Animation - Viewport doesn't update

[portnicki]

Hey,

me again
How do you make the Octane viewport to update in modo everytime you browse through frames on your timeline (modo timeline that is)?
Camera is the only thing that is moving in the scene - no geometry changes.

Only realoding the scene works for me.
And it's a real pain when I want to preview if my camera's focal lenght is right (or out of focus).

And is there a way to control the focal lenght some other way than manually keyframing and inputting a random number into to form.

I mean something like modos way:

This:


instead of this:


??

Thanks!

[face_off]

How do you make the Octane viewport to update in modo everytime you browse through frames on your timeline (modo timeline that is)?
Camera is the only thing that is moving in the scene - no geometry changes.

That's right. The issue is that you might move the Modo slider faster than the plugin can refresh the vertices. So at the moment the plugin requires that you Refresh to update the vertices. This will change over time - because as you move the slider, it would be very quick to just update the transforms of the Modo Mesh Items - so that will be done in the next week or two (and that will be key to implementing object motion blur too).

And is there a way to control the focal lenght some other way than manually keyframing and inputting a random number into to form.

It should be just a matter of opening the Viewport and focus picking. When you focus pick, it should add a keyframe for the focal length at the current frame.

I'm very keen to refine the plugin support for animation - so keep telling me what you need - and I'll add what I can into the plugin.

Paul

[portnicki]

Hello Paul,

thanks for answering so soon.
Yeah, for now it's a pain to reload the whole scene with every camera movement.
Even worse - right now I'm rendering a very low res draft frames, and the render time of each frame is smth like 6-10s, whereas the time the scene loads into Octane each & every time is another 6-8s. So as a result my draft animation takes twice as much to render as it should.

I've tried to export the whole scene from modo to Octane standalone via the new Alembic format but as soon as I import it, Octane crashes.
When I tried exporting as an OBJ file I get some really strange geometry issues and of course I loose all my texturing.

Thatnks for the focus picking trick, I didn't wthink of that.
I still prefer modo's way of a graphical representation of the focal lenght. For example I want my object out of focus (I want to set the focal point far behind my object). When I click the background (no geometry) it doesn't do anything. I know it makes sense - there's nothing to focus on. I still need to go to camera settings and put in a number. No biggie of course just a matter of a habbit from modo.

I'll let you know progresivlly on the things that could be improved as I go on with my animation.

Thanks again Paul,
Wojciech

[face_off]

Even worse - right now I'm rendering a very low res draft frames, and the render time of each frame is smth like 6-10s, whereas the time the scene loads into Octane each & every time is another 6-8s. So as a result my draft animation takes twice as much to render as it should.

There are multiple levels of scene updating per frame. These are:
1) Only update the camera pos/target. Almost instant frame change - as you see when moving the animation timeline slider in the latest release
2) Update camera and mesh item transforms. This should also be reasonably fast
3) Complete geometry refresh. Slow, but picks up all the morph/vertex changes
4) Complete scene refresh. Also picks up animated materials.

I will add checkboxes for all the above options so you can control what level of refresh you need each frame change.

I've tried to export the whole scene from modo to Octane standalone via the new Alembic format but as soon as I import it, Octane crashes.
When I tried exporting as an OBJ file I get some really strange geometry issues and of course I loose all my texturing.

I think there was a big in Standalone fixed in 1.51 related to this.

I still prefer modo's way of a graphical representation of the focal lenght. For example I want my object out of focus (I want to set the focal point far behind my object). When I click the background (no geometry) it doesn't do anything. I know it makes sense - there's nothing to focus on. I still need to go to camera settings and put in a number. No biggie of course just a matter of a habbit from modo.

Did you try using the "Use Modo Focus Distance"?

Paul

[portnicki]

There are multiple levels of scene updating per frame. These are:
1) Only update the camera pos/target. Almost instant frame change - as you see when moving the animation timeline slider in the latest release
2) Update camera and mesh item transforms. This should also be reasonably fast
3) Complete geometry refresh. Slow, but picks up all the morph/vertex changes
4) Complete scene refresh. Also picks up animated materials.

I will add checkboxes for all the above options so you can control what level of refresh you need each frame change.

Well Paul, I could not ask for more, that would be awesome!

I think there was a big in Standalone fixed in 1.51 related to this.

Yeah, I've downloaded it and still no go. Maybe theres smth strange with me scene, dunno. I mean I'm more comfortable to work with the plugin than the standalone (still a matter of a habbit I guess) so exporting the scene was only a way to make Octane not reload the whole scene each frame for preview.

Did you try using the "Use Modo Focus Distance"?

I didn't know there is such a switch, my bad.

And
PS. The Octane renderer & modo plugin was the best money spent in a long time. And I must say Paul, the speed and quality of your support is second to none!

Wojciech

[portnicki]

ok, so the file naming for the animation could use a numbering rule like: 0001, 0002, 0003, 0004 ...
instead of just 1, 2, 3, 4 ...

that's because many apps will import in the following sequence: 1, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 2, 21, 22

Also not a big deal to batch rename the files but would be one inconvenience less.

[heavypoly]

Also it would be great to have an option to save animation by timeline frame number. That way if for some reason modo crashes and you need to start the render where you left off, it doesn't overwrite the existing frames

[face_off]

ok, so the file naming for the animation could use a numbering rule like: 0001, 0002, 0003, 0004 ...

I think this was added in release 1.50.0.50.

Also it would be great to have an option to save animation by timeline frame number. That way if for some reason modo crashes and you need to start the render where you left off, it doesn't overwrite the existing frames

This should have also been done in release 1.50.0.50.

Are you both on earlier versions of the plugin perhaps?

Paul

[portnicki]

ok, so the file naming for the animation could use a numbering rule like: 0001, 0002, 0003, 0004 ...

I think this was added in release 1.50.0.50.

Also it would be great to have an option to save animation by timeline frame number. That way if for some reason modo crashes and you need to start the render where you left off, it doesn't overwrite the existing frames

This should have also been done in release 1.50.0.50.

Are you both on earlier versions of the plugin perhaps?

Paul

oh jeez, I'm embarassed again - I'm sitting here on a 1.33.0.46 version.

Hey, here's any idea - maybe an "you're not up to date" dialogue at the plugin launch - that would save you a looot of explaining

[portnicki]

maybe I just do not know how to do this, but - control the camera movement inside the Octane preview window (be able to move & rotate).

Now I need to steer me camera in one of the modos viewports and look the other way to the Octanes window to see the outcome.