How to use portals

[roeland]

Portals are invisible planes in the scene to indicate where light from the environment enters the scene. This allows Octane to render certain scenes more efficiently, mainly indoor scenes which are illuminated by light coming through the windows.

The steps to use portals are the following:

You need to create the portals in your 3D modeling program. Every window or other opening where environment light enters the scene should be completely covered with a portal. This portal is a single sided polygon, with the normal facing inwards. Make sure these portals have a separate material.

Then, in Octane you can assign a Portal material to these portals. If you don't want to use the portals, for example when the camera is placed outside, you can assign a fully transparent material to the portals.

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Roeland

[pixelrush]

hmmm inwards eh? wasnt it out in indigo?...long time ago... ok thanks roeland

[Jozvex]

If you had a few windows in a row, would it be more efficient to have separate portals or one bigger one? I guess it depends on how much 'wall space' is between the windows.

[mirobimbo]

Roeland, one small video tutorial please. I cant make it to work. I do not see effect. Works it in directlight?

[gilfanovruslan]

I think a small theory of portals (with pictures) would cover more user's questions than big tutorial.

[vipvip]

yes a small tutorial would be great !

[Refracty]

So does the fully transparent material work in direct lighting? Usually direct lighting ignored the transparency and caused shadows. I hope you fixed this in the new release !!!

when the camera is placed outside, you can assign a fully transparent material to the portals.

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Roeland

[tyrot]

So does the fully transparent material work in direct lighting? Usually direct lighting ignored the transparency and caused shadows. I hope you fixed this in the new release !!!

when the camera is placed outside, you can assign a fully transparent material to the portals.

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Roeland

can anybody .... verify this ...?

[TheOracle]

video tut would be great indeed.

[abstrax]

So does the fully transparent material work in direct lighting? Usually direct lighting ignored the transparency and caused shadows. I hope you fixed this in the new release !!!

can anybody .... verify this ...?

No that's not possible with the direct light kernel. On Monday we will try to reenable alpha shadows for direct lighting. Maybe it works now with CUDA 4.0.

Cheers,
Marcus