Octane standalone is dead?

[steveps3]

Well it appears as if the sceptics were right. Octane for Blender users is dead. Or at least it is if you want to use any version past 1.20. It seems incredible that one of Octanes major audiences is just ignored.

What am I rambling on about? Well you may not have noticed but since version 1.20 there is no way of using the standalone version of Octane from Blender. Why don't you use the Octane4Blender version I hear you cry. Because it is terrible I reply. It is ok for small projects but for anything large you is just so fiddly trying to set up the materials that it is unusable. Not to mention the clunky way that you have to set up special octane nodes but at the same time all the non octane nodes are still there just to trip you up.

Is it really too much to ask for the Blender exporter to be updated to keep it working with the new format .OCS file? I would have thought that for someone with good python skills it wouldn't take more than a couple of hours. Fundamentally it works so fixing it can't be that hard, can it?

I am amazed that I appear to be the only person who is calling for this. Perhaps Cycles has got so good now that all the blender users have stopped using Octane. It certainly is becoming a tempting prospect for me. There really is no point keep shouting look at all these new features when they are just deadwood to Blender users who can't use them.

Please someone, come to the rescue.

[stratified]

I'm sorry you feel that way.

Octane is in a better shape for Blender users than ever with the advent of the plugin. A lot of users actually like the Blender plugin.

The Blender exporter was never officially supported by OTOY. But if you think it shouldn't be that hard, get up to speed on Python and do it yourself. You could counter that by saying you don't have the time. But you are expecting of other users to sacrifice their time to get the exporter working ...

Mind you, I think the exporter is a very useful and I hope someone steps up to maintain it. I guess, like with all things in life, rambling is not going to magically put a new exporter in your hands...

kind regards,
Thomas

[pixelrush]

Possibly it would be an idea to post a request for a script maintainer or someone to do an update at the Blender forums.
If Blender Octane users were to offer some crowd sourced money there might be more likely to be a taker.
Even a small sum of say 10€ each is OK in comparison to the 99€ (currently) plugin.

[stanlong]

I'm with steveps3 that we can update the exporter and keep the free connection working. I don't think it is an Python issue as much as it is an Otoy and their OCS file format issue. Is the OCS2 file version in its final format? Is there any documentation? I've looked at the existing exporter and it would not be that difficult to add the OCS2 output format to it. I just wonder if it is not going to change with Octane v1.25 or v1.26?

[stratified]

We never supported the exporters for exactly that reason. We want to keep changing the OCS file format however we please. There's no documentation, nor will we provide documentation and it might change in the next version...

Reverse engineering the OCS format isn't that hard so I think it's doable to maintain the exporter script. At least for stable versions of Octane.

cheers,
Thomas

[pixelrush]

...we can update the exporter and keep it free..

Yes OK but who is this we? Who is this generous person?
Easy to say this needs to happen...and again next time , the time after...

[steveps3]

I'm sorry you feel that way.

Octane is in a better shape for Blender users than ever with the advent of the plugin. A lot of users actually like the Blender plugin.

The Blender exporter was never officially supported by OTOY. But if you think it shouldn't be that hard, get up to speed on Python and do it yourself. You could counter that by saying you don't have the time. But you are expecting of other users to sacrifice their time to get the exporter working ...

Mind you, I think the exporter is a very useful and I hope someone steps up to maintain it. I guess, like with all things in life, rambling is not going to magically put a new exporter in your hands...

kind regards,
Thomas

I am countering that by saying I do not have the skills. If I did then I would gladly update the scripts.

Is the format for the .OCS available or would it need to be reverse engineered? I am a programmer (Cobol rocks!) so turning my hand to another language shouldn't be too much effort and learning python would be useful for a Blender person anyway. Obviously If I need to learn Python, learn the format of the script and find time to do all this then it wouldn't be something that would happen over night.

[steveps3]

Possibly it would be an idea to post a request for a script maintainer or someone to do an update at the Blender forums.
If Blender Octane users were to offer some crowd sourced money there might be more likely to be a taker.
Even a small sum of say 10€ each is OK in comparison to the 99€ (currently) plugin.

I would certainly be willing to do such a thing.

[steveps3]

We never supported the exporters for exactly that reason. We want to keep changing the OCS file format however we please. There's no documentation, nor will we provide documentation and it might change in the next version...

Reverse engineering the OCS format isn't that hard so I think it's doable to maintain the exporter script. At least for stable versions of Octane.

cheers,
Thomas

I am not sure about this statement. The exporter was an Refractive Software thing. Lionel, out of the kindness of his heart, took it on and greatly improved it but the initial script was Refractive.

[steveps3]

So what do other programs use? Is there not a Maya exporter etc? Are these exporters written by a third party?

Sadly if the only answer is to use blender4octane then that is not an answer that I am willing to take. I will simply stop using Octane.