OTOY Forums

OK, I really, really, really tried, but I can't get a fluent workflow into this. There are too many stumbling blocks, some minor, some almost deal-breaking, by now that make my effords just futile...
Here's a list of issues in my last venture, no particular order, just as i stumbled over them:

DAZ Studio 4.9 latest non Beta
Plugin 3.0.20.22

1. on change of render kernel from raytrace to pmc
minor - default max samples change from 1000 to 2000 => should be 200 for PMC (PMC is slower, but needs usually less samples)

2. pressing DEL in the node graph editor deletes the object the material is connected to from the scene instead of the selected node
major - that's a really annoying bug!

3. no way to lock the aspect ratio in the render dimensions for custom resolution
medium - I often use a custom portrait format, doing the math for changing resolution by myself is sooo 1999....

4. no way to switch fixed ratios into portrait mode
medium, related to 3. DS has a quite nice selection set for different resolutions and alignment. why does the plugin need one of it's own with different settings?

5. Viewport and Node Graph editor interfere with each other
medium to major - when you select a material in the viewport and open it's NGE the NGE window is placed somewhere underneath the viewport and you have to fumble some time to get it a) to the top and b) to a size you can reasonable work with it and c) is sometimes popped over by the viewport again. not very work- or userfriendly.....

6. starting NGE undockable
minor - would be nice to have if the NGE not initially wants to dock itself on moving around

7. DS still crashing randomly when selecting materials in the viewport
medium - we had that before, and on my last tests it seemed gone, but now I just stumbled over it again after a longer session.
SAVE OFTEN!

8. why is the imager exposure by default 0.6 and not 1.0?
minor - just wondering......

9. missing a "reconvert material" from DS scene
minor - maybe I overlooked something here, but I couldn't find something similar.....

10. material textures get lost
major - we have several threads about this and my suspicion is that this concerns props/figures that were loaded via 'Content Library - Poser Formats' which don't get saved correctly with the scene file. If you use a lot of these, you end up doing a lot of work in assigning and re-assigning materials everytime you open up your scene file. That's a big NO-GO.

11. rendering "final" doesn't use defined render dimensions
medium - I had defined: 444x720px, clicking final rendered: 1024x512px - no matter what
why is there a "Final" anyway?

12. the render progression bar could show the total/remaining time for the render
minor - nice to have

At this stage I gave up enervated to get me a beer....

Uwe

Hi Uwe. You are coming from the Poser plugin, which is a somewhat minimalist Octane implementation, and everything works and the workflow is obvious. The DAZStudio plugin has vastly more functionality than the Poser plugin, and along with that comes a much longer time to shake out the bugs, and the workflow is also more complex. I can only fix bugs and try to improve usability and users provide feedback.

1. on change of render kernel from raytrace to pmc
minor - default max samples change from 1000 to 2000 => should be 200 for PMC (PMC is slower, but needs usually less samples)

IMO, the max samples should default to whatever the previous kernel was set to - however doing this, or your suggestion is quite complex with the current plugin codebase.

2. pressing DEL in the node graph editor deletes the object the material is connected to from the scene instead of the selected node
major - that's a really annoying bug!

Try editing the OctaneRender_switches.cfg file (DisableDelKeyCapture setting) mentioned at https://docs.otoy.com/#60Preferences%20Tab Additional Settings.

3. no way to lock the aspect ratio in the render dimensions for custom resolution
medium - I often use a custom portrait format, doing the math for changing resolution by myself is sooo 1999....

In theory, this may be able to be implemented in the future.

4. no way to switch fixed ratios into portrait mode
medium, related to 3. DS has a quite nice selection set for different resolutions and alignment. why does the plugin need one of it's own with different settings?

No idea why it has it's own set of aspect ratios and resolutions - however there are certainly a lot of them!

5. Viewport and Node Graph editor interfere with each other
medium to major - when you select a material in the viewport and open it's NGE the NGE window is placed somewhere underneath the viewport and you have to fumble some time to get it a) to the top and b) to a size you can reasonable work with it and c) is sometimes popped over by the viewport again. not very work- or userfriendly.....

Yes - this seems to be DAZStudio's window management functionality. Hopefully be a resolution in the future.

6. starting NGE undockable
minor - would be nice to have if the NGE not initially wants to dock itself on moving around

I agree - I want all my windows to be undockable, but I need to manual set them that way each DASStudio use.

7. DS still crashing randomly when selecting materials in the viewport
medium - we had that before, and on my last tests it seemed gone, but now I just stumbled over it again after a longer session.
SAVE OFTEN!

I have make some more changes to the plugin which will hopefully resolve this issue, which will be in the next release. The actual crash is in the Qt window system that DAZStudio uses, and is not actually caused by the plugin.

8. why is the imager exposure by default 0.6 and not 1.0?
minor - just wondering......

My best guess is that 0.6 best matches the DAZStudio render. Keep in mind that the default Daylight power is 1.5, and default IBL power is 1.75. So there is too much light in the scene, so the exposure is reduced to compensate. I can change all these defaults - however it may break other users existing workflows.

9. missing a "reconvert material" from DS scene
minor - maybe I overlooked something here, but I couldn't find something similar.....

To do this you need to reload the scene with the Preferences->"Load OctaneRender materials from .duf user preset" unticked.

10. material textures get lost
major - we have several threads about this and my suspicion is that this concerns props/figures that were loaded via 'Content Library - Poser Formats' which don't get saved correctly with the scene file. If you use a lot of these, you end up doing a lot of work in assigning and re-assigning materials everytime you open up your scene file. That's a big NO-GO.

This should be fixed in the next release.

11. rendering "final" doesn't use defined render dimensions
medium - I had defined: 444x720px, clicking final rendered: 1024x512px - no matter what
why is there a "Final" anyway?

Fixed in the next release. Final loads all the geometry into a single Octane mesh node (so no live updating), which results in a slightly faster render.

12. the render progression bar could show the total/remaining time for the render
minor - nice to have

It could, yes. But I'm focused on fixing crashes and bugs at the moment

Paul

face_off wrote:Hi Uwe. You are coming from the Poser plugin, which is a somewhat minimalist Octane implementation, and everything works and the workflow is obvious. The DAZStudio plugin has vastly more functionality than the Poser plugin, and along with that comes a much longer time to shake out the bugs, and the workflow is also more complex. I can only fix bugs and try to improve usability and users provide feedback.

Yes, I'm spoiled, I know. It's all your fault! You and your Poser Plugin...
seriously, tho, no complaining. I can imagine that this is one heck of a mess to fix.

1. on change of render kernel from raytrace to pmc
minor - default max samples change from 1000 to 2000 => should be 200 for PMC (PMC is slower, but needs usually less samples)

IMO, the max samples should default to whatever the previous kernel was set to - however doing this, or your suggestion is quite complex with the current plugin codebase.

yeah - no big deal, was just surprised by the default setting.

2. pressing DEL in the node graph editor deletes the object the material is connected to from the scene instead of the selected node
major - that's a really annoying bug!

Try editing the OctaneRender_switches.cfg file (DisableDelKeyCapture setting) mentioned at https://docs.otoy.com/#60Preferences%20Tab Additional Settings.

cool - didn't know that exists. will do.

3. no way to lock the aspect ratio in the render dimensions for custom resolution
medium - I often use a custom portrait format, doing the math for changing resolution by myself is sooo 1999....

In theory, this may be able to be implemented in the future.

would by very convenient!

4. no way to switch fixed ratios into portrait mode
medium, related to 3. DS has a quite nice selection set for different resolutions and alignment. why does the plugin need one of it's own with different settings?

No idea why it has it's own set of aspect ratios and resolutions - however there are certainly a lot of them!

just the wrong ones, for me at least. IMHO the selection in DS way more versatile.

5. Viewport and Node Graph editor interfere with each other
medium to major - when you select a material in the viewport and open it's NGE the NGE window is placed somewhere underneath the viewport and you have to fumble some time to get it a) to the top and b) to a size you can reasonable work with it and c) is sometimes popped over by the viewport again. not very work- or userfriendly.....

Yes - this seems to be DAZStudio's window management functionality. Hopefully be a resolution in the future.

could the NGE open in a modal window? maybe that would help...

6. starting NGE undockable
minor - would be nice to have if the NGE not initially wants to dock itself on moving around

I agree - I want all my windows to be undockable, but I need to manual set them that way each DASStudio use.

yup - me, too

7. DS still crashing randomly when selecting materials in the viewport
medium - we had that before, and on my last tests it seemed gone, but now I just stumbled over it again after a longer session.
SAVE OFTEN!

I have make some more changes to the plugin which will hopefully resolve this issue, which will be in the next release. The actual crash is in the Qt window system that DAZStudio uses, and is not actually caused by the plugin.

that would really be helpful - I don't always remember to save before selecting a material...

8. why is the imager exposure by default 0.6 and not 1.0?
minor - just wondering......

My best guess is that 0.6 best matches the DAZStudio render. Keep in mind that the default Daylight power is 1.5, and default IBL power is 1.75. So there is too much light in the scene, so the exposure is reduced to compensate. I can change all these defaults - however it may break other users existing workflows.

Ah - OK. makes sense - in a way - I guess....

9. missing a "reconvert material" from DS scene
minor - maybe I overlooked something here, but I couldn't find something similar.....

To do this you need to reload the scene with the Preferences->"Load OctaneRender materials from .duf user preset" unticked.

wouldn't that reconvert ALL materials in the scene? - I'd prefer to reload a single one in case I messed it completely up...

10. material textures get lost
major - we have several threads about this and my suspicion is that this concerns props/figures that were loaded via 'Content Library - Poser Formats' which don't get saved correctly with the scene file. If you use a lot of these, you end up doing a lot of work in assigning and re-assigning materials everytime you open up your scene file. That's a big NO-GO.

This should be fixed in the next release.

I keep my fingers crossed....

11. rendering "final" doesn't use defined render dimensions
medium - I had defined: 444x720px, clicking final rendered: 1024x512px - no matter what
why is there a "Final" anyway?

Fixed in the next release. Final loads all the geometry into a single Octane mesh node (so no live updating), which results in a slightly faster render.

Ah - I see.

12. the render progression bar could show the total/remaining time for the render
minor - nice to have

It could, yes. But I'm focused on fixing crashes and bugs at the moment

In no way do I want to keep you from that!

Thanks, Paul!

Uwe

Speaking of the Poser plugin, will the DAZ plugin ever be able to import multiple saved octane materials that can be applied to an entire figure from a single file? (And saving all the materials to the file)

I am referring to the way the Poser plugin can do this by importing a .poc file to a figure/prop, applying all of its material zones simultaneously, regardless of different UV maps.

So far, It appears that every imported material needs to be dragged and dropped to each material zone individually, (or applying the same material to every zone, which doesn't work with differing UV maps), which is a very time consuming task every time I want to set up a scene, especially if a figure has many different material zones. The ability to link a single editable material to multiple material zones is quite nice, but only works with materials with the same UV map if using textures. From what I can tell so far, .orbx files only seem to contain a single material, and still must be dragged/dropped upon import.

Of course, being a newbie to the plugin, this functionality may exist already, in which case, please tell me how.

ThetaGraphics wrote:Speaking of the Poser plugin, will the DAZ plugin ever be able to import multiple saved octane materials that can be applied to an entire figure from a single file? (And saving all the materials to the file)

I am referring to the way the Poser plugin can do this by importing a .poc file to a figure/prop, applying all of its material zones simultaneously, regardless of different UV maps.

So far, It appears that every imported material needs to be dragged and dropped to each material zone individually, (or applying the same material to every zone, which doesn't work with differing UV maps), which is a very time consuming task every time I want to set up a scene, especially if a figure has many different material zones. The ability to link a single editable material to multiple material zones is quite nice, but only works with materials with the same UV map if using textures. From what I can tell so far, .orbx files only seem to contain a single material, and still must be dragged/dropped upon import.

Of course, being a newbie to the plugin, this functionality may exist already, in which case, please tell me how.

Yeah - I miss that functionality sorely, too. I have a huge collection of exported pre-saves by now....

Currently your only option for export and import is to do it by Octane materials, which works on material zone base only.

An export/import for whole whole characters or sets would be just fabulous.
But I fear, Paul doesn't have the nerves for that

Speaking of the Poser plugin, will the DAZ plugin ever be able to import multiple saved octane materials that can be applied to an entire figure from a single file? (And saving all the materials to the file)

I am referring to the way the Poser plugin can do this by importing a .poc file to a figure/prop, applying all of its material zones simultaneously, regardless of different UV maps.

So far, It appears that every imported material needs to be dragged and dropped to each material zone individually, (or applying the same material to every zone, which doesn't work with differing UV maps), which is a very time consuming task every time I want to set up a scene, especially if a figure has many different material zones. The ability to link a single editable material to multiple material zones is quite nice, but only works with materials with the same UV map if using textures. From what I can tell so far, .orbx files only seem to contain a single material, and still must be dragged/dropped upon import.

Of course, being a newbie to the plugin, this functionality may exist already, in which case, please tell me how.

I don't think there is a way to do this with the DAZStudio plugin. The best option is to Save As->Character Preset.

Paul

save material preset works too.