ArchiCAD → Options → Add-On Manager. The ‘OctaneRender for ArchiCAD’ and ‘OctaneRender Renderer’ Add-Ons should both be ticked. If they have a red ‘!’ next to them, then they could not be loaded, which is most likely due to not having the latest NVidia Cuda drivers loaded.
In general, due to the nature of the way ArchiCAD constructs the flat surface geometry, the vast majority of material should have ‘smooth’ DISABLED. Only curved surfaces should be ‘smooth’ enabled (like grass, motor vehicles, etc).
Set the Internal Engine material Emission Attenuation to be equal or greater than the ‘Emission Percent’ set in the plugin ‘Configuration’ screen (available from the Settings Tab of the plugin).
This is due to using the same card for Octane rendering and for your Windows display adapter. It is highly recommended to have a separate card as your Windows display adapter (your on-board graphics card for example).
If you are using one card, set the Render Priority to Low (see Devices).
For reference, Otoy have recommended registry settings that you should use:
In cases of the Windows Vista/7 ‘Timeout Detection and Recovery‘, settings can be changed using Regedit. The recommended setting for Octane are registry setting HKLMSystemCurrentControlSetControlGraphicsDrivers, TdrLevel = 3, TdrDelay =10 (if these settings are not already there, right click the right panel → New → DWORD). You will need to reboot after changing these settings.
It is also recommended that you view the ArchiCAD scene using the Internal Renderer whilst rendering large scenes in Octane (right click the Perspective Camera in the Navigator-Project Map→3D Window Settings → Change 3D Engine to Internal Engine.
The ArchiCAD plugin does not have a node graph. Instead it uses a tree structure which enables macro type functions (copy, paste, import, export, etc) which is more efficient and much better matches the ArchiCAD workflow.
You can import an ORBXThe ORBX file format is the best way to transfer scene files from 3D Authoring software programs that use the Octane Plug-in such as Octane for Maya, Octane for Cinema 4D, or OctaneRender Standalone. This format is more efficient than FBX when working with Octane specific data as it provides a flexible, application independent format. ORBX is a container format that includes all animation data, models, textures etc. that is needed to transfer an Octane scene from one application to another. format from the Octane Standalone LocalDB.
There is now no limit.
No, the memory available will be the memory capacity of the smallest card in your system. If you have a 1Gb and a 2Gb card, and need over 1Gb of memory for your scene, turn off the 1Gb card in the Cuda Devices Tab of the plugin.
Yes, it was introduced in version 1.16a.
A MacIntosh version is planned.
At this stage texture map scaling is implemented, however Octane does not currently support texture map offsets or rotations, nor disabling of tiling. To use these effects in your renders, manually adjust the texture maps in your image editing program.
This is most likely occurring because the texture map for the tree is inside an ArchiCAD library archive (icf file). To get around this, extract the archive and use the extract as your library by doing the following:
- File → Libraries and Objects → Extract a Container. Select whichever your current library is (which contain the tree texture map) – most likely ‘
C:\Program Files\GRAPHISOFT\ArchiCAD 16\ArchiCAD Library 16\ArchiCAD Library 16.lcf’. Extract into yourMy Document\ArchiCAD 16 Libraryfolder (or similar)
- File → Libraries and Objects → Library Manager. Click the library you just extracted in 1 and delete it (X button). Then ‘Add’ and select the folder to extracted to above (it should then display ‘Object Library 16’ and ‘Zones 16’ under ‘Linked Libraries’.
- In the plugin, select ‘Re-convert from ArchiCAD’ for any GDL materials which had texture maps inside the lcf library.
The above is .pln file specific – so you will need to do the above on a blank document and save as a template if you want it always applied by default.
During the upgrade, your graphics card may have been disabled by Octane. To fix this, go into the Devices page of the plugin and re-tick ‘Active’ for your video card.
If your scene was originally a very large scene, and you deleted all the items in the scene to start from a blank scene, then some/all the deleted items may still be in the pln file, so when the plugin searches through all the scene geometry, it may still search through the deleted items. Saving the scene to a pla file, and then reload that pla should resolve this issue.
When importing and exporting RenderTargets the plugin also has a defaulted to C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\OctaneRender for ArchiCAD\Views.
Custom folders that are remembered are i.e. the last CSV and OBJ folders when loading proxies, the background image folder, saving (rendered) Images and exporting OCS/ORBX.
When rendering without texture maps it might be caused not expanding your library, then running the plugin and saving all materials as default. Then when you expand your library the file links where still broken (because the links in the saved defaults were blank).
Notice that there is there is a difference between "Re-convert from ArchiCAD material" and "Re-convert all materials from ArchiCAD":
If you "Re-convert from ArchiCAD material" the plugin will re-create the Octane material from the ArchiCAD material.
However, if you "Re-convert all materials from ArchiCAD", then the material is reloaded from its default first. So if there is a default Octane setup for a material, it will load that default setup rather than reconverting the material from ArchiCAD.
What this means is that it might be the case you have done a "Save all scene materials to defaults" when the image file references had been lost. So you have default materials setting with no material texturemaps. This explains if reconverting each material individually fixes the problem.
To resolve this, you can delete all your default material settings by deleting all the files in the C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\OctaneRender for ArchiCAD\Defaults folder.
For More Information
More information about OctaneRender® and the Graphisoft® ArchiCAD Plugin are found here: