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Recently I was playing around with AM's Ultimo Paradiso a lot.
It's an island scenery package sold at DAZ.
It contains a lot of plant props, palm trees and other tropical stuff.

The problem I ran into: I ran out of VRAM pretty soon because of all the geometry.
So I just thought, instancing would be nice.

In the standalone you can connect a geometry to several different placement nodes and use the VRAM only once.

I don't see an easy way to implement this to the plugin as it is now.

But there comes another wish I have to play:
A second tab, similiar to the NGE, where one can place values like booleans, RGB's, floattextures and so on, and connect them to input pins of materials to have global values like colours, mix values and so on.
Maybe it could be possible to integrate some sort of instancing to this tab?

I'm asking a lot maybe, but one can dream, no?

If some of this is possible I don't expect it to happen tomorrow!

UruMike wrote:Recently I was playing around with AM's Ultimo Paradiso a lot.
It's an island scenery package sold at DAZ.
It contains a lot of plant props, palm trees and other tropical stuff.

The problem I ran into: I ran out of VRAM pretty soon because of all the geometry.
So I just thought, instancing would be nice.

In the standalone you can connect a geometry to several different placement nodes and use the VRAM only once.
I don't see an easy way to implement this to the plugin as it is now.

regarding this: instancing is supported in DS4.5 already, so the plan is clearly to support that through the plugin and by octane instances. i haven't had a closer look how it works in ds, so i can't currently say how it will be done in the end, but i do of course aim for something easy to use. since ds itself doesn't support material mapping for instances, but octane does, and material-linking/mapping is already one of the major jobs of the plugin, it should be possible to extend ds in this particular aspect...

UruMike wrote:But there comes another wish I have to play:
A second tab, similiar to the NGE, where one can place values like booleans, RGB's, floattextures and so on, and connect them to input pins of materials to have global values like colours, mix values and so on.

and regarding that, you might find this interesting: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 88#p134188
...

t_3 wrote:

UruMike wrote:Recently I was playing around with AM's Ultimo Paradiso a lot.
It's an island scenery package sold at DAZ.
It contains a lot of plant props, palm trees and other tropical stuff.

The problem I ran into: I ran out of VRAM pretty soon because of all the geometry.
So I just thought, instancing would be nice.

In the standalone you can connect a geometry to several different placement nodes and use the VRAM only once.
I don't see an easy way to implement this to the plugin as it is now.

regarding this: instancing is supported in DS4.5 already, so the plan is clearly to support that through the plugin and by octane instances. i haven't had a closer look how it works in ds, so i can't currently say how it will be done in the end, but i do of course aim for something easy to use. since ds itself doesn't support material mapping for instances, but octane does, and material-linking/mapping is already one of the major jobs of the plugin, it should be possible to extend ds in this particular aspect...

Huh? Instancing is supported in DS 4.5? I didn't know that...
Can a plugin draw in the DS viewport?
If yes: it could be possible to draw, maybe in an 'Instancing Mode' initiated by the plugin, bounding boxes to place instances.
Then you open the Octane viewport to finetune the position...?

t_3 wrote:

UruMike wrote:But there comes another wish I have to play:
A second tab, similiar to the NGE, where one can place values like booleans, RGB's, floattextures and so on, and connect them to input pins of materials to have global values like colours, mix values and so on.

and regarding that, you might find this interesting: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 88#p134188
...

Yep, read that one, just couldn't find it anymore...
Maybe really a second or even a third tab would be useful for these purposes?
Like a general tab and an instancing tab, something along these lines?

UruMike wrote:Huh? Instancing is supported in DS 4.5? I didn't know that...

i on the other hand don't know how it works and if it works

UruMike wrote:Can a plugin draw in the DS viewport?

i tried that once, but it is not quite simple since it need to be drawn via opengl. i know it should be possible, but in the end the independent octane viewport also has some advantages, so i didn't spend much time on this.

UruMike wrote:If yes: it could be possible to draw, maybe in an 'Instancing Mode' initiated by the plugin, bounding boxes to place instances. Then you open the Octane viewport to finetune the position...?

if you switch to bounding box rendering in the ds viewport, you are already close to that - since never tested, i don't know how instancing affects ds viewport performance. afaik opengl supports instancing since v3.1, so it might be that daz already uses ogl also to draw the instances, so it shouldn't be that big performance eater (repeat - i don't really know it )

t_3 wrote:Maybe really a second or even a third tab would be useful for these purposes?
Like a general tab and an instancing tab, something along these lines?

something like this - yes. i currently don't have a clear picture; global values will most probably part of the current mat tab, since it should be (if possible) the main place to have an overview about all what is going on with materials, what is link and how, etc. pp. *) material mapping for instances would for sure be overkill if also integrated there, so an additional editor will most probably be the best solution.

*) note: if someone wondered why there are mat parameter sliders in the main mat tab, but nothing to change types or the structure; can't exactly remember if already told it, but: at some point it will be possible to a) select specific parameters for display there (like onl y often changed values, like gamma or bump amount), so it gets less cluttered and provide fast access for fine tuning, and b) it will be the hook to allow multi-edits (change a specific parameter for multiple mats absolute/relative)...

linvanchene wrote:Suddenly there were two police cars.

i wish it was instancing already

in fact i use a spacepilot, thus i'm able to operate camera navigation and the mouse (for other tasks) in parallel, and the content pane resides on the 2nd monitor. in other words: it was just quickly loaded...

Hi,

So to summarize, in Daz 4.6 Instancing works within DAZ. You see it in the DAZ screens, but sadly not in an Octane render.

I do hope this can be resolved in the next release. For large scenes instancing is a must.

Many thanks.

SciFiFunk wrote:I do hope this can be resolved in the next release. For large scenes instancing is a must.

Many thanks.

will be: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 49#p155849

Star player!

Made my day. Many thanks.