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This is a bad one. I just opened a scene saved with the 28.5 addon and the Bump Height values (all of them) are now 0.001 instead of 0.01 (the saved value). This needs to be fixed quickly. Otherwise bump maps will not really be visible any more, only having a tenth of their actual strength. I have to go back to 28.5 now until this is fixed. But then there's the Gradient import bug. Darn. This is not a great place to be in. Right now I can't confidently create materials.

Blender 3.6, addon V28.7, Windows 10, RTX 3060.

We've fixed it in the coming versions. But in order to solve messed up values in the old files, we have to update a new 28.5 version. Please use the new 28.5.1 save the .blend files and you can use it correctly in the 28.7 version.
viewtopic.php?f=113&t=82618

Cheers,
Tom

Thanks for the heads up, Tom.

But you need to abandon this methodology of having to got back to old versions to save files for forward compatibility with new versions. Such a system might be acceptable for one bigger step of an upgrade once, but as of now i'm at 3 older versions that I have to keep to save old files for new versions. This is not maintainable any more. If this becomes s standard, I would have to filename-tag my Blender/Octane files with Octane versions numbers to see which old Octane version I need to open the file up in to make it ready for a newer version. That's not going to happen for my workflow.

As for now most of my files are only test files, so I can live with them being abandoned. It's not worth my time to go through all of them and save them out in the hotfixed version. I will have to wait until Octane becomes more stable and reliable before I can move to serious projects. As for now development is still too chaotic and unfocused. I'm "happy" with 28.5 for now. It's still slow and buggy, but when you know the quirks it's usable. The newer versions haven't fixed any of the serious problems and I will wait until a version comes out that I could switch to.

For the future I suggest that you Octane-version-tag the blend files somehow and switch to an import-centered solution to get rid of bugs in old files. This is the only way to keep users sane and not having them to worry about which Octane version would work with which file now. So in an ideal case I should be able to open a 27.16 file in the most recent versions, a popup would appear asking me if I want to upgrade it to a new version and it should open up fine. The gradient backward bug and the bum backward bug should just be silently fixed on import - in an ideal case. But as I assume the blend files are not Octane-version tagged by now, the addon would just be as smart about the correct version as I am.

Cheers,
Andreas

Hello Andreas,

Thanks for your suggestions.

So in an ideal case I should be able to open a 27.16 file in the most recent versions, a popup would appear asking me if I want to upgrade it to a new version and it should open up fine.

In most cases, OctaneBlender will upgrade the .blend files to the latest version correctly and silently. And we will avoid the methodology of getting back to the old versions as much as we can.
But for Bump Height/Gradient map cases, we lost the information in the .blend file. Basically, they're caused by bugs/limitations in Blender or Octane Blender.

I'm "happy" with 28.5 for now. It's still slow and buggy

The reported bugs have been fixed and we will optimize the performance in the coming version as well.

Cheers,
Tom

Great to hear about the performance improvements. I'll keep following the releases and will jump on the train once I see them tackled.

We're listening, Andreas!

Thank you for your reports!

Just to clarify. The "coming version" is not 29.0, correct? There's no mention about any performance fixes in the release notes.

It'll be a new 28.x based on Octane 2023