OctaneRender for Modo (Windows) 1.52 [STABLE]

[face_off]

Secondly, part of the problem you are experiencing is due to the head and body material being grouped within another group (as you point out in your post). The plugin needs to handle this situation, and I will have a fix for this in the next few hours.

This actually looks like a bug in Modo. If you click on the material group "Man aXYZ design 01.lx2" you'll see that it has a polygon tag. Because it has a tag, the Modo API will ignore the image maps under that tag because that tag doesn't match the material being queried (in this case BMan0015-Head or Body). For some reason the Modo renderer copes with this situation.

So.....I can code the plugin to also handle this situation as the Modo renderer does - but this appears to conflict with the Shader Tree rules. The Modo API code documentation states that the head and body image maps should be ignored because the parent group polygon tag did not match.

Paul

[cakeller98]

Secondly, part of the problem you are experiencing is due to the head and body material being grouped within another group (as you point out in your post). The plugin needs to handle this situation, and I will have a fix for this in the next few hours.

This actually looks like a bug in Modo. If you click on the material group "Man aXYZ design 01.lx2" you'll see that it has a polygon tag. Because it has a tag, the Modo API will ignore the image maps under that tag because that tag doesn't match the material being queried (in this case BMan0015-Head or Body). For some reason the Modo renderer copes with this situation.

So.....I can code the plugin to also handle this situation as the Modo renderer does - but this appears to conflict with the Shader Tree rules. The Modo API code documentation states that the head and body image maps should be ignored because the parent group polygon tag did not match.

Paul

Thanks Paul! Loving the plugin (it's helped me a lot within modo, and is the main reason I purchased Octane! - NICE WORK!)

So - here's what I think...

The group tag is a selection set tag... not a material tag. I don't know ALL the deets about tagging, but I don't think what the assets are doing violates the rules - since it's done in a LOT of the assets. I could be off base, but...

Two different meshes can have polygons in the same selection set. These two meshes can each have a material tag, and then the selection set can ALSO have another tag.

I dunno... you might have a brick wall, with mortar between the bricks... the bricks are one material, and the mortar another. But then you might also have another selection tag with everything and place a label over all of them, which would be graffiti or something?

But really it's probably just to protect imported shaders from affecting other geometry. Much like DLLs have a signature to prevent different versions of the DLLs conflicting? - might be a wrong example.

Note the polygon tag selection set (upper right) is not limited to a single mesh.

This is how it gets rendered in Octane

AND here is the LXO file that this is... hope it's helpful.

SelectionTags.zip

LXO File - maybe this helps as a test case?

(17.3 KiB) Downloaded 228 times

[cakeller98]

OK, hope this isn't getting too greedy!

So another Asset I use all the time is the shadow catcher... it's fairly easy to create a diffuse material override for Octane. But I prefer if I don't have to have multiple shaders, or duplicate work.

One of the issues obviously is the imported asset "selection set" tags. Which I think you are currently working on - so once that's addressed... that'll fix that step.

However the other issue is that in Modo the shadow catcher isn't quite as simple... I think. There's a Shader setting called "Alpha Type" which, for shadow catchers is set to "Shadow Catcher"

Alpha Type - Shadow Catcher

it would be nice if whenever that Alpha Type was set to Shadow Catcher, if the plugin could automagically set up a diffuse material with matte turned on.

Of course, what if we have specular reflections on the matte object, or etc... perhaps we have to be able to mix the matte shader with a glossy or specular shader. Anyway...

Here is an example of a fixed shadow catcher. You can certainly test out the default shadow catcher from the presets (it's under Mesh->Basic->Shadow Catcher)

Shadow Catcher.zip

Here is a simple example showing the fixed shadow catcher with override.

(4.25 MiB) Downloaded 265 times

[MagnusL3D]

Thank you for posting this info. If I render the block on the left in Modo - it doesn't look right to me. I think the normals are wrong, so are being into Octane incorrectly.

Pls see below.

Paul

I have seen that to, but however this is a small piece in a gigantic machine and you wont notice those small things if I renderd it Modo, but previously I have renderd it in another 3rd party renderer for Modo and then, no flaws.

/M

[MagnusL3D]

Problem, I think, is that the material shader has edge rounding on @ 2mm.
I don't believe that is a supported feature in Octane, since it's still on the list of requested features.
If you turn off edge rounding (set it to 0mm) the modo render and octane render match.

Turning of edge rounding does not make it match for me. But I have not installed the absolutley latest plugin, 1 step behind, might be that ?

I was able to achieve this effect by baking the normals including those from the round-edge and creating an override. However, I wasn't able to do this with your files, because the UVs aren't 0-1... so baking a normal map doesn't really work with that AFAIK.

And it probably wont be UV'mapped since it is a tiny part of a _enormous_ machine loaded with the Modo Advanced CAD loader, so optimally it should just work atleast as well as in Modo, preferable as good as the other 3rd party renderd which I have used previously with this.

[face_off]

The group tag is a selection set tag... not a material tag. I don't know ALL the deets about tagging, but I don't think what the assets are doing violates the rules - since it's done in a LOT of the assets. I could be off base, but...

Two different meshes can have polygons in the same selection set. These two meshes can each have a material tag, and then the selection set can ALSO have another tag.

I dunno... you might have a brick wall, with mortar between the bricks... the bricks are one material, and the mortar another. But then you might also have another selection tag with everything and place a label over all of them, which would be graffiti or something?

I had changed the plugin to ignore the group polygon tag - so it now picks up the Preset man's body. However when I look at the new scene you posted, the above change is not working with that - because the Selection Set 3 at the top of the Shader Tree is now overriding all the other materials. I can provide a link to the installer for this build is you like - just PM me for it.

So I need to do some more work to build in full Selection Set support for the plugin, which I will do. TY for the test scene - it helps a lot.

it would be nice if whenever that Alpha Type was set to Shadow Catcher, if the plugin could automagically set up a diffuse material with matte turned on.

Good idea - I will add this.

Paul

[face_off]

Turning of edge rounding does not make it match for me. But I have not installed the absolutley latest plugin, 1 step behind, might be that ?

cakeller98 wrote:
I was able to achieve this effect by baking the normals including those from the round-edge and creating an override. However, I wasn't able to do this with your files, because the UVs aren't 0-1... so baking a normal map doesn't really work with that AFAIK.

And it probably wont be UV'mapped since it is a tiny part of a _enormous_ machine loaded with the Modo Advanced CAD loader, so optimally it should just work atleast as well as in Modo, preferable as good as the other 3rd party renderd which I have used previously with this.

Octane does not current support rounded edges. However they appear to not be the problem with that mesh. I exported your mesh to another app via OBJ and the normals were wrong. If it's rendering OK elsewhere, it is most probably because the other renderer is recalculating the normals rather than using the wrong normals supplied by the mesh item.

But this does not help you....

Some points....

1) Turn OFF smoothing on the Octane material - that removes the artifacts, but gives you hard edges (won't be an issue for a large model).

2) If you want to keep smoothing ON for the Octane material, select the mesh and Vertex Map->Set Vertex Normals. You can increase the amount of roundness to the edges by increasing the material Smoothing Angle (try 80 degrees) and then doing a Set Vertex Normals. Because the mesh polygons are very odd shapes, some with 10+ edges, this does not work perfectly.

3) It might be worth checking the SolidWorks export options to see if there is a way to export as quads or tri's, since I think that would also resolve the issue.

Hope that helps.

Paul

[Obizzz]

I just had a crash when resizing the Octane window. Very basic scene with two materials.

Edit: just tried again and the same thing.

What driver version is recommended for a Titan?

[Obizzz]

Actually it doesn't seem to be isolated to that scene only. Resizing the window a few times will eventually crash Modo with the error message pointing to OctaneRender for Modo.lx

[Obizzz]

Is there any way to find relevant info in crash logs or similar to track down what the problem might be. The Octane plugin hasn't been very stable for me.

Modo 701 SP5, latest build of the Octane plugin running on Win 7 Pro 64bit.

I'll probably have some time to do some testing tomorrow with a clean .cfg and maybe try a different graphics driver.

People don't seem to have the stability issues I'm encountering so it might be something else than the plugin in itself but the crashes to happen when doing Octane related things.