Page 1 of 2

From Lightwave to RNDR

Posted: Thu May 12, 2022 1:12 pm
by Mastoy
I can't seem to get my animation scene from LW to render through RNDR :(

My scene is very simple, just the camera moving from frame 1 to frame 100 (just 2 keys)
How do I export the complete frame range to ORBX ?
I've tried launching IPR (at frame 1) and selecting "Export to ORBX". It gives an ORBX file that I can open in Standalone, but animation doesn't seem to be there :(
And the parameters in Standalone are weird :
- fps : 1
- Frame range : 0 to 1
- Frame resolution : the size of the IPR window, not the size in LW

Am I doing something wrong ?
I really need to get a complete ORBX file that I can send to RNDR :(

Thx !

Re: From Lightwave to RNDR

Posted: Fri May 13, 2022 2:29 am
by promity

Re: From Lightwave to RNDR

Posted: Fri May 13, 2022 6:22 am
by Mastoy
promity wrote:https://docs.otoy.com/Lightwave3DH/Lightwave3DPluginManual.htm#Lightwave3D/ExportScenetoAlembic-Orbx.htm
Thx for the link !
I didn't check the manual because it's ridiculously outdated, my bad !

So ... "You need to render the sequence using F10 to get the animated Alembic/Orbx files." ???
Does this mean I have to actually render the whole scene to send it to RNDR and ... render it ? :lol:
How dumb is that ?
If I setup my scene to render faster, only to get the alembic file right (by using a fast infopass kernel maybe ?), I will lose all my good render settings in the Orbx file, and will have to change them in Standalone ? WTF ?

Can someone give me like a mini-tutorial to get this right pls ?

Re: From Lightwave to RNDR

Posted: Fri May 13, 2022 7:41 am
by promity
If you have Alembic as the export file, as in the manual - Octane will not render the entire scene, but will only export the scene to the ORBX animation sequence, as far as I remember.

Re: From Lightwave to RNDR

Posted: Fri May 13, 2022 2:23 pm
by pryzm
The reason you F10 it is to save the animation out to the ORBX file. It will not "render" the scene, it just "bakes" the animation out to the ORBX/Alembic file. Try it, you'll see, it goes pretty fast.

Re: From Lightwave to RNDR

Posted: Fri May 13, 2022 2:29 pm
by Mastoy
Thx a lot to both of you for taking the time to answer :)
I've finally managed to render my scenes via RNDR.
Pressing F10 indeed doesn't render the scene, but creates the ORBX with everything included (it's just weird that while it does that, there's no indicator or progress bar that shows it's doing it :D )
I think I'm going to use RNDR a lot more now :)
Happy rendering !

Re: From Lightwave to RNDR

Posted: Mon May 16, 2022 11:33 pm
by mikefrisk
RNDR is a complete joke. It takes longer to save out an ORBX file than it does to just render it locally. I've tried everything and depending on your scene you most likely should just keep it local. It also seems that Otoy has zero intentions to update the orbx file or even acknowledge this. The only thing worth using RNDR for is for archviz stills or the like, not animation.

Re: From Lightwave to RNDR

Posted: Tue May 17, 2022 9:39 am
by Mastoy
mikefrisk wrote:RNDR is a complete joke. It takes longer to save out an ORBX file than it does to just render it locally. I've tried everything and depending on your scene you most likely should just keep it local. It also seems that Otoy has zero intentions to update the orbx file or even acknowledge this. The only thing worth using RNDR for is for archviz stills or the like, not animation.
Yeah I realise that now :(
Yesterday I tried to export a 150 frames animation. I stopped the export by killing LW process after an hour of ... nothing. CPU went hot, LW stopped responding and it lasted an hour without any sign of progress.
We need a progress bar !

Re: From Lightwave to RNDR

Posted: Wed May 18, 2022 11:05 pm
by mikefrisk
Mastoy wrote:
mikefrisk wrote:RNDR is a complete joke. It takes longer to save out an ORBX file than it does to just render it locally. I've tried everything and depending on your scene you most likely should just keep it local. It also seems that Otoy has zero intentions to update the orbx file or even acknowledge this. The only thing worth using RNDR for is for archviz stills or the like, not animation.
Yeah I realise that now :(
Yesterday I tried to export a 150 frames animation. I stopped the export by killing LW process after an hour of ... nothing. CPU went hot, LW stopped responding and it lasted an hour without any sign of progress.
We need a progress bar !

Progress bar would be progress, haha, but still altogether worthless. I've found I had to break up the scene into sections of 30-50 frames and send it over that way. By time I got it all sorted, renamed, and comped together it felt pointless. Its a shame too because the RNDR nodes are lightning fast and would be such an asset if we could save out scenes faster.

Re: From Lightwave to RNDR

Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2022 2:45 am
by pryzm
Maybe it was because it was just a small test (100 frames) but my export seemed pretty seamless. It didn't take long to export at all. Make sure you check the file in Octane Standalone to make sure it loads and renders properly before uploading the ORBX file. The ORBX exporter for C4D is updated quite a bit (so maybe it's a LW thing, sadly). I'd hear more complaints than I do if it were such a big problem. I do hear complaints, because I'm on the RNDR network (mostly as an operator, but artist on occasion as well) and keep tabs of both the artist side and operator side).