For PhotoRender projection, Sun Studies and Fly-Throughs, set the PhotoRender Engine to “OctaneRender Renderer” in the ArchiCAD PhotoRendering Settings dialog.
Rendering each of these types of renders will be done by OctaneRender, using the current rendertarget settings setup in the plugin Setup Window. You should pay special attention to the “kernel” -> “maxsamples” number, since each frame of an animation will complete to this number of samples prior to moving to the next frame, so keep this number as small as possible (without loosing render quality).
NOTE: Octane needs to have been initiated prior to doing a PhotoRender Projection, Sun Study or Fly-Through – which simply involves opening the OctaneRender for ArchiCAD plugin Setup Window once after starting ArchiCAD.
IMPORTANT: If you open the plugin Setup window and then open the Viewport (and optionally then close the Viewport but leave the Setup window open), then the ArchiCAD scene will have been loaded into Octane, and when you photorender, the photorenderer will use that existing Octane scene, rather then reloading it from ArchiCAD. That means:
You can render sunstudies and animations without the photorenderer re-loading the ArchiCAD scene into Octane each frame by opening the Viewport prior to starting the sunstudy/animation.
If you have animated objects in the ArchiCAD scene you will need to force the photorenderer to load the ArchiCAD scene into Octane each frame, so in this case close the plugin Setup window prior to starting the animation
The photorenderer will not load geometry proxy objects into the Octane scene, so to render geometry proxies, open the Viewport prior to starting the photorenderer.