OTOY Forums

Hi guys I just purchased the Octane plugin for Lightwave and so far I am pretty impressed.

I have a real quick question though; how come my meshes are not smoothing when I render them? The option is activated where applicable, but the object still looks faceted. Am I using the wrong render kernel?

In closing, does anybody have a suggestion for entry level tutorials etc. on this plugin for Lightwave?

Thank's for your time!

Make sure you apply smoothing in the lightwave surface editor as well.

Thank you kindly!

Sorry to report that did not change the appearance of my surface.

There are options for increasing the subdivision level of geometry in modeler under the General Options tab ( shortcut 'O') and for both display and rendered geometry in Layout under the object properties tab (shortcut 'P'). I've found this will usually improve the appearance of subdivision geometry when looking to solve this particular issue myself. I admit I've never had a problem with properly-smoothed geometry ending up looking faceted in Octane, so if that's actually the problem apologies for not helping. Also, as mentioned above, enabling smoothing in the surface editor.

Regarding a basic entry-level tutorial for the Octane LW plugin, you should check out the series of free videos on the Newtek website under the 'Learn' page. These just cover the basic setup to get you going with rendering, which you probably already know but it's worth checking them out to see if there's anything else useful that you might have overlooked. Also, there's a commercial video set from Ryan Royce at Liberty 3D called 'The Quick Start Guide to Octane for Lightwave'. It should help give you a good understanding of the essentials with most areas of using the plugin, though it doesn't go in-depth - as the title says, it's a quick start guide but I certainly found it helpful. Also, reading the manual really is worthwhile in giving you a more detailed understanding.

Hope this helps.

lightvu wrote:Sorry to report that did not change the appearance of my surface.

Be aware that you need to reload the scene in the IPR after changing the smoothing option the LightWave material editor. The normals to smooth the object are not available from LightWave if this option is not enabled, so you must reload the objects after enabling it.

Thanks,
-Juanjo