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Animation workflow

Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 9:17 am
by gardeler
Hi
going through the manual for animation workflow suggests that you export your geometry from your 3D app, then go into octane and shade it. After that you save the file, go back into your program and link to you ocs file and render the scene. (bottom of P39)

I'm in maya, and I can't find any place where I can link to the ocs file?

Also, is there a way to export your shaders from octane back into maya? I preffer to work in the stand alone version, but for anims, I need to go back to Maya. so until octane supports alembic, and gets a timeline, I'm stuck in the middle..

Do I have to stay in the 3D app if I want to render an animation, or is there a 2 way bridge that I have missed?

Thanks

Martin

Re: Animation workflow

Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 9:36 am
by gordonrobb
If it's anything like the Lightwave plugin, you don't go anywhere near the standalone. You do all the shading and animating and rendering in Maya.

Re: Animation workflow

Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 12:36 pm
by gardeler
I don't know how the lightwave plugin is behaving, but what I like with the stand alone version is that after you have loaded all your geometry, (the obj's) there is no "translation time". Everything is already ready to render. You can change everything without any further need of waiting for the maya to covert the geometry, shaders and so on for rendering.

In maya you can move the camera around and you render will update, and you shader tweaks will update as well. But creating new shaders and other objects requires a recompile first. If you have large datasets and textures, this will slow down the workflow. (most render engines within maya has these issues.)

Hope lightwave is better at this. :)

cheers

Martin

Re: Animation workflow

Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 2:43 pm
by gordonrobb
Ah, doesn't sound like the same as Lightwave. In LW, nothing is being converted. You're working with LW objects, and creating the textures/surfaces in LW (but Octane versions), the IPR works much the same as the standalone, and is as quick. Only difference is some of the changes you will make to parameters don't update until you hit ok, but apart from that, it's just as quick.

Re: Animation workflow

Posted: Mon Aug 26, 2013 9:22 pm
by xxdanbrowne
I'm not an expert in this so take this with a pinch of salt (though I do have the maya plugin):
You have to set up the scene in maya, add octane materials to your objects and an octane camera. You will then be able to render in the render view using octane render.
(I vaguely remember that there are a couple more steps than that but it's the gist of it).

Then I would imagine that you just scrub one frame at a time through the timeline and render each frame as you go (or maybe you can render an entire animation... unknown...)

Re: Animation workflow

Posted: Wed Aug 28, 2013 11:57 am
by gardeler
The maya plugin works just fine and is easy to use. But all the nodes you create after starting the previewer, (IPR), will require a re-initiation of the preview so it can load the new nodes. This takes some time, and if you need to do this a lot then it starts to get frustrating.

Maybe it should work in the viewport in stead. (I think the Caustic Visualizer does so.)

But then again, if you had a timeline in the stand alone you didn't need anything else, hehe.