Test render and glitches

[Paul-sn]

Hi there,
First I just want to say that Octane is amazing, and that this type of integration of the GPU into the rendering pipeline is definitely the way of the future. When it works, it works amazingly well - and fast. So good job!

However, in trying to import and render a piece for the competition, I've experienced an enormous amount of glitches and/or crashes and problems that make it extremely difficult to finish my entry. I'm under the impression that many of the other users aren't experiencing these same issues, and I was hoping that if I detailed my issues here, I could get some feedback from Radiance.

1) The biggest problem is the massive slowdown in the Octane UI when rendering something. The render viewport itself is working amazingly fast, so that isn't the problem... but everything else slows to a crawl. Navigating the Graph Editor or the Node Inspector becomes practically impossible. Just expanding/collapsing a node in the Inspector came take a delay of several seconds. Obviously, this negates the whole point of live, preview-rendering. I want to stress that I'm not running other applications at the same time, and that I select the "checkerbox" with only 4 squares above the render viewport (sorry... not sure what this is called... the button that makes the Viewport more responsive when changing the camera angle, etc...).

2) I should also mention that my video card is a Geforce 250 GTS with 512 MB of ram... could this be the problem? I've read of other people claiming to have buttery smooth performance, and I'm nowhere near that (granted though that my card isn't a 285...). The on-screen indicator has never gone past 250ish MB out of the 512, so I'm not sure what's going on here. Also, I'm running the latest 195.62 drivers because the 190.38 drivers absolutely refused to work (gave some strange OpenGL error message).

3) There are weird glitches all over the place. For instance, whenever I adjust a slider somewhere in the Node Inspector, it kicks me back up to the very top. So, I could be changing the specularity in the 15th mesh at the very bottom of the Node Inspector, and immediately after making the change, Octane throws me back up the top of the Inspector again.... Coupled with the slowdown mentioned in 1), it makes it incredibly slow to tweak the scene. This is analogous to Microsoft Word kicking you back up to the 1st page of a 10 page document anytime you add a sentence... you just can't get any work done that way.

4) Another strange glitch happens randomly in the Viewport. Even if I import very simple meshes (a big half-cube, for a room), depending on the angle of the camera, certain parts of the object get "grayed" out and flicker... They render this way too. It can completely ruin a scene.
I've attached a screenshot to show an example of this (though a video would make it more clear).

I think that's it for now... I hope I could get some feedback on this. I think Octane is a brilliant idea and I would be very proud to support its development by purchasing a license - particularly for the very modest cost - but at this point, it's simply not working well enough for me.

Thanks!

[radiance]

Hi,

use the subsampling (checkerboard buttons on top of the render viewport) to make the interface respond quicker.
i'll also be releasing a new demo version in 2 days that will have much quicker navigation and editing.

regarding the artifacts in your render,
either your model is way too big or way too small.

one unit = 1 meter, and if you're modeling app works in milimeters or centimeters, after you import you're model will be kilometers large and you'll get these shading issues.
use the unit conversion in the FILE -> OBJ Import options to change it.

also make sure you haven't got the smoothing enabled on meshes like cubes/walls/boxes as this gives normal smoothing with large angles and then you get these problems...

regarding the stability issues, the demo version is a tech demo, not a final product.
we're working hard on fixing these issues and the next release coming in 2 days will be a major advancement with lots of new functionality, much faster navigation and more stability.

Radiance

[Paul-sn]

Thank you for the very prompt reply - and on a weekend!

Adjusting the scale has already helped a great deal - no more artifacts. In case it helps anyone else, I was importing from blender, and am having more success using the decimeters to meters conversion factor.

I'm looking forward to the next update in 2 days!
Keep up the excellent work!