Can Octane convert Cinema 4D materials correctly?

[Termin8]

Hello,

I'm just wondering if Octane can convert all settings of Cinema 4D materials into it's own materials?
Also, when do you plan to implement emissive materials?

Thank you!

Best regards,
Alexander

[matej]

I don't know Cinema 4D or the exporter for it, but I'm pretty sure it can't (atleast that is true for Blender). Materials are mainly created inside Octane node editor.

Emitters (blackbody, texture) are already implemented in the current licensed version (have been for some time). The demo is rather old.
Look through the WIP threads for renders with emitters to get a picture.

[abstrax]

Hello,

I'm just wondering if Octane can convert all settings of Cinema 4D materials into it's own materials?
Also, when do you plan to implement emissive materials?

Thank you!

Best regards,
Alexander

Matej has already answered the second question. To your first question: At the moment it's not possible to convert C4D materials 100% into Octane materials. I have tried to do as much as possible, but OBJ/MTL is quite a bottleneck and you can't store a lot of things in MTL files. Also no shaders get exported, only colours and image textures. Fortunately you can still bake shaders into image textures, if needed and UV coordinates are exported as good as possible.

On the other hand, Octane materials are physically based and work quite differently than the C4D materials, as the underlying physical model differs a lot. Because of that Octane is not only a renderer, but also a material editor, which allows you to setup, render and change materials in realtime.

Cheers,
Marcus

[Termin8]

Thank you guys for the clarification! Very much appreciated!

I have one more question for you.

If i adjust a texture in C4D using it's internal texture manipulation tool, will Octane place the texture correctly? Sometimes i don't create UV maps, just place materials and decals.

Thank you!

best regards,
Alexander

[abstrax]

If i adjust a texture in C4D using it's internal texture manipulation tool, will Octane place the texture correctly? Sometimes i don't create UV maps, just place materials and decals.

Thank you!

best regards,
Alexander

Hi Alexander,

All texture mappings are converted to UV mapping as good as possible (Octane knows only UV mapping). That means you might run into problems in some places, where you are using a parametric texture mapping (like spherical or cylindrical mapping). Texture scale, offset and rotation are also "baked" into the exported UV map. -> In most cases the texture mapping works ok. To have full control, you should use UV mapping to start with.

Another limitation is that stacked textures/materials can't be exported at the moment as the MTL file format is not flexible enough for that. You can created mixed materials in Octane, but they can't be exported to Octane.

The third limitation is that each polygon can have only one UV mapping. The exporter takes polygon selections into account, though. For each polygon the topmost of the assigned materials is chosen and with that the correct UV map assigned to this material. I.e. as long as you separate the materials via polygon selections, you can use different mappings. But you can't use different UV mappings for the same polygons.

I hope the answet makes sense (it's quite late already).

Cheers,
Marcus