Octane Hydra | Solaris plug-in 2020.2.1.2 - 03-16 [OBSOLETE]

[BK]

Dear Octane community,

OTOY® is proud to announce the availability of new DCC plugin OctaneRender Hydra | Solaris V2020.2.1 - for Houdini 18.5.499.

The world's fastest unbiased GPU rendering engine on CUDA and Metal now integrates completely with Houdini 18.5 Solaris.

What is Octane Hydra | Solaris?
The Octane Hydra | Solaris plugin is based on Pixar’s USD (Universal Scene Description) and Pixar’s Hydra API to empower artist workflows across look development, scene layout, lighting, and final rendering.





Pixar's USD pipeline
https://renderman.pixar.com/stories/pixars-usd-pipeline


-Installation steps-

Insert the OctaneRender® plugin folder path to the houdini.env file. Houdini®creates this file after launch it for the first time.
On Linux and macOS® systems, append a single line to enable OctaneRender®:

HOUDINI_PATH = "/path/to/octane;&"

On Windows® systems, you need to set the PATH to point to the plugin bin folder as well:

PATH = "C:/path/to/octane/bin;$PATH"


Setting this environment variable outputs any error related to loading the OctaneRender® plugin on the command line for diagnosing installation problems:
HOUDINI_DSO_ERROR = 2

Sample file to refer the workflow with Houdini H18.5.499

OctaneMainPluginWorkflow.zip

(41.76 KiB) Downloaded 213 times

- Changes since first beta II-

• Integrated the 2020.2.1 engine
• Merged with OctaneRender for Houdini v2020.2.1.2 H18.5.499 main plugin
• Implemented Octane Object layer UI inside Geometry Setting node
• Fixed Octane Subdivision
• Fixed Slider refresh issue
• Performance improvement

-Known Issues-
- Light Linker is yet to be supported as we are investigating if we could assign the Octane light IDs internally.
- we are still experiencing issues with Octane nodes working correctly due to what appears to be issued with the version of USD that Houdini is built with.



===================================
Enterprise Subscription Downloads
===================================
2020.2.1.2 Houdini 18.5.499

===================================
Studio Subscription Downloads
===================================
2020.2.1.2 Houdini 18.5.499



Happy GPU Rendering !!

Your team
OTOY

[galleon27]

Either i'm doing something wrong or octane materials don't work at all.

[BK]

Either i'm doing something wrong or octane materials don't work at all.

Hi Galleon27,

Thanks, could you please try Octane viewport render instead of Karma?
We have partial Principled shader support inside OctaneHydraSolaris and planning to improve in future releases.

Maybe please share a sample file here or via PM for us to investigate.

Cheers

[galleon27]

Either i'm doing something wrong or octane materials don't work at all.

Hi Galleon27,

Thanks, could you please try Octane viewport render instead of Karma?
We have partial Principled shader support inside OctaneHydraSolaris and planning to improve in future releases.

Maybe please share a sample file here or via PM for us to investigate.

Cheers

Oh yea, my bad with the screenshot. I was switching between renderers to see if Principled Shader worked in others. I've attached a new screenshot and a hip file.
For some reason, Principled Shader with transparency(Glass) returns black. Fixed this by adding a Render Settings node. Guessing the default specular depth is 1.

[BK]

Either i'm doing something wrong or octane materials don't work at all.

Hi Galleon27,

Thanks, could you please try Octane viewport render instead of Karma?
We have partial Principled shader support inside OctaneHydraSolaris and planning to improve in future releases.

Maybe please share a sample file here or via PM for us to investigate.

Cheers

Oh yea, my bad with the screenshot. I was switching between renderers to see if Principled Shader worked in others. I've attached a new screenshot and a hip file.
For some reason, Principled Shader with transparency(Glass) returns black. Fixed this by adding a Render Settings node. Guessing the default specular depth is 1.

Thanks, Galleon27,
Currently, Octane material is not working with the test geometry maybe the shaders are baked into them. This is a known issue to us.
We have tried to replicate your workflow and Octane Materials is working fine with other primitives.

workflowSample.zip

(36.38 KiB) Downloaded 211 times

Regarding the Principled shader, we reached out to SideFX a while ago about how Karma can render a principled shader and responded that it's complicated.
Karma is actually reading a shader in source code and rendering that. So we might have to wait a bit more..

cheers

[galleon27]

Thanks, Galleon27,
Currently, Octane material is not working with the test geometry maybe the shaders are baked into them. This is a known issue to us.
We have tried to replicate your workflow and Octane Materials is working fine with other primitives.

The attachment OctaneMaterialTest.jpg is no longer available

The attachment workflowSample.zip is no longer available

Regarding the Principled shader, we reached out to SideFX a while ago about how Karma can render a principled shader and responded that it's complicated.
Karma is actually reading a shader in source code and rendering that. So we might have to wait a bit more..

cheers

The test geometry was working fine in the previous version. Maybe you were right about the baked shaders, but even after deleting them, still doesn't work.
Here is a scene with just a simple cube with a specular material. Still doesn't work. I used the principled shader just for testing to see if i was doing something wrong or Octane Materials just weren't working for me.

Thanks for the help.

[BK]

Thanks, Galleon27,
Currently, Octane material is not working with the test geometry maybe the shaders are baked into them. This is a known issue to us.
We have tried to replicate your workflow and Octane Materials is working fine with other primitives.

OctaneMaterialTest.jpg

workflowSample.zip

Regarding the Principled shader, we reached out to SideFX a while ago about how Karma can render a principled shader and responded that it's complicated.
Karma is actually reading a shader in source code and rendering that. So we might have to wait a bit more..

cheers

The test geometry was working fine in the previous version. Maybe you were right about the baked shaders, but even after deleting them, still doesn't work.
Here is a scene with just a simple cube with a specular material. Still doesn't work. I used the principled shader just for testing to see if i was doing something wrong or Octane Materials just weren't working for me.

Thanks for the help.

Hi Galleon27,

Yes, they used to work before. It will start to work automatically as soon as the bug in the USD library is fixed.

Please try to render the workflowSample.zip attached in the previous post. The primitives are using Octane Materials.
We would need to wait for Sidefx to finish their USD implementation then we would reach them out again to support Principled shader inside Octane!!


cheers

[galleon27]

Hi Galleon27,

Yes, they used to work before. It will start to work automatically as soon as the bug in the USD library is fixed.

Please try to render the workflowSample.zip attached in the previous post. The primitives are using Octane Materials.
We would need to wait for Sidefx to finish their USD implementation then we would reach them out again to support Principled shader inside Octane!!


cheers

Ok. I got it working. In order for the Octane Material to work, it has to point either to an Octane Material Builder(1) or OUT_Material node(2). It wont work if it points to the Material Node(3).
In the regular Houdini workflow, pointing to the Material Node works just fine. Guess it doesn't work in Solaris that way.

Thanks for the help.

[BK]

Hi Galleon27,

Yes, they used to work before. It will start to work automatically as soon as the bug in the USD library is fixed.

Please try to render the workflowSample.zip attached in the previous post. The primitives are using Octane Materials.
We would need to wait for Sidefx to finish their USD implementation then we would reach them out again to support Principled shader inside Octane!!


cheers

Ok. I got it working. In order for the Octane Material to work, it has to point either to an Octane Material Builder(1) or OUT_Material node(2). It wont work if it points to the Material Node(3).
In the regular Houdini workflow, pointing to the Material Node works just fine. Guess it doesn't work in Solaris that way.

Thanks for the help.

Thank you Galleon27, for your feedback.

Yep, we would need to point the out node or the Material builder.
We will try to see if we can keep the same workflow as Solaris in the future build.

cheers