Octane Render Plugin - Video Textures support and Depth of Field question

teknostorm

I tried the Octane Render Plugin demo quickly with my scene and found the renders fast and lovely (though the light effects changed greatly). But there were two problems for my workflow -

1. The video texture didn't show at all in the octane render (I'm mapping a video on a surface to simulate a huge projector screen).

2. The depth of field I had set in the camera for each shot got greatly exaggerated. Almost except the exact point of focus got blurry. So the face was in focus but the body was not.

Does anyone have any experience with these issues? If I could solve these I could maybe buy the plugin.

DustRider

The camera settings in Octane are similar to a real Camera. The aperture setting under “Octane Thin Lens” in the Effects tab (see below) will adjust the intensity/range of DOF. Reducing it will reduce the effects of DOF, increasing will increase the effects of DOF. To turn DOF “off”, set it to 0.

I'm not sure on your first question, I'm guessing you're rendering an animation.? What is the video format? (hopefully someone who has done this will drop by)

Jonstark

Actually I could never set the aperture all the way down to 0, it always seemed to go back to a default of .01% or something, but it was close enough that it made no real difference :)

I honestly don't know about question number 1 though. All light in Octane is mesh light, so it seems likely the answer will be yes it can do that, but at first glance not sure exactly how to set that up.

Rashad Carter

teknostorm said:

I tried the Octane Render Plugin demo quickly with my scene and found the renders fast and lovely (though the light effects changed greatly). But there were two problems for my workflow -

1. The video texture didn't show at all in the octane render (I'm mapping a video on a surface to simulate a huge projector screen).

2. The depth of field I had set in the camera for each shot got greatly exaggerated. Almost except the exact point of focus got blurry. So the face was in focus but the body was not.

Does anyone have any experience with these issues? If I could solve these I could maybe buy the plugin.

I have no idea about question 1, but it seems like something that should definitely be possible, even easy once someone explains it.

Question 2 makes me think you are having issues with Auto Focus. No matter how large or small your aperture value setting may be, if the auto focus selects something to focus on other than what you assumed would be the focus the blurring can seem overly extreme. When the camera ends up in close proximity to geometry, say a leaf on a tree, it can skew the auto focus. Sometimes making a slight change to the camera position can sometimes clear up a shot that had been previously extremely blurred.

Auto focus can be disabled, as needed. This will allow you to set your own focal point which could well end up being the best solution especially in an animation where you dont want the focus jumping around all over the place.

WendyLuvsCatz

just testing, an animated image series background worked and contributed to scene lighting but on a sphere primitive the texture stayed static so I conclude animated textures are not supported but as a background it is indeed.

teknostorm

Thanks for the replies everyone! i had already set autofocus to off. I will try setting aperture to 0 once my carrara stops rendering a sequence.

And yes, I'm rendering an animation in png image sequence format. The video is mapped to a screen and it shows in the viewport and in Carrara renders, but not in Octane plugin renders or viewport.

WendyLuvsCatz

I find animated textures render very quickly in carrara's native renderer so would suggest compsiting your scene using octane for foreground moving stuff like figures and furniture etc with an alpha and render the background with the projector separately then add in your video editor

I honestly never expected even BG image series textures to be supported and am impressed they are as Octane standalone does not support animated textures.

WendyLuvsCatz

now I know they are I will be rendering moving clouds in the native renderer with a spherical camera to use in my scenes as image based lighting

teknostorm

wendy♥catz said:

I find animated textures render very quickly in carrara's native renderer so would suggest compsiting your scene using octane for foreground moving stuff like figures and furniture etc with an alpha and render the background with the projector separately then add in your video editor.

Thanks that sounds like a good idea, but I will have to read up on that, it's beyond my current skills!