Non-offical Blender 2.56 plugin

[yoyoz]

I was wrong in my previous post: you can install v0.52 from blender's interface providing you select the zip file and don't uncompress it before. It seems it has some side effects that I've docmumented in the initial post but nothing too serious.

I can't work on the plugin today but here are some plans for this week-end (and later):
- allow user to choose behaviour of Status Notification (blocking, non-blocking, none)
- pdf plugin documentation
- automatic material renaming during export with ascii characters only and no spaces
- support for relative paths and paths containing spaces

Please fell free to post any realistic suggestions on possible plugin improvement

[steveps3]

I've been running / testing on windows 7 with no problems. The only problem I have is keeping up with Lionel's constant updates

[grimm]

Hi Yoyoz,

I'm having the exact same problem as Jonathan. If I put the plugin in 256/scripts/io I can't see it anywhere in Blender (I'm using 2.56a). It does not show up in the render menu or in the addons list. If i install it or put it in the 256/scripts/addons it shows up in the addons list but still does not show up in the render menu. I have tried enabling it and disabling it but no effect. I also ran Blender from the command line and there were no errors. I'm running Fedora 12 linux.

[SamCameron]

Wow Yoyoz, that would be awesome, your script is working as a charm right now, about suggestions I would like to method to dissable the auto focus in Octane Render, or a method to automaticly focus an object (or an empty) all the time, actually you have to setup the focal depth in the script manually, so would be interesting to have a pick button (as to pick the camera, and the sun) but to pick the object to focus, so in that way you can animate easily the dof by an empty or any other object, also the focal depth is limited to metters I think, that's not so good cause some times you need to focus in centimeters wich is more acurate.

[carter2422]

Yoyoz,

Ah ha! Great work, it's functioning now. Time to try this out!

Thanks for your excellent work. Assuming everything goes to plan how would you feel about me featuring your script in a Blender Cookie tutorial?

-Jonathan

[carter2422]

Hey again Yoyoz, I thought I'd reply again with some feedback for you.

First off, excellent work! The exporter works like a charm and makes Blender integration all that much more enjoyable with Octane. For the most part it does everything I need but I do have a couple comments on ways you could enhance the functionality even more.

• When setting the camera resolution in the exporter the Blender camera does not update; this makes setting your camera correctly a bit difficult.

• The status notification is great but would be even better if it would clear automatically based on activity. For example, if the user is inactive after pressing Export then the notification will remain indefinitely. But soon as the user is active the notification disappears after a few seconds, much like Blender's own notifications.

• It would be great if we could set the render settings from with Blender. e.g. samples, depth, raytracing or direct lighting, etc.

• If focal depth could be set based on Blender's cameras focal depth it would be ideal, currently it's more a matter of trial and error to set the correct focal depth.

That's it for now. I must say I'm really loving it though, the above items are mostly just nit-picking.

-Jonathan

[yoyoz]

Hi Jonathan,

nice to see you finally made it work!

I'll be more than delighted if you make a tutorial using my script, but I suggest you also ask Refractive Software as my work doesn't reflect what will be officially offered to customers, and I'd like to avoid anybody getting embarassed. Feel free to PM me

Thanks also for the feedback. Not everything may be possible to implement but here are some thoughts/clues:
- Camera resolution: I got your point and will see what can be done (I can't make it the easy way because of what looks like an API change)
- I couldn't use or mimic Blender's notifications so far (and still investigating), too much to learn at the same time. I'll soon make a quick update with an option so you all don't get annoyed until I can fix that.
- at the moment you can only set samples for animation rendering, where you must have Octane stop by itself. I'm unsure we would get a great benefit from limiting the number of samples at exporter level for a still image. Stuff like PT/DL cannot be set through a command line option at the moment so there's nothing I can do in the script...
- Shame on me, I don't know how to set the focal depth in Blender... Need a tutorial!

I hope we'll soon have the pleasure to see some of your artwork rendered in Octane
Lionel

[yoyoz]

Hi SamCameron, when playing with the FD in the exporter I can see the option is properly transmitted to octane but I can't see any difference in render, even with extreme values. A couple of samples reflecting this may help me better understand. On the AF side, nothing I can do if there's no command-line option...

[SamCameron]

Hi Yoyoz, I made an scene for you to have a look, as you can see I set in your script 3 keyframes in the Focal Depth settings, I aswell made the 3 keyframes into the Blender's camera DOF, so you can see where is the focal point, but notice that the blender dof doesn't match with your script, in blender I can set the parameter something like this: 19.700 , but in your script is limited to 19 or 20 , not in between numbers (only metters, not centimeters). Would be nice to have a pick button to select the object or empty to focus, and made everything based on Blender's DOF.

[yoyoz]

@SamCameron and Jonathan
I think I'm getting close to what you mean, but I've a couple of questions:
- Focal Depth and Depth of field are same thing?
- if yes, should we use Blender's terminology instead of Octane's?
- can we set camera's aperture in Blender for Blender's render?
- is it acceptable that setting DF/FD is either 'no' or 'from blender camera'? (meaning you must define a camera if you want to export the setting to Octane)
[EDIT] - what if DoF from blender's camera is 0?

PS: new notifications using Blender's ones are ready, but I can't publish yet due to work on FD/DP