first test of lighting via Emitters only. On using the blackbody emitter sliders there is a display bug (the values are set ok), It's only showing some of the digits before the decimal point.

Not a biggy as it works fine, but for the sake of a polished product (and to avoid support questions) I include here.

Overall GREAT JOB on shaders! Very well integrated sir!

Again I'm using those aztec tiles, not in great numbers, but again this would at least slow the scene down without CTRL-D instances. This time out, those people ANIMATE - woohooh!

The animation here is slower atm (but wont be so bad when I get to work on flooding it with daylight). I get a half decent image out in 10 secs a frame (to test with). The only thing I wish to note is that the window is frozen out whilst it's in a status of UPDATING. Can it potentially send a lot of fresh data per frame then? What data does it send between frames? Any way I can minimize this overhead?

I think this PASSES the large scene test.

I'm stopping here for now with the large scene testing (I have several more large sets to test), but it comes down to the CTRL-D instances. In terms of handling large amounts of data this Octane plug-in has proven to be stable. Great job!

Tue Aug 26, 2014 12:47 pm

Viewport Focusing bug.

Hi,

This can happen at the start of a session (only once, on my first ever session!), or at any time during a Carrara session.

Suddenly after a camera move (pan, in/out etc) the image will go out of focus. I can't fix this in session even by creating a new camera (mind you I copied from the existing problematic camera), and switching to it in the render room.

Saving the scene out then coming back in again fixes the problem. The camera is back in focus again (without changing anything). Not as important as CTRL-D instancing or in-viewport camera selection to me, but annoying as (atm) I have to save, come out and in again. On a large scene this is time consuming.

I would estimate it's averaging once every few hours (multiple sessions), but i can give a better estimate when I worked in a single long session for longer.

My usual work pattern is hang about in one scene for a while, saving regularly (like a nervous twitch), then saving and exiting anyway (as I don't trust Carrara - I've lost sessions before to inexplicable sudden crashes).

UPDATE. I wonder if it's always because of this: Hold down left mouse button, drag around a bit - it goes out of focus, use the right mouse button, drag and it's back in focus. I need to test this again when it happens seemingly randomly with the right mouse button "fix", but I may have isolated this to the left mouse button and draging in the viewport with Free Camera Mode selected.

Thanks

Steve

Tue Aug 26, 2014 1:00 pm

The camera is usually in auto-focus mode, and the focus point is the centre of the screen. If you move objects so that there is nothing in the middle, the focal plane will be set to an infinite distance and the objects will most likely go out of focus (unless you have made the aperture a lot smaller to increase the depth of focus).

The icon before Auto-focus (looks like a crosshair sight, just before AF) is the manual focus mode - select the icon and then click on the object in your scene you want to be in sharpest focus. For an animation, you will want to set the focus manually to avoid things going in and out of focus as they move around. The focus depth can also be animated for some nice effects.

There is a new Octane Thin Lens panel for focal depth, auto-focus and aperture control under Camera/Effects back in Carrara.

Let us know if that resolves your issues or if you still believe there is a bug.

Tue Aug 26, 2014 1:15 pm

Hi,

I am willing to accept its an idiosyncrasy of Octane perhaps, but to me it behaves like a bug. Incidentally this is happening with other camera movement. I am just about to make a test video which I'll post to this thread (via youtube). I'll delete it when we are satisfied that this is an issue.

One moment...

Happy to upload this if you want to see it. What I've noticed when watching the video myself is that as soon as I move the camera (having turned auto focus off), because the camera settings are auto focus on, it reapplies the autofocus.

So you've got camera settings over-ridding the viewport settings. By turning autofocus off as a camera setting this is no longer an issue.

So now it comes down to whether you consider the fact that viewport settings are not overriding camera settings to be a bug. I would think it is, but now I have a work around it's a very low priority fix in my book.

Cheers.

Tue Aug 26, 2014 2:02 pm

Here is a couple of things I would like people to either confirm or disprove please, both relating to Render Target Settings but I dont think they are linked! System resources are fine any one else get either (or both) of these ?

1) Back in the closed sessions we had an issue with render target settings (in the early days of the initial testings) and sadly it seems to be back but not too often, only had it a couple of times in the last 48 hours.

2) I am still getting the 'random side effect' where the image file browser opens up after clicking on the button to open up render target settings! as soon as you close the image file browser the render target settings pop up! Just reminding you about it!

BTW, the 'blue rt settings issue', I have since making the video changed device priority settings to LOW with only the last card checked.

Addition:

Finally, there seems to be quite a long period after the closing of the live render viewport where my system 'drags/lags' in responsiveness until the render engine 'lets go' of everything and I can work at 'normal' speed once again! Think of an aircraft engine winding down! After closing the live render viewport interaction can sometimes be laggy but as the cards fans get quieter & quieter then 'lag' slowly disperses until its once again a smooth user experience!

Its almost like the render engine does not want to let go of my scene and tries to keep it for as long as possible before admitting defeat and accepting that I closed the live render viewport!

Tue Aug 26, 2014 2:04 pm

On a positive note.

Modelling with the viewport on. wow!

Make a change and see it in place as soon as you let go of the mouse. Instantly rendered as well. Awesome! (Another time and click saver).

Tue Aug 26, 2014 2:08 pm

orion_uk wrote: 2) I am still getting the 'random side effect' where the image file browser opens up after clicking on the button to open up render target settings! as soon as you close the image file browser the render target settings pop up! Just reminding you about it!

BTW, the 'blue rt settings issue', I have since making the video changed device priority settings to LOW with only the last card checked.

Hi,

I haven't had either of these. Been using this program now for about 12-14 hours in total.