FAQ

Click here for Wim's plugin hints and tips.

  1. Why are shadow and textures rendering oddly on flat surfaces?

If flat Poser geometry has very little detail — like the roof or wall of a building — then the Octane smoothing will try to round the entire wall. To resolve this, turn off smoothing in the materials with a flat surface in the MaterialsA set of attributes or parameters that describe surface characteristics. Tab of the plugin.

  1. When I move a Poser light, the parented emitter geometry (created with the Create Emitters From Lights.py script) does not update in the Octane scene if I have Auto-Refresh on.

This is a known issue, caused by the Poser light not being in the Octane scene, so the plugin cannot detect that the parented geometry needs updating. Simply right-click the Auto Refresh button to manually refresh the emitter position after moving it in the Poser scene.

  1. There are faint light bands on flat surfaces.

This occurs when very bright emitters are placed at a great distance from the subject. Either move the emitter closer, scale the scale (via the Setup Configuration screen), or adjust the rayepsilon in the kernel settings.

  1. I get a “Rendering Failed” message when rendering using the PMC kernel.

This is due to having an old card which only supports compute model 1.0, which does not support PMC rendering. Use the path tracing kernel instead.

  1. When I load a scene previously saved with Octane settings, the Octane settings are lost.

Load the scene via File->Open to load the Octane settings. Double-click a Poser scene in the Windows Explorer will not load the settings – this is a Poser bug which has been reported to the host application developers.

  1. How can I get a Poser scene element material to convert to an Octane emitter?

Set the Ambient_Value to > 1 in the Poser MaterialThe representation of the surface or volume properties of an object. Room for that material.

  1. How can I specify the render dimensions?

Click the Resolution Lock button on the plugin Setup window, then set the resolution via the sliders or edit boxes in the resolution tree item in the Render Options List.

  1. I changed a setting in the OctaneDefaults.py file, but it isn’t being applied to my scene.

You either need to restart Poser, or load a scene in order for the OctaneDetaults.py file to be reloaded. Also, ALL Octane settings are saved with your scene, so if you want to apply the defaults again, you can reset may of the settings via Render Options List -> right-click -> “Reset Options to Default Settings”, and the Material tab -> right-click -> “Re-Import from Poser” -> “Whole Scene”.

  1. Windows becomes unresponsive when rendering large scenes.

This is due to Octane limiting access to the graphics card by Windows. It is generally more of an issue for lower-spec cards. Set the Render Priority to Low for your card in the Cuda Devices tab.

  1. I am an experienced OctaneRender Standalone user, and would like to access the node graph in the Poser plugin.

The Poser plugin does not have a node graph. Instead it uses a tree structure which enables macro type functions (copy, paste, save collection, etc.) which is more efficient and much better matches the Poser workflow.

UPDATE: Release 2.24.1.60 of the plugin introduced material editing via the Octane node graph. Click this link for details.

  1. SpecularAmount of specular reflection, or the mirror-like reflection of light photons at the same angle. Used for transparent materials such as glass and water. and ambient texturemaps are not being copied from the Poser material to the Octane material.

At this stage specular and ambient maps are not converted, due to the potential of misinterpreting their intended use in the Poser material. In these cases, simply add these maps to the Octane material manually, then save the material for when it is needed again.

  1. I get a Poser warning when I use the Scene Texture Counter or Image File Statistics button with 16-bit TIF or HDR files.

This is a known limitation with the wxpython implementation in Poser. At this stage the two tools work for 8-bit (LDRImage formats that have 8 bits per color channel such as the common image formats JPEG, PNG, GIF among others.) images (jpg, png, tif, etc.).

  1. My Poser skydome prop does not work.

Skydomes, as implemented in Poser can be made to work in Octane. However, a far better approach is to load the skydome texturemap into the environment texture of the environment node in the Render Options List. If you need additional sunlight for shadows, add the “one-sided square” prop from the Poser Primitives library and convert it too to an emitter and position it high up in the scene.

  1. How do I know if I have run out of texture memory on the video card?

If you run out of memory, the texturemaps which there was not room for will render black. You will most likely get an out of memory Cuda error, which will close the plugin. Also, the texture memory requirements reported in Image File Statistic will be less than the memory being used as reported in the viewport status bar under “Mem:”. To use less memory, remove some bump maps by right-clicking the option in the Material tab of the plugin or scale some of the larger maps down in size by using the Compress Texture Maps scripts. You can also free up some video memory with the “Basic” windows theme (see Question 9 above), and you can also free a little more video memory in Poser by selecting Render -> Render Settings -> Preview (OpenGL) -> Texture Display -> 128. Closing browser windows will also free up a little memory.

UPDATE: You can now store texturemaps in CPU RAM by clicking Setup, then ticking “Out of Core TexturesTextures are used to add details to a surface. Textures can be procedural or imported raster files.”.

  1. Will the plugin convert EzSkin SSS shaders?

EzSkin uses a different system for SSS, which is not compatible with the Octane node system, so there is not a one-to-one correlation between that would allow the replication of the EzSkin SSS into Octane. Also, the Octane SSS is a much simpler node system and provides a much better quality of render. For a tutorial on creating an Octane SSS skin shader, see this link. You only need to do this once; save the shader and re-use it.

  1. How many texturemaps can I fit in my card?

An unlimited number.

  1. If I get 2 graphics cards, do I double the memory available?

No, the memory available will be the memory capacity of the smallest CUDA enabled card in your system. If you have a 1 Gb and a 2 Gb card, and need over 1 Gb of memory for your scene, turn off the 1 Gb card in the Cuda Devices tab of the plugin.

  1. Does the plugin work with the DAZ Genesis DSON figures?

Yes.

  1. How do I do “instancing”?

Click on the figure or prop you want to replicate (it should be in the center of the scene) in the material Tab and change the node type from “mesh” to “scatter”. At this point there will be no transforms (instances) loaded for that figure, so the figure will not render. Then click the “Generate Transform File” button, select a .csv file to output the transforms to, and enter the other values in the dialog (mouseover each field for an explanation of the fields function). Once the transform csv file is generated it will be loaded into the figure for rendering. If you regenerate the transform file, the plugin will remember the previous setting you used for that scene and figure. The transforms are saved in the csv file, not with the pz3 file.

  1. Why doesn’t the material picker work when you have a Poser camera selected in the Parameter Dials window?

This is a known issue and a limitation due to the event messaging system in Poser.

  1. Will there be a Mac version?

There is currently a Mac version is available. See the OTOY Poser plugin forum for details.

  1. When I change a material in Poser, why doesn’t the change propagate to the OctaneRender plugin?

The typical workflow is that once you run the plugin for a particular scene, the “master copy” of the textures is then in the plugin rather than the Poser Material, so changing the Poser Material does not automatically update the material in the plugin. If you want to transfer any changes you made in the Poser Material back to the plugin, rightclick the figure (or “scene”) in the Material tab of the plugin, and select “Re-import [scene/figure] from Poser”. That will re-convert the Poser material into the Octane plugin.

In general, most users tweak the materials in the plugin (Materials tab) rather than back in the Poser Material Room.

The “Refresh” scene on the Setting tab of the plugin loads new geometry and new materials, but does not overwrite or Materials (since you may have changed them in the plugin).

  1. Can the tiling in a texture map be disabled, offset, or rotated?

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, simply manually adjust the texture maps in your image editing program.

  1. How do I handle scenes where there are props with identical names?

If you duplication a figure in Poser which has a prop parented to it, the OctaneRender for Poser plugin will not be able to differentiate between the original parented prop and the duplicated parented prop (due to the identical prop names). In this, case, rename one of the props.

  1. When I change the “scatter” settings on an SSS material, the render does not restart.

This is because you need to have a node plugged into the “transmission” pin in order for the “scatter” node to work. So plug an RGBspectrum (white) node into “transmission” and you can now adjust the “scatter” settings.

  1. What is figure compatibility with Poser 2014?

At the moment Poser does not expose the subd mesh vertices, so the plugin cannot render subd meshes (this will be fixed in a Poser Service Release). Until then, use Figure -> Skinning Method -> Poser Traditional to correctly render Poser Pro 2014 figures.

  1. How do you stop the DOFThe distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance at a time, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on each side of the focused distance, so that within the DOF, the unsharpness is imperceptible under normal viewing conditions. source: wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field) (blurry) effect?

Settings tab, “camera” -> “aperture” -> set to 0.

  1. Why do Dawn’s corneas not render?

This is a problem with the Dawn figure. Select the Dawn cornea material and click “Normals Forward” to fix this issue.

  1. The following error is displayed: "Cuda Error: CUDA error 702", or “Display driver stopped responding and has recovered”.

These messages occur if Octane blocks your video card for more than the Windows timeout. By default Windows has a 2 second timeout, however the recommended timeout for Octane is 10 seconds. Installing Octane 1.20 should set the timeout to 10 seconds, however if this has not happened you can manual adjust the timeout by adding the following 2 registry settings.

WriteRegDWORD HKLM “SYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlGraphicsDrivers” TdrLevel 3

WriteRegDWORD HKLM “SYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlGraphicsDrivers” TdrDelay 10

Refer to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff569918%28v=vs.85%29.aspx for more details.

  1. When rendering a animation through Octane, the figure’s mesh tears at the joint after the first frame is rendered. How do I fix this?

Change the figure skinning to Unimesh via Figure->Skinning Method->Poser Unimesh.

  1. What does “[actor name] has a mismatch between vertices and textures and it will not be loaded into the Octane scene.” mean?

This error generally means that the figure or prop contains a modelling error, where there is a polygon with a different number of vertices to texturemap UV coordinates (i.e., the polygon might have four vertices but three UV coordinates). Octane requires that a figure or prop has either no texturemap UV coordinates (i.e., a glass object), or ALL vertices have texturemap UV coordinates. You will need to contact the supplier of the figure or prop and request they correct the error if you wish to render this figure/prop in Octane.

  1. The OctaneRender Viewport renders black after upgrading from Octane 1 to Octane 2.

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.

  1. I cannot tick the Active checkbox in the Cuda Devices tab.

The Windows font scale is potentially set to 125% or higher. Set the font scaling to 100% in order to tick/untick the Active checkbox for a particular video card.

  1. 34) How can I manually add a Poser transmap to an Octane material?

To assign a transmap to a material, set the Opacity pin type of the material to “Greyscale Image”, and then load the transmap using the “Image” button on the “Greyscale Image” tree item.