OR4C no show in Carrara then crash [Solved]

[Mythmaker]

Hi everyone, just got on board today.

Installed Octane Standalone 64b 2.17, smooth activation. Launched, LiveDB loads. All's well.
Installed OR4C 64b 2.17 next. Setup installed seemed normal and straight forward.
Launched Carrara. Edit> no sign of Octane. Load scene/ object with shaders. No sign of Octane.
Checked Program and Features. Both OS and OR4C 2.17 are installed.
Restart system. Launched Carrara. Load fully shaded scenes/ objects. Octane no show.
Uninstalled OR4C 2.17. Installed OR4C 2.16. Same story.
Checked Program and Features. Both OS 2.17 and OR4C 2.16 are installed.

My Carrara environment is pretty basic. I don't have many plugins installed (only mimic/goz/clothdeformer), am a relatively new arrival in Carrara. Hope I'm just missing something obvious...

Await further instructions.

[EddyMI3D]

Hello Mytmaker!

I assume you have C8/C8.5 in 64bit version on your PC and you installed OR4C into the installation path of Carrara.

Eddy

[Sighman]

This is likely an install path problem. The installer does not check that it is installing to the correct place and if you did not install 8.5 to the default install location or you are using Carrara 8 then you need to change the install path when you install the plugin. Also you cannot mix 64bit and 32bit versions of Carrara and the plugin. Use Explorer to find the location of the Carrara.exe file and use that path to install the plugin.

[Mythmaker]

Hi Eddy and Sighman, my system info is in my sig.

I suspected all that too. First thing I checked in Programs and Features is to confirm both are 64bit.
My Carrara install path is standard. No 32bit version installed. C drive program files/DAZ3D/Carrara8.5.
I actually installed OR4C 2.17 twice just to be sure before opting for 2.16.
First install I noted it got the install path correct so just went through with it.
Second (re)install of 2.17 I re-download, ensure 64 bit, manually select install path just in case.
Third install (2.16 64bit), also manual select path.

Any other variables?

EDIT: when manual select it should be /.../DAZ3D/Carrara8.5 (what I chose), and not DAZ3D/Carrara8.5/Extensions/ , correct?

EDIT: I only installed the setup.exe. Do I need to install the .../.../dotNetFx45_Full_setup too?

[Mythmaker]

Interestingly, there is an OctaneRender folder in /Extensions.

Just launched Carrara again and load scene with shaded objects, still no Edit>Octane Command.

[Mythmaker]

Culprit found.

During the first install the OR4C installer generated a new DAZ3D/Carrara8.5/Extensions folder.

During the second/ thrid install I manually selected the installer-generated "imposter" DAZ3D/Carrara8.5, instead of the actual/ default install directory (one level down at DAZ3D/DAZ3D/Carrara8.5/)

Uninstalled 2.16. Deleted the imposter directory. Re-download 2.17. Now activated and all.

New problem (LOL just my luck). Load scene, anything - Genesis, living room, dragon... Launch Octane. OR4C pops up, pauses, Carrara crashes.

Changing kernel from Direct Lighting kernel to Pathtrace, add Octane material, no avail. Another obvious culprit probably.

I actually read the whole OR4C manual before I installed. Oh well. Help appreciated.

[Mythmaker]

Here a screenshot. Hope this will help isolate the cause for the crash.

[Sighman]

I'm at a loss. Can you open an empty scene? What if you just load a single primitive. If you have a single GPU then go to the devices tab on the Octane Settings dialog and enable priority on your titan and set the priority level to medium. Also in preferences try setting Auto Start Render to true.

I have also included a screen shot of all the files that should be in the Extensions\OctaneRender directory. Can you confirm their dates and file sizes...

Devices

Devices.png (10.68 KiB) Viewed 7587 times

Preferences

prefs.png (9.84 KiB) Viewed 7587 times

Plugin Files

[Mythmaker]

Resolved. Culprit is indeed ----> default Auto Start Render = false.

From Scene> Effects> OctaneRenderTarget> Edit> Preference, I set Auto Start Render = true. No more crashes. And I haven't even turned on 'use priority' yet. Everything then renders flying fast out of the box.

For good practice... I should enable my single Titan's use priority anyway, and keep level to medium, correct?

Other observations:

In 'Scene> Effects> OctaneRenderTarget> Edit', a few tabs - namely Devices, Octane Live DB, Animation are greyed out/ inaccessible. That's by design, correct?

Also, yes all 10 files exist in OR4C (2.17) Extensions folder. The 27/2/2015 files have the same size as yours.

Thanks for your spot-on analysis and quick response.

[Sighman]

Glad you sorted it out. As far as device priority, the Titan is a pretty powerful card and it is all a matter of how responsive you want the UI to be. If you want to do a lot of interactive work while the viewport is open then pick medium or low. It is really a preference thing.

If you open the render settings from the viewport instead of the effects pane then the tabs won't be disabled. I'll look into why they are disabled in the first place...