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Hello everyone!

I'd like to buy octanerender (i've tested it and it looks great), but i've got an important question that should determine if octane is for my needs or not.

...first I apologize for my bad english

if I have well understood, in the host application (Max, Maya, Blender...) objects materials are only assigned as "groups" (materials for walls, for courtains, floor, glass, chrome...) but they are not setted (no parameters about glossiness, ior, traslucency...ecc), the real set-up of the materials is done inside octane.

my question is:
if i have an object (or different objects that is/are needed for different scenes), with differnt materials applied (10/15 materials) everytime that this object is imported in a new scene it needs to have all the material assigned from scratch (with lot waste of time).....there are no possiblities to export from ocatne some "information" about the link from the different materials to the object?

Hope that someone can help me about

if you edit the materials directly in the mesh node - by clicking the mesh and edit them in the right pane - you can right-click on the node header and save single materials. a better way would be to create materials "outside" the mesh node, by adding materials or material macros to the nodegraph and connect them to the surface nodes where you need them. you can then select a bunch of them (by dragging a select-rectangle around them) and save them into a single .ocm, again by right-click on one of the selected materials...

by the way where and how you can apply materials in octane only depends on the way surfaces are exported by the host, and how they are grouped there...

a tutorial about how macros work (along with a bunch others) is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShCm2tQPA1c

Thanks a lot for your reply T_3!

really intresting the thing about macros, but they don't seem to solve my doubt about the trouble of "speeding up" the process of working (importing) with objects with different materials applyed to them.

today i saw a videotutorial about the integration of the Octane exporter in Studiomax, where all the materials set-up process was made inside 3DStudio (using the material editor of 3DsMax) and all the changes were visibile in real-time inside a floating window (without the needs of the Octane interface).

after that video i thought about the possibility (hope not only theorically) to working on an object (..a chair) and set-up the materials (octane materials) for that object, and then save the scene (...only the chair in a .max format); I'm pretty sure that if i start a new scene in StudioMax and import the chair....this have the octane materials still assigned to all it's parts (like when i save the scene with vray materials applied).

Tomorrow i'll buy the Octane license so i can make some tests.....I'll keep the fingers crossed!

Thanks again, paolo

Hi paoloverona, don´t forget there is a exporter for 3dsmax and a plugin.
The exporter is free, the plugin cost 99.00 € but there is a bundle for the render engine and the plugin for 179.00 €.
So if you need realtime preview inside 3dsmax you need both.

Cheers, mib.