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Hi, don´t forget you use BETA software,
with bugs, not stable, not feature complete.
We are the test crew to get it stable.

Cheers, mib

Well, I came back to the previous plugin version, because I can't get an alembic export due to Octane server crash. So I reinstalled the Octane Server - 1.33 - 4.0 beta and Blender Octane Edition - 1.33 - 4.0 beta (2.69).

I finally got my alembic export using the trick explained below. I exported a car with animated character driving it. I spent hours copying one by one the materials from my original model. I have joined most of the separated parts of the car (doors and else) because each part sharing materials with others have different materials Inside Octane and gave a very high amount of material pins. Rotating wheels which can't be joined together generate 5 materials pin each !

It would be great if the plugin would NOT create multiple materials pins for the alembic node if a material is used several times (shared by several meshes) in the Blender file !

Other bad surprise (but bot the least !) : the camera framing is not the same in Blender and in Octane from the alembic node. The alembic camera doesn't respect the Blender camera settings.

A temporary trick for Blender plugin users while waiting for a fix : To avoid the Alembic Export failure and error message saying that a Compute model 1.3 is not found, try to disable all GPUs (uncheck all boxes) before exporting to Alembic file. This seems to circumvent the bug.

Finally had a chance to test the alembic exporter and I must say for me it works very well no issues at all.



Thanks Jim and Octane team..

@daveyt : all your GPUs are compute model 2.0 ? My GPU used for display is a compute model 1.3 (GTX 260) it shouldn't be seen as it is not supported and not enabled for rendering, but it is.

ROUBAL wrote:The main problem remains the same: the Alembic export fails as said previously : Blender console saying that the server failed searching a Compute 1.3 model (which is not supported) !

Can you give me the scene where you get this error?..

ROUBAL wrote: Other bad surprise (but bot the least !) : the camera framing is not the same in Blender and in Octane from the alembic node. The alembic camera doesn't respect the Blender camera settings.

What exactly is wrong with camera? Can you please post the screenshot of how your exported alembic node having this "wrong camera" is set inside standalone when you render it?..

Hi Jimstar,

I am still investigating on various shadow areas, and found some clues :

ROUBAL wrote:
The main problem remains the same: the Alembic export fails as said previously : Blender console saying that the server failed searching a Compute 1.3 model (which is not supported) !

Can you give me the scene where you get this error?..

It happens at random on any scene, even a simple cube.

I found that disabling all GPUs before exporting in Alembic seems to avoid the failure and error message (I mean unchecking all GPU selection boxes in the plugin).

I have finally understood what happens with the camera : My camera is parented to a car with a slow parent relationship of -3 frames to give more realism in the camera motion.

The plugin seems to not take in account the frame delay, and so the image is rendered at the wrong location.Disabling the Slow Parent option in the object panel gives the exact same image in Blender and in Octane.

So, would it be possible to allow frame delay in next plugin releases ?

EDIT : Bad news : I am again unable to export alembic files, and the trick of disabling the GPUs this time doesn't work (It worked in version for Blender 2.69, but no more with 2.70) ! It seems to really appear at random. It sometimes works if I set few frames, but doesn't create the alembic file if the animation is from 1 to 500... I am becoming mad with this thing !

In fact, the Octane Server tray icone is still here, but when I right click to close it I get a message from Windows saying that Octane as stopped working (It was not working in fact).

Octane server shuts down at any time but you don't know, because the icon is still present ! Sometimes, launching the Server creates 2 tray icons at the same time and one of them disappear after few seconds ! An I still get this message :

Octane: ERROR loading mesh. Server response :
CUDA device 1: Failed to find a CUDA binary matching compute model 1.3.

Why is it searching a compute model 1.3, as it is not supported and not enabled for rendering

I give you a Blend file in a Zip, but it is imho useless, as this same file sometimes exports fine and sometimes returns plenty of errors and doesn't export the alembic file several times in a row (I reload the server each time) !

Details of the server crash error given by the Windows PopUp :

Signature du problème :
Nom d’événement de problème: APPCRASH
Nom de l’application: OctaneServer.exe
Version de l’application: 0.0.0.0
Horodatage de l’application: 5330d5e1
Nom du module par défaut: octane.dll
Version du module par défaut: 1.50.0.1
Horodateur du module par défaut: 5330bb98
Code de l’exception: c0000005
Décalage de l’exception: 000000000004fdbe
Version du système: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48
Identificateur de paramètres régionaux: 1036
Information supplémentaire n° 1: 4dec
Information supplémentaire n° 2: 4deccc03146a1d5de38309f1add696b0
Information supplémentaire n° 3: 5c5e
Information supplémentaire n° 4: 5c5eec9d8e3eb06bf12229f1dc8d0af8

Next version HERE.