Octane takes forever to export geom

[sdanaher]

Rendering is fast, but exporting subdivided meshes is taking ages. Memory is only about 2GB max.
Getting beachball constantly. Is there a way to speed this up?.

[aoktar]

Exactly not forever but takes much longer than cpu renderers. So you should optimise your objects. Try lower subdivisions. Use faster cpu.
Also don't forget to use Octane Object tags for animated objects.

[sdanaher]

Yes it was a figure of speech. It takes a long time, long enough to negate its rendering speed advantage unfortunately.

Objects are subdivided as much as they need to be, no more. I'm rendering for print, you need high-res meshes.

This is a huge problem for us print guys. Octane is making productivity hit the floor during lighting exploration and amends. It seems like it resends everything even if all I do is change a shader on an object. Very inefficient.

Regarding meshing what will be fastest out of these three:

- Octane object tag subdivision
- Hypernerbs subdivision.
- frozen mesh at full resolution

And can connecting meshes into one object speed things up? Does it not like lots of separate objects (like Cinema doesn't).

[aoktar]

This is a huge problem for us print guys. Octane is making productivity hit the floor during lighting exploration and amends. It seems like it resends everything even if all I do is change a shader on an object. Very inefficient.

Regarding meshing what will be fastest out of these three:

- Octane object tag subdivision
- Hypernerbs subdivision.
- frozen mesh at full resolution

And can connecting meshes into one object speed things up? Does it not like lots of separate objects (like Cinema doesn't).

1- I'm just writing plugin and speed is not a matter of plugins. It's due renderer. Things are different when you use gpu not cpu. There is lot of convertion procedure and recompiling of textures,materials and geometries for gpu format. Most time consuming procedure is geometry compiling for gpu. I wish to accelerate the things but it's not thing which i can do it. I did my part as fastest as possible.

2- I don't have any idea about your scenes. But propably you are doing somethings wrong. It does not resend all geometries when you change anythings.

material tweak -> resend only tweaked material
object tweak -> resend only changed objects
etc....

If you capture some video i can have an idea about your issue. Also just for curiousity i have to ask that: haven't you tried it before buying? Because this this kind of critisms make me sad and worried about. I feel like that we hide these. But we don't hide any limitations or weakness. Also we have a demo to test everythings.

[sdanaher]

I'm trying to figure out if and how I can improve things, because Octane has huge potential for me. No doubt i'm doing some things wrong, or at least not optimised for GPU workflow.

Here's the good, in case you think I'm being too hard or negative: I'm very happy with the light. It has excellent quality lighting, much better than vray IMO. It gives me very fine control of illumination and can get very subtle lighting when I need it very fast. This is HUGE plus for me. And is does transmission better than vray, and transparency/refraction is blazingly fast. Is simpler too.

However I was having all kinds of issues on this project. Aside from the beachballing I was having other issues like geometry losing their shaders and rendering in clay for no reason. Then the corrupted image files (some still opened despite the error).

I expect I'm doing somethings wrong, but I really need to learn the most efficient approach. Sounds like goem conversion is the problem for high-res scenes so if you can advise what is best (HN, Octane Subdivision or frozen mesh, or no difference) that'd be a start.

[aoktar]

I'm trying to figure out if and how I can improve things, because Octane has huge potential for me. No doubt i'm doing some things wrong, or at least not optimised for GPU workflow.

Here's the good, in case you think I'm being too hard or negative: I'm very happy with the light. It has excellent quality lighting, much better than vray IMO. It gives me very fine control of illumination and can get very subtle lighting when I need it very fast. This is HUGE plus for me. And is does transmission better than vray, and transparency/refraction is blazingly fast. Is simpler too.

However I was having all kinds of issues on this project. Aside from the beachballing I was having other issues like geometry losing their shaders and rendering in clay for no reason. Then the corrupted image files (some still opened despite the error).

Limitations: free VRAM and triangle count is at the moment. If you are on out of VRAM or exceed triangle count, it can crash, freeze, etc... Plugin can't do anything for this also i thought to implement an estimator for VRAM but that's not very easy and accurate. Your words are sounds like that's a problem like that or high gpu usage. But i can't know without you give me more details, infos. What do you see as triangle count and free VRAM? Try to give me some screenshots for LV to see render info and gpus. What's your gpus? Are you using "render priority"?

I expect I'm doing somethings wrong, but I really need to learn the most efficient approach. Sounds like goem conversion is the problem for high-res scenes so if you can advise what is best (HN, Octane Subdivision or frozen mesh, or no difference) that'd be a start.

Also how do you work with high-res in interactive mode? LV is can't work with bigger resolution than screensize. Also there is not any relationship with resolution and resending geometry. There is no different for renderer which kind of geometry is used. It will see same amount triangle.


There is some tutorials to watch. Please watch if you didn't. First "FREE TRAINING: Getting Started".
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=87

[sdanaher]

Limitations: free VRAM and triangle count is at the moment. If you are on out of VRAM or exceed triangle count, it can crash, freeze, etc... Plugin can't do anything for this also i thought to implement an estimator for VRAM but that's not very easy and accurate. Your words are sounds like that's a problem like that or high gpu usage. But i can't know without you give me more details, infos. What do you see as triangle count and free VRAM? Try to give me some screenshots for LV to see render info and gpus. What's your gpus? Are you using "render priority"?

Also how do you work with high-res in interactive mode? LV is can't work with bigger resolution than screensize. Also there is not any relationship with resolution and resending geometry. There is no different for renderer which kind of geometry is used. It will see same amount triangle.

There is some tutorials to watch. Please watch if you didn't. First "FREE TRAINING: Getting Started".
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=87

Thanks. I will take a look.

Not sure what you mean about LV not handling res larger than screen size. Its image aspect it has a problem with.

Re geometry, I assumed the Octane SubD used a different algo than HN. I'm not complaining about rendering speed, rather export speed.

Once all data is sent lighting & shader updates are fast, though the OGL in cinema can become very slow to respond to just moving 1 object or a light. Other times in the same scene it'll be super quick, as normal. This could be a cinema or OGL issue, I don't know. Tried changing card priorities but doesn't seem to make a difference. Can't figure out the logic.

LV is flakey. I've just figured out that it doesn't like being docked to the interface. It works better when as a floating window. If you click the green cog to resend data when the window is docked sometimes nothing happens, icon remains black. There's no scene export info in the top right when docked [EDIT: this is now working in R6.2] and the behaviour of the Green/Black cog button is unclear. Is it a toggle? Because if I click it again it turns green. When your scene takes minutes to resend you need clear feedback about what octane is doing. Five buttons to control rendering is excessive.

Some other issues:
As mentioned the LV does not respect portrait aspect ratios. It does not constrain to the longest edge if that edge is vertical. This is very important for us print guys and for doing patch renders, matte painting and other FX work I'd imagine. It's as if the only consideration has been for regular animation and landscape aspects. Same thing happens if you render in the editor: the render is only fitted to the horizontal frame bounds, which is fine if you only render in landscape format. It would be very useful to be able to pan and zoom the image frame inside the LV (not the camera but the 2D image buffer) especially when using lock res button (perhaps you can?)

HDRI image environments lose their ability to be rotated in U and V, and sometimes it will no longer accept any images and you have to delete and create a new node.

As mentioned objects inside hierarchies, or modifications to hierarchies can break shader connections resulting in parents do not propagate their shader to children. Resending does not fix the issue.

This is all user feedback that I hope as a developer you'll find useful for improving the software - don't take it as a personal criticism.

[aoktar]

LV is flakey. I've just figured out that it doesn't like being docked to the interface. It works better when as a floating window. If you click the green cog to resend data when the window is docked sometimes nothing happens, icon remains black. There's no scene export info in the top right when docked [EDIT: this is now working in R6.2] and the behaviour of the Green/Black cog button is unclear. Is it a toggle? Because if I click it again it turns green. When your scene takes minutes to resend you need clear feedback about what octane is doing. Five buttons to control rendering is excessive.

If you show me a screen capture i can understand better. Is it hard to do?
I never see the issues that you say. Also nobody says. In manual there is some explanations about buttons. Also InlifeThrill's videos will show everythings.

Start button is not toggle type. When you click Send button wait until it become again GREEN. Also check message in bottom status bar in C4D. It shows the process. You don't need to press double time. Also i don't think other buttons are confusing. Please read manual about them. I think your hw or system and scenes is not optimal for Octane. So these makes you confused.

HDRI image environments lose their ability to be rotated in U and V, and sometimes it will no longer accept any images and you have to delete and create a new node.
As mentioned objects inside hierarchies, or modifications to hierarchies can break shader connections resulting in parents do not propagate their shader to children. Resending does not fix the issue.

Again, if you show me some visual stuff for these reports. These are not meanfull for me. I'm alldays using the plugin for tests or my works. I don't see this kind of problems. Propably you are out of limits of somethings. These can make the rendering is corrupted. Breaking of shader or HDR shows this. Are you checking FREE VRAM while working? OR total TRIANGLE or count of OBJECTS?

About HDR rotation, how loose ability to rotate or don't accept any images? Send me a scene when you have any problems so i can check.

[sdanaher]

If you show me a screen capture i can understand better. Is it hard to do?
I never see the issues that you say. Also nobody says. In manual there is some explanations about buttons. Also InlifeThrill's videos will show everythings.

Start button is not toggle type. When you click Send button wait until it become again GREEN. Also check message in bottom status bar in C4D. It shows the process. You don't need to press double time. Also i don't think other buttons are confusing. Please read manual about them. I think your hw or system and scenes is not optimal for Octane. So these makes you confused.

a1.jpg

Repeating the names of the buttons in a manual is not really an explanation for their use and the underlying rational. That's the same info as the bubble help in Cinema anyway. Its not really an explanation why they exist. Eg why would I want to Reset the render data? Why would I ever use the Stop button when I can Pause and either resume or restart? What does the resend button behave like a toggle when it isn't. All things that get in the way of productively learning how to use software and optimise for it.

My system is a Mac Pro 5.1 12 core, OSX 10.10.4, 48GB RAM, Titan X & GTX 980, Cinema R16/17. My scenes could well be not optimal for Octane, which is what I'm trying to find out.

Again, if you show me some visual stuff for these reports. These are not meanfull for me. I'm alldays using the plugin for tests or my works. I don't see this kind of problems. Propably you are out of limits of somethings. These can make the rendering is corrupted. Breaking of shader or HDR shows this. Are you checking FREE VRAM while working? OR total TRIANGLE or count of OBJECTS?

About HDR rotation, how loose ability to rotate or don't accept any images? Send me a scene when you have any problems so i can check.

I can't really show actions in a screen grab, unless you mean a movie? but I'll do my best when I have a free moment. I'm not running out of VRAM (have over 2GB free), but haven't checked the total triangles. What is the limit?

[aoktar]

Ok i'm going to add more info for buttons. But i don't think that's so complex to solve. Btw, if you watch our tutorials you will not have so much confusions about buttons or LV.

When i look to buttons, three of them are important.

Start button: Rest all gpu data and resend your scene. All buttons are inactive(include Start button-grayed) until new render sessions start. So that's not a toggle button.
Restart button: It just restart render from maxsamples=0. As it does that when you change somethings.
Pause/resume button: I suppose that's most clearly named buttons. Pause or resume current render without delete any gpu data.
Stop button: It simply stops current render. You can't resume that you should restart with "Restart Button". It doesn't reset any data.
Reset Button: It stops and clear all gpu data. This is fine for freeing the gpu memory without closing LV. At this perspective, "Stop" button can be seen as unnecessary.

Again current limitations as i can know:

Total triangle limit = about 19millions
Total texture limit = As fits to VRAM without "Out-of-core" or cpu RAM if you use "Out-of-core".
Total nodes limit = This is little internal thing. It's mostly critical when you use "Updata Geometry enable and auto". Because it export all objects as Octane nodes. If you have more than 10-20k objects in results(count one of each clone of cloners), you can reach this limitation. Render instances will take only one node but normal instances will consume as count of clones.