OTOY Forums

hi Everyone,

Is there some trick to getting shadows to show up in the render passes? When I enable shadows, in the render passes, and the Octane viewport just shows white, no shadows.

You need to enable Kernel Alpha Channel.

Paul

Hi Paul,

I've enabled Kernel Alpha Channel and Shadows, and still nothing but white. I'm sure this is user error, but I have a feeling something else needs to be enabled maybe? Please see below.

Shadows are only caught from the active render layer onto the non-active render layers. To catch the shadows you need to partition your scene into render layers. The letters from "test" would go on the active render layer and the ground plane goes into any other render layer.

I don't know how it's done in Rhino but in the standalone, you configure the render layer id of each object via an object layer node. The render layer node itself plug directly into the render target. Is's explained better here and here.

cheers,
Thomas

The Rhino plugin does not currently allow you to assign Render Layers, so this approach will not work on the current release of the plugin. I am still undecided how Render Layer Ids can be assigned - because Rhino does not allow any method to tag specific geometry items with a tag. The best option is probably for the plugin to put all NON-LIVE geometry in layer 0, and then provide an extra numeric box under the Live Update checkbox where you can enter a Layer Id. I will investigate the viability of this approach when doing the next release.

In the meantime, mark your geometry with Live Update, then export to OCS and open the scene in Octane Standalone, where you can select the Mesh item of the live geometry and assign a Layer Id.

Hope that helps.

Paul

Interested to see where we get with this.. although due to my using Revit I suspect I'm better going the OCS+Standalone route.

Interested to see where we get with this.. although due to my using Revit I suspect I'm better going the OCS+Standalone route.

Yes, Revit is an even more difficult case than Rhino. And when you export from Revit to Standalone, all the mesh is in a single ObjectMesh node. However proxies have their own ObjectMesh nodes, so they could be placed in a separate layer (in Standalone).

Paul

Thanks everyone, good to know I'm not crazy then.

Paul -- I think your method, tagging all non live geometry to Render Layer 0, with a Live Geometry Update box to assign and ID to, is a good one. It's clear and easy.

If that method ends up not working out maybe a Rhino Geometry layer could be tagged to Render Layer ID? So perhaps, you could have a pull down menu in the Octane settings under Render Layer ID's that has a list of all Rhino layers in the scene to assign to a Render Layer ID number? No clue if something like that would work.

Hello Paul,

the feature to render an black / white alpha channel for a specific material would be a very valuable feature for my work, since my current approach via material ID and color selection in Photoshop is somehow lacking precision (the selection often looks jagged and unclean) .
Is it possible right now to save an octane material and assign a layer ID by edting the material file with wordpad ? I opened it but have not been able to identify a variable that seems appropriate...

best

Andreas

the feature to render an black / white alpha channel for a specific material would be a very valuable feature for my work, since my current approach via material ID and color selection in Photoshop is somehow lacking precision (the selection often looks jagged and unclean) .

Hi Andreas. It's a long shot, but try changing the pre-multipled alpha setting in the Imager.

Is it possible right now to save an octane material and assign a layer ID by edting the material file with wordpad ? I opened it but have not been able to identify a variable that seems appropriate...

You cannot do it that way. I think the best solution is to wait for the next release. Keep in mind the shadow passes are by geometry rather than material.

Paul