2016 Carrara Octaners - newboids

protovu

Hi Ella, 

I am not sure I undestand your comment. Could I trouble you to break it down in terms of an Octane emitter? Or, are you saying that

it is simply not possible to have an object in a scene be ignorred by an imitter object?

Maybe I will need to render a separate alpha image for the lights in question?

Thanks,

Rick

WendyLuvsCatz

Oops Provotu I was actually answering EvilPriducers question 

3DAGE

this is where Layer passes would be used,.

objects can have a different layer ID's,. so can lights,. you can render out different layer passes then composite, you can render up to 8 different light layer passes

 

When you use a Carrara spotlight as a light source in Octane,. Octane creates a "tube" (mesh object) which emits light based on the position of the carrara light

the Carrara light options to Exclude/Include objects don't work on an octane light.

It's no longer a Carrara spotlight in Octane,. It's an octane light,. which uses a Carrara light as a convenient way to set up your lighting.

all of the carrara (lighting effects) such as lens flare, glow etc, don't work in Octane because those are fake lighting effects.

you can create real lens flare or glow in Octane by using the post productions options for Glare and blur

real world lights don't have an include/exclude option,.

Also,. the radial blend ?  .. is that the Carrara shader option  "Pattern functions / Gladient  set to Radial ?

or am i mising something new in octane,. i can't find a radial blend in octane's shaders options.

Many of Carrara's shader options cannot be "converted" to octane shader options,. although Sighman has done a great job of making what's possibe , possible

To create an octtane shader for an object to emit light,

In the top layer of the shader,. Select Octane material,.

If you started with a Multichannel shader,. this will now be ignored, and a new Octane layer added beneath it.

Set that bottom layer to Octane "Diffuse"

then look down the list of channels for "Emission"

Set that to either Blackbody, or texture, depending on hat you need.

See pics,. Octane layers Octane emitter shader

you can also see that by enabling Post production, i've got an instant lens flare effect on the bulb next to the cube

.

protovu

Hi 3dage,

Good stuff, and so kind of you to put it together. I actually have gotten into emitters a little. The control is astonishing, and with me a beginner, wow. So I have attached 2 images. The larger image shows what I meant by "radial blend" as a way of getting at the glowing orb, or disc look. The shader is actually on a few little discs in the scene, and it seems to achieve what I am after, as long as the discs face squarly to the camera. When I tried this same technique on a sphere, too much light was produced, and I was not able to get the edge fade out. I tried using the falloff function in the opacity(formerly known as , alpha) channel, but was left with the balloon look.......which is of course terrific when you need it.

On the Octane Object Layers question, I see that with layers enables, I can disappear selected objects, and, I guess, their respective shadows. It seems that each object has its own layer?  Very cool function.

 

Quick ad-endum: Is it possible that the render layers option is not available in 2.17?

What I am not certain of is how to assign an object to a specific layer. Probably obvious.

Thanks again,

Rick

3DAGE

No problem, there's a lot of stuff to figure out, and Shigman keeps addign new stuff,. much has changed since the first release.

You can control light emitters by adjusting the Distribution,. and the Power, setings.

Thanks for the radial blend  shader pic,. ,. that explains it,.

just as an aside,. Carrara has a curve filter,. (multi uses, really powerful)  which can be used to create a more complex radial blend,.when it's applied to a Black/white mixer with a gradient blend set to radial. interesting for a flashlight type of effect.

export that as a texture, or just screen capture the shader preview area, save as a texture map and use in octane

Pics + Octane object ID pane,.

Gradient shader with curve filter

protovu

I like that tip. Very cool. Embarassed to say I have never tried that tool. For something similar, I would knock out little .avi files in premiere and drop them in various channels. This would have been good, as I assume in Carrara (not with Octane) it could have been animated.

So, are you on other than Octane 2.17? If so are you finding it stable. I tried 2.24 and had some unfortunate render wierdness. Some objects were left out of renders. Some frames towards the end of a 20 second scene would not render as part

of a sequence.

3DAGE

I'm using Octane for Carrara 2240082  ....and in another Carrraa,. playing with the version 3 beta release

both seem stable to me, althoiogh i've not done many animations, mostly still's,

I tend to keep animaions quite short, then combine them in a video editor,.

One goot thing with rendering sequences is the fact that you can re render individual frames or sections of the animatiopn if you see any glitches,. you should eb able to set the Sequence start frame and as long as the file name is the same it should add in to the existing sequence

On the scenes with issue,. do they render correctly, and fully in the version you're using now ?,.

What type of objects were not being rendered, ?

I  just ran a quick test 21 seconds animation (simple primitives moving around), to see if anything went AWOL ,. no issues to report.

 

 

protovu

In 2.17, everything renders now. Fully. The objects that would render intermittently in 2.24 were vertex objects. Not too complex. They just disappeared. I would rebuild the scene, and then they would disappear again. Then they would

stay, but the animation would stop about 40 frames short......And, it would not continue as an add on to the sequence as you indicate.

 

protovu

Plot thickens.....Anyone finding any issues with Carrara 8.5 pro and Octane Render using Windows 10?  A tech guru I know is telling me that Win10 has speed and security advantages, but some apps are not Win10 friendly.

And, I am on PremierePro CS3 which suits me just fine. Anyone been through this with a nice outcome?

3DAGE

you should be able to set the Sequence start frame and as long as the file name is the same it should add in to the existing sequence

 that works for me,. but it's not Automatic,. you need to set the same filename, and start the sequence where you need to.

On the Missing objects,. I;''ve seen issues with updating in the early beta's,. but the addition of the Alembic and "Genrate animation" seemed to resolve that.

  On incompleted renders,. I've not seen that happen before.

Can you move the timeline (past the point where octane stops),. and let it render,..or is nothing happening,.?

Are there any messages from octane "why it stopped",.? or is it actually crashing out at that point.

remember this is beta,. so any issues should be reported on the OTOY Carrara plugin forum too.

 

With every new version of an OS,. thre will be some software which will have some issues running under the new OS,

I'm on Win 7 ,., so,.I've. no idea about win 10,. but windows does have a good compatibility system for handling older software,. so Carrara should be fine,. I remember some early adopters jumping to win 10,. I don't recall any big issues.

I use Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere,.

Can you elaborate on the issues you're seeing,. they may have little to do with Windows 10.

protovu

Hi 3dage,

On the Octane Render issues, they all went away when I reverted to 2.17. When I was trying 2.24 and having issues, there were no messages from Octane, just a stoppage of the render. I did report to Otoy. Actually, I get a few crashes with 2.17 on some files, but these are not consistent. Sometimes they are associated with sliding the time(frame) point of the sequencer backwards. Might be an overload issue, but shut down and relaunch of Carrara seem to help.

 I haven't switched to Windows 10 yet, so I can't answer your last question.  Tried to search the Octane forums on the Win10 subject, but I have a heck of a time getting the search function to work well there.  I must be doing something wrong.

protovu

Separate question:

Do open GL transparacies work for anyone in the 3D viewer with Octane materials? All my Octane materials read as opaque in the 3D viewer, and I am wondering if I am the only one. Granted, as we enjoy faster rendering in Octane, this is not a deal buster, but, sometimes it is faster for workflow to be able to use the good old 3D viewer open GL transparancies once an Octane material is set, and not need to look back and forth to 2 windows when animating. Wireframe view is not very helpful.

3DAGE

If you've not upgraded to win 10,.  (as a techie) I'd suggest that unless you have serious problems with Win7 speed and security,. it's a non issue

If what works for you, works for you, why change that.

You can also try to export your scenes from carrara,.  and render them in Octane "Stand alone" although that's not as efficient as a built in plugin,. it does bypass the beta plugin part of the issues you're having.and could help track down the source of the issues.

any good techie should also explain thet historically Speed and Security enhancements have appeared in every single new operating system, from MS DOS to MS Windows (Better speed and More security are good selling points).,.

but,... what has also happened is that the OS demands more memory and more processing,. restricts what the "Owner/User" can do,.  and adds new animated guff, which will hapilly consume much of that processing and speed enhancement,..right up,.

Example Windows 8, touchie feely, highly graphically driven, .  or even Windows 7,. which included transparent and animated windows, all of that animated graphical nonsence. costs.... and memory and processing cycles are the fee.

 

 

 

protovu

I agree with your points, particularly regarding the bells and whistles which matter nil to me. And, like you say, if it ain't broke.........

Probably like you, I have been dragged into OS iterations. But, some things, like 64 bits, were pretty compelling. I wonder if newer versions of DirectX will be equally compelling as I get more into Octane. Wouldn't want to be shut out on that.  Additionally, if 10 is in fact faster, (booting, rendering, saving) then doesn't that argue that some of the WinBloat has been reduced? Perhaps fewer system resources are being pirated for the OS?  From a Google search, it seems like most Octaners are finding they like Win10, though I cannot find anything specifically on the Carrara/Octane combo regarding positive or negative outcomes.

 Any OS changes at this point would be proactive. That is, while I have not had "serious" problems with 7, I do have some annoyances with 7 which have me interested in 10, and it seems just a matter of time before there is some update that may be important. And on security issues, again, this would be a proactive move. Hard for me to justify any increased risk.

chickenman

One change that Windows 10 uses that 8 and below didn't is the us of the system and compression process.

This process utilizes the RAM more efficiently than the write to disk methods previoulsy used. If it is data that is being reused it will be stored in this process and you can see the file size appear to bloat but infact things are running smoothly.

This speeds up a lot of things and is a method similar to what Linux and MAC have been doing.

http://lifehacker.com/why-is-windows-10s-system-process-using-so-much-ram-1725076206

 

protovu

So, may I ask, Chickenman, are you a satisfied Win10/Car8.5pro/Octane user?  If so, can you share any suffering you endured during the transition?

Thanks,

Rick