OctaneRender™ 3.0 for LightWave™ - Production build 3.04.1.0

[juanjgon]

Hi! This is the latest production build of the OctaneRender™ 3.0 for LightWave™ plugin, available for Lightwave 10.1, 11.6 and 2015.3 Windows x64 and OSX.

*** NEW PLUGIN DEPLOY FOLDERS STRUCTURE ***
From this build, the user no longer needs to copy the "Octane.dll", "Octane.dat" and "tbb.dll" files to the LightWave/bin folder. Now all the Octane core files are deployed in the same folder used by the plugin .p file, and the user don't need to copy or move them to any other place. All the users updating the plugin from a previous versions, should remove the old "Octane.dll" and "Octane.dat" files from the LightWave/bin folder to avoid problems. DON'T REMOVE THE "tbb.dll" FILE FROM THE LIGHTWAVE/BIN FOLDER, BECAUSE IT IS USED ALSO BY LIGHTWAVE.


Release 3.04.1.0
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... _Win64.zip
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... se_OSX.zip

Release 3.04.1.0 DEMO VERSION
https://render.otoy.com/plugindownloads ... _Win64.zip
https://render.otoy.com/plugindownloads ... mo_OSX.zip

Standalone version for the network rendering nodes
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... 1b_win.exe
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... _macos.dmg


New features
A list of all the new features is provided here: viewtopic.php?f=33&t=51679
The plugin manual is being updated to cover most of the changes. https://docs.otoy.com/manuals/products/lightwave-3d/v3/


=============================================
RELEASE 3.04.1.0
=============================================

* NEW PLUGUIN FEATURES:
- New option in the render target root node options to enable/disable the asynchronous image files saving. This feature should be disabled to render using external controlers, like RenderQ. Disabled by default.
- New parameters in the volumetrics OpenVDB file options to set an offset for the $F current frame token.

* NEW OCTANE FEATURES:
- Added support for gradients along hair segments / hair strands.
- New "Hair gradient interpolation" parameter in the Octane_Object_Properties custom object plugin, Hair tab, to control the hair gradient shading.
- New "Octane W Coord Texture" node, used to shade the hair along it's lenght with the new hair gradient feature.
- Added new pin "AO Texture" to the direct lighting kernal. When connected this texture will be used for ambient occlusion instead of the environment. This is useful to remove the blue tint of interior walls when direct lighting is used.
- New render layers modes: "Normal", "Hide inactive layers" and "Only side effects"
- Bump and normal maps can now be rendered together.
- New mode to the falloff texture node which calculates the angle between the shading normal and a direction vector which you can also specify in the falloff node. This is very useful for creating effects like dust or snow.
- Improved import and export speed of OpenVDB files.
- If the second or third UV set are not specified the first UV set will be used as a fallback.
- Improved colour shadow pass for specular materials with "fake shadows" enabled.
- Extended the value range of the "max. samples" pins of the various kernel nodes to 1 .. 1,000,000
- Reduced/fixed self-shadow artifacts at the terminator of point-like lights on objects with very strong and fine bump maps.

* PLUGIN BUGS FIXED:
- Fixed a start IPR freeze problem while working with complex scenes.
- Fixed several problems with the IES lights icons and viewports mesh previews.
- The multilayer EXR file half precision parameter doesn't work. Fixed.
- The Photoshop compositing project file feature is not working at all. Fixed.
- Scrubbing while IPR is rendering in a scene with a background sequence hangs or crash LW. Fixed.
- LiveDB materials randomly losing sync with images. Fixed from now on. NOTE: The LiveDB nodes from previous plugin versions can lose the texture paths due to this change.

* OCTANE BUGS FIXED:
- Fixed gaussian spectrum textures on medium scatter pin.
- Fixed medium absorption not giving zero absorption when there is no node attached to the absorption pin.
- Fixed incorrect UV mapping when displacement triangles are rendered with the baking camera.
- Fixed black pixels in displacement triangles rendered in info passes.
- Added filtering of NaNs from info film buffer.
- Fixed rounded edges of mix materials.
- Fixed non-smooth rendering of triangles without a connected material node.
- Fixed darkening by 30% of emitters with an unconnected distribution pin .
- Fixed shadow catcher materials not being rendered when render layers are enabled.
- Fixed too dark rendering when a daylight environment with power 0 is being used.
- Fixed broken dirt texture in bump channel.
- Improved resilience of the net render master against out of order messages.
- Fixed a bug where the net render master "loses" work assignments when sub-sampling is enabled and a change is made that does NOT wipe the film buffer (e.g. changing the tonemapping settings or max. samples). As a result rendering never reaches the specified max. samples i.e. never finishes.
- Fixed incorrect tonemap type when PNG-16 are saved via the "Save current render to disk." button.
- Fixed rendering with the PMC kernel and the baking camera.
- Fixed picking in scenes where volumes and surface geometry overlap.
- Fixed kernel crash when "over-under stereo" is used and the "swap eyes" option is enabled.
- Fixed bump and normal mapping on displacement triangles.
- Fixed broken light passes.
- Fixed potential deadlock if the render threads are still rendering during shutdown.

[FrankPooleFloating]

YES! Thanks J!

[BorisGoreta]

Thanks a lot, this is a really good update !

wow, I can crank up the bump without getting artifacts !


AO Texture input does not reset when it is disconnected, it should behave the old way again.

If there are two direct kernels the AO Texture input of the second one does not work, it is ignored.

[BorisGoreta]

Is it possible to sense when we turn on an object in the scene editor using the check column named A. It would be great if this object would load and start rendering, now it is required to reload the whole scene.

Just browsing through lights crashes LW, might be when I select IES light that this happens.

[vipvip]

Now Frankpoolefloating is happy and will not leave Lightwave for Houdini ...
Thanks a lot Juan !

[juanjgon]

AO Texture input does not reset when it is disconnected, it should behave the old way again.
If there are two direct kernels the AO Texture input of the second one does not work, it is ignored.
[/attachment]

Thanks Boris, I'll check these issues for the next build.

-Juanjo

[juanjgon]

Is it possible to sense when we turn on an object in the scene editor using the check column named A. It would be great if this object would load and start rendering, now it is required to reload the whole scene.

Sorry, the LW SDK events system doesn't report the changes in the scene editor on/off state. You are going to need to reload the scene after change this flag.

Just browsing through lights crashes LW, might be when I select IES light that this happens.

Can you reproduce this problem? A scene with this issue to test it here could help.

Thanks,
-Juanjo

[FrankPooleFloating]

Now Frankpoolefloating is happy and will not leave Lightwave for Houdini ...
Thanks a lot Juan !

... there was never any danger of that happening... I was just pointing out that Houdini got their 3.04 first, which presumably was because their SDK is so much easier for Juanjo to work with. Hopefully LW3DG is rectifying this, as part of their diabolical plans...

[vipvip]

Yes, and their plans are perhaps too diabolical, as the expected LW2016 will become lw2017, 2018 (??...)
for now , i "enjoy the silence" of their communication, as most of us . (note i don't expect to begin a never-ending thread about this question, like it is on lw forum)
nevertheless developpers Like juan are still onboard to show the right direction !...

[3dworks]

great new build, but i am experiencing some smoothing issues never seen before, not sure if it started with the last build. anyone else having this?

EDIT, sorry a bit hard to see because of image compression, but on the screen you can clearly see the quads of the model being unsmoothed near terminator in IPR, which does not happen in VPR. it's a mixed material diffuse + glossy and both nodes are set to smooth, no edges rounding.

EDIT2 actually, in the first screenshot - which i added now - you cane see the artifact better!

cheers

markus