ok, where to start...
this is probably the first release being only a few days behind the standalone update
you can apply this update to any previous version, including a 1.2 install - i'd still recommend to keep a 1.2 install in a different copy of daz studio as backup, since there is still some work to do.in general this update should work a lot smoother than the last release update from a month back. apart from finishing the rework from 1.2 to 1.5/2.0 which is nearly done, i could also identify and fix lots of smaller and bigger issues, in particular with the node display and the nge.
when displaying complex node structures in the nested layout there, i reached some extents what Qt (the ui framework of daz studio) is capable of - including the animation/keyframe editor there need to be several hundreds of elements built whenever a single material is clicked, nested and stacked within dozens of layers. this led to quite some problems, even responsible for lots of crashes, but should work much more reliable now and also notably faster.
in addition i decided to hide the transform sliders in image nodes by default (can be shown with a click), at least until an image node is directly clicked in the nge (or for images in the hdri environment where they are always shown). theses sliders are usually seldom used, but did take lots of screen space, so hiding them makes the node display again more compact.
completely reworked was also the drag & drop system... you can drag nearly everything nearly anywhere, including files from the windows explorer (or other standard file displays). i.e. if you drag images onto the mat tab, they will immediately inserted as materials, set up with diffuse and bump out of each map (or drag exactly 2 images, one rgb and one gray, to create on material having them on diffuse and bum channels). this also works on the environment tab, where hdri environments will be created out of them. dropping images to the nge (into a currently open material) will add them as image nodes.
you can also drag octane files (ocm/ocs/orbx) on the misc. tabs, to import the respective nodes (rendersettings takes rendertargets out of the dropped files, environment tab all environments, and so on). the system tab will ask what to import. other ways to get stuff in are the import buttons in all these places, or copy and paste. you may i.e. press ctrl+c on a camera node in the standalone and import it into studio by pressing ctrl+v when the viewport window is active (same with tabs and nge).
note: you can switch tabs in the plugin ui while dragging (might come handy), by just hovering a short while over the tab name - works for main tabs and for the tabs of the thumbnail viewer (live db and presets).
yet another example is to save user presets by dragging them from the scene materials list into the presets thumbnail view.
speaking about user presets: this version is now able to read presets saved with 1.2 back and convert them to the current version. note that this may need a few seconds for really complex materials, but is needed only once - once loaded the preset is already saved back in the new internal format and will open fast from then on. ps: the 1.2 versions will be kept in the OctaneRender_presets.oczdb file in the data directory but it is of course a good idea to back it up, just in case (btw, the plugin creates a backup on every save with a .bak extension instead .oczdb).
remarks about "the new" data format: the plugin now uses only octane's own xml format to store and read materials, nodes, etc. be it a .duf based save, user presets, live db cache or when exchanging stuff via drag & drop, clipboard or import/export.
the plugin also uses octane's conversion system to convert this data between versions, so if octane is capable to convert saved data from a particular version to another (typically upwards), the plugin is able to do that too. for me this means hopefully the last complete rewrite of internal data handling, since now anything is completely in line with octane standards (what wasn't possible before 1.5 - therefore all the hassle with changing data formats again and again).
a particular improvement was possible during content loads where the number of accesses to image maps (which of course need to be also read by the plugin/octane) was notably reduced, resulting in faster load times. the plugin now also does map resizing on the fly, no longer needs to write or read cached resized versions of the maps (the final installer will clean them out on disk also btw).
material previews and node previews in the nge do now work much better (also using in-memory caches instead of disk based one); full material previews are of course still saved to disk in order to populate the thumbnails view. note: the usability of the realtime node preview in the nge still depends on your gpu power, so it depends on if turning them on in the nge (checkbox on the top) is a good idea or not.
now for the things that will probably hurt a little... this version still has several limitations; while in theory .duf save/load is already possible for fresh scenes (new format) and also read back of 1.2 scenes, i need to do more testing. giving that out to eariy might just create more problems then what it helps. saving of user presets or orbx/ocs/ocm exports may be a short term substitute.
also other features still need some work and smaller annoyances fixed. i.e. in the texture tab the resize switch is ok, but it is better to not touch the other two (type change & image replace). network rendering has some flaws also. animation rendering is in particular completely untested, but the 2.12 octane version has a few new & interesting options to make some of the tasks needed there more reliable.
so, how to proceed on: i'm going to have another update when the weekend is over - no promises about what precisely and exactly when, but i'll give my best to take on the most burning issues. ps: i had a good run during the last couple of weeks and will of course try to keep it on.
please for now: no bug reports! i'm going to take on them with the next update, and will give you instructions how to hand them over in a way that allows me to handle them properly (it's just too time consuming to scrub countless forum posts about who wrote what and when and what about).
ok. even after this nbr. of lines i have probably forgotten to mention this and that, but, anyway here it is:
the updater to 2.1 (with octane 2.12.1), applicable for any previous version,
also containing a new 1.55 version built upon the same code base:
... needed to cancel it for another day in order to fix a few very annoying problems!
note: in case of problems with the updater, feel free to post here. will need some rest though until take on them (if any)...
