UNOFFICIAL plugin for 3ds Max 2010+

[Jaberwocky]

ok, thanks jim i'll give it a try when I get a moment.


cheers

[Jaberwocky]

Jim

I've had a play with V1.39.

You'll be please to hear that everything is now working fine on the animation side.The bug you discovered seems to have cured the animation problem completely but with just one exception.

Editing and saving the settings in frame 0 has carried forward to the remaining frames except for the Camera settings.These did not save.I kept loosing the focus / depth of field settings.They kept returning to their previous settings.See the image capture below for details.


I have also had another thought.

how about changing the % drop down pre-set in the exporter for one that reflects the various camera pre-sets available from within octane.See attachments.

What do you think ?

[JimStar]

Editing and saving the settings in frame 0 has carried forward to the remaining frames except for the Camera settings.These did not save.I kept loosing the focus / depth of field settings.They kept returning to their previous settings.See the image capture below for details.

This is not a bug, this is a conceptual thing: we should decide, get camera tunings from 3ds Max scene frames, or tune it in Octane, and do NOT export it from Max. At the time - EACH frame is imported from Max with camera tunings that exist in THAT frame in Max... I think this is the right thing - if you create animation sequence, it is strange to create one half (e.g. geometry) in one place and another (camera motion, FOV, depth...) in another place...
But if it the right thing from the point of view of 3D-experts - I'll fix all things to that behavior, to import in Octane geometry and Sun direction only, and do NOT import camera in each frame...
Think about it...

I have also had another thought.

how about changing the % drop down pre-set in the exporter for one that reflects the various camera pre-sets available from within octane.See attachments.

What do you think ?

Yes, I can add this if it is more convenient...

[JimStar]

BTW. I thinked more about your question about "camera not stored"...
I think that if you not want to export camera from Max and just want to get camera stored in Octane - you can just UNSET the checkbox "Camera" when sending animation to Octane from Max... It should resolve that problem, and we should not change anything in the normal behavior of importing camera motion, FOV motion and depth motion from Max when it is needed...
I just forgot about existence of this checkbox when wrote the previous post...

[Jaberwocky]

BTW. I thinked more about your question about "camera not stored"...
I think that if you not want to export camera from Max and just want to get camera stored in Octane - you can just UNSET the checkbox "Camera" when sending animation to Octane from Max... It should resolve that problem, and we should not change anything in the normal behavior of importing camera motion, FOV motion and depth motion from Max when it is needed...
I just forgot about existence of this checkbox when wrote the previous post...

good point.I'll try it with the camera settings off.

It wasn't so much the camera motion which i still need to import coming into octane from max.It was the depth of field which was out of focus to start with in Octane on the first frame and would not then store it to be read by the subsequent frames in octane.I had to stop each frame whilst it rendered in order to set and store the depth of field in Octane in each frame but leave the camera motion as it was.

Hope that sort of makes sense.

Anyway i'll try it with the camera switched off.

[Jaberwocky]

Actually ignore the last comments I just switched on the depth of field in the exporter and with a bit of trial and error , adjusting this I got it close to being in focus.It seems better.Its still slightly out of focus.The depth of field could be deeper.but it's much better.I have it set all the way up to 10.

[Jaberwocky]

Just done a 10 second video run.Yep it seems to be working fine.

Done some calcs.

To render up a 1 1/2 Hr animated feature film at say full HD - 1920 x 1080 - 24 frames per sec(film speed) using one gtx460 1 gb card would be as follows

this is based on good quality 2048 samples/ pixel - (4) diffused direct light setting using 2.49Beta

7.5 days to export
135 days to render.
Oh and a shed load of terrabyte hard drives in raid 1 to store the frames ie 90x60x24=129600 frames of animation

One other point to mention.If you created a machine with 4 x 590's in it you could probably render out a feature film in around 11 days after exporting it.(roughly.)

Pixar....Hah....who needs them !!!!

[JimStar]

Jaberwocky
I added in 1.40 these abilities about get camera settings stored in Octane render-project... Just for convenience...

[Jaberwocky]

Jim

Cheers, Great service as usual.

Gonna have another Play

Jabba

[JimStar]

One other point to mention.If you created a machine with 4 x 590's in it you could probably render out a feature film in around 11 days after exporting it.(roughly.)

Pixar....Hah....who needs them !!!!

It is now net render feature very needed in Octane, as Arion has... That will be awesome - some time ago I assembled to my wife a render farm for Mental Ray in home storage room... And now she likes Octane so much that works only in Octane (I assemled to her a comp with 4 x GTX580-3GB for that)... And a server rack-cabinet with two Q6600 computers and two on i7 (motitorless, 8GB memory on each) stays not used... It will be good point to install in each of them even more GTX580s, add more comp-racks with 4xAGP motherboards with 4xGTX580 on each, and use, and use, and use...