some questions

[clement]

Hi Ahmet ,

When I try to copy/paste an 'Octane object' (with a mix texture calling other sub textures etc ) into another scene , it doesn't copy the 'subtextures' , only the mix material , but empty .. is there any tip to force c4d to copy all without having to manually select them ? the 'same' problem with 'unseeing' the subtexture is that when you want to clean your scene by using the 'delete unused materials' , it will delete all subtextures in the mix material .. so you have to clean manually .

About those mix textures by the way , I find it can become confusing quickly enough because we can easily have 6-10 sub material for at the end using one over our mesh .. I understand this but was wondering if we could have a small information 'symbol' to quickly find the parent mix texture amoung the subtextures etc ? (maybe it's impossible I can understand ? )

I was wondering if the diffuse material could not have his specular channel too ? ( to prevent from having to have to make some mix mat for doing a skin shader (using SSS in fact ) or such )

Other problem I faced are the float multipliers which doesn't work : here some screens

so for example the diffuse channel (or any other channels as it seems 'broken' everywhere ) the float mulitplier under the color choice , doesn't do anything . I think his goal is to multiply the chosen color and so allow us to blend between 0-1 to the color ? )

to turn arround this problem I use an RGBspectrum color and use the the mix slider to blend with a defaut black color ..not the faster way but it works .

(I use c4d R15.064 and Octane 2.21 )

[aoktar]

Hi Ahmet ,

When I try to copy/paste an 'Octane object' (with a mix texture calling other sub textures etc ) into another scene , it doesn't copy the 'subtextures' , only the mix material , but empty .. is there any tip to force c4d to copy all without having to manually select them ? the 'same' problem with 'unseeing' the subtexture is that when you want to clean your scene by using the 'delete unused materials' , it will delete all subtextures in the mix material .. so you have to clean manually .

About those mix textures by the way , I find it can become confusing quickly enough because we can easily have 6-10 sub material for at the end using one over our mesh .. I understand this but was wondering if we could have a small information 'symbol' to quickly find the parent mix texture amoung the subtextures etc ? (maybe it's impossible I can understand ? )

make a null, assign all materials. And copy it with your ojects. I prefer to use node editor for complex materials.

I was wondering if the diffuse material could not have his specular channel too ? ( to prevent from having to have to make some mix mat for doing a skin shader (using SSS in fact ) or such )

cannot understand.

Other problem I faced are the float multipliers which doesn't work : here some screens

so for example the diffuse channel (or any other channels as it seems 'broken' everywhere ) the float mulitplier under the color choice , doesn't do anything . I think his goal is to multiply the chosen color and so allow us to blend between 0-1 to the color ? )

Float Multiplier not working.jpg

to turn arround this problem I use an RGBspectrum color and use the the mix slider to blend with a defaut black color ..not the faster way but it works

It works. Color has a priority here. You should set it to black if you want to activate float sliders.

[clement]

thanks for the reply Ahmet .

Hi Ahmet ,

When I try to copy/paste an 'Octane object' (with a mix texture calling other sub textures etc ) into another scene , it doesn't copy the 'subtextures' , only the mix material , but empty .. is there any tip to force c4d to copy all without having to manually select them ? the 'same' problem with 'unseeing' the subtexture is that when you want to clean your scene by using the 'delete unused materials' , it will delete all subtextures in the mix material .. so you have to clean manually .

About those mix textures by the way , I find it can become confusing quickly enough because we can easily have 6-10 sub material for at the end using one over our mesh .. I understand this but was wondering if we could have a small information 'symbol' to quickly find the parent mix texture amoung the subtextures etc ? (maybe it's impossible I can understand ? )

make a null, assign all materials. And copy it with your ojects. I prefer to use node editor for complex materials.

ok

I was wondering if the diffuse material could not have his specular channel too ? ( to prevent from having to have to make some mix mat for doing a skin shader (using SSS in fact ) or such )

cannot understand.

well I was asking if the diffuse material, which has no specular channel, could have one ? ( to be able to have SSS effect + specular on the same material without having to to multiple mix materials )

Other problem I faced are the float multipliers which doesn't work : here some screens

so for example the diffuse channel (or any other channels as it seems 'broken' everywhere ) the float mulitplier under the color choice , doesn't do anything . I think his goal is to multiply the chosen color and so allow us to blend between 0-1 to the color ? )

Float Multiplier not working.jpg

to turn arround this problem I use an RGBspectrum color and use the the mix slider to blend with a defaut black color ..not the faster way but it works

It works. Color has a priority here. You should set it to black if you want to activate float sliders.

hmm sorry I don't understand here , as you say the color has to be black to make the 'multiplier' slider works .. so we can't choose any other color so ? what is the goal of this color channel here so ? can't it just work by choosing any color and then use the float multiplier slider to blend it 0%-color chosen% ? if you compare to the c4d behavior : you choose any color and the 'float' ( strenght) slider blend it between 0%and 100% of the color chosen .. so I don't understand it doesn't work the same here .

[aoktar]

For mixing color+texture, cannot understand why you can't use it. Check my video to see how works.
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/119958698[/vimeo]

Also specular+diffuse material, do you see a specular on a diffuse material in standalone? We have same in plugin as SA.

[clement]

thanks for the vid Ahmet . No I can use texture + color , my question was for the float slider which doesn't affect the color except if the color is black . So I think it's not working correctly and the float slider should be a multiplier over the color channel ( so I choose any color and if the float slider is set to 0 , the result is black ..any inbetween values give a blend between black and the chosen color )
If I want to set a color and adjust his strengh , the only way is to not use the color channel but an RGBspectrum for example and make a mix between a black color in the color channel and the real one we'd like to have in the rgbspectrum .. the longest way to achieve a simple color strengh setup .
As you show in your vid , you set a black color and when you adjust the float slider it becomes white ?? why ? there is something wrong here too I think . the color chosen should be at 100% floatvalue and anything lower than 100% should give a blend between black and the color .

(for my question about specular, I don't really use the standalone sorry i didn't want to be offensing I just try to give you my c4d user feelings as I'm doing with betatesting at Maxon ).

[aoktar]

ok, you want to use it as color multiplier. It's not designed for like that. It's a alternative to requirements for tweaking quick specular, opacity,etc.. Also too late, we can't change it anymore. Otherwise we will corrupt old scenes also someone may not want to have this.
You can use mix texture with a multiply texture for color intensity.

[clement]

ok Thanks Ahmet . Yes ok I will use mix texture. (I'll adapt my c4d logic to Octane one's )

By the way I noticed another thing : when I use the Octane 'remove unused material ' command and Hair material it removes the hair mat even if they are used
here a quick vid :

Octane Unused materials command and Hair material.mov

(1.19 MiB) Downloaded 3202 times

Am I doing something wrong here ? Hair materials seems seen as unused materials .

[aoktar]

No, that's correct. i don't check the hairs for materials. i'll fix it.

[mattfrodsham]

Going back to the 'specular on diffuse material' topic.

This was one of the hardest material workflows to adjust to, coming from Vray which has a specular layer/coat system. As most people know, there is basically no such thing as a truly diffuse material so my instinct is to use glossy almost all the time. I share your opinion that adding SSS to a material is more difficult in Octane, as you must use the mix material and give up some of the glossy/specular surface in favour of the SSS diffuse material. Rather than controlling the reflective surface only via colour/glossiness/fresnel/IOR etc. you are reduced to controlling it via an percentage, which is a bit uncomfortable. Of course there are tricks with falloff maps etc. you are not limited to a float texture to mix the materials.

I'm sure there is a reason why diffuse and glossy are split into two separate categories, perhaps it's GPU based, perhaps it's just Octane based, but for shader creation I also find it awkward to create some materials. I also think this is probably more of a discussion for the main forum instead of C4D, but it is an interesting one.

Just my 2 cents.