The LiveDB is OctaneRender’s asset database that stores MaterialsA set of attributes or parameters that describe surface characteristics., Node groups, and even whole scenes shared by the OctaneRender® community and team. The asset database makes it easier to move these assets across a myriad of OctaneRender plugins as well as Standalone scenes.
Most materials contain textures with images. The associated images are downloaded and saved to disk in a cache folder, and the material name is added to the path. You can see the folder's location by selecting an image associated with a LiveDB file and looking at the top of the Node Inspector (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Images downloaded with LiveDB assets are stored in a cache folder
To download one of the Live DB assets, open the LiveDB tab in the Scene Outliner, right-click on the Node you want to use, then click Copy. Next, right-click in the Nodegraph Editor and click on Paste from the context menu to paste the Node into your scene. You can examine the Node's contents by double-clicking on the Nodegraph icon (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Pasting Nodes from the LiveDB into your OctaneRender scene
To upload an OctaneRender node to the LiveDB, create a Nodegraph from the objects in your scene that you'd like to upload, right-click on the new Nodegraph in the Nodegraph Editor and choose Save... From the drop-down menu, click LiveDB. The menu offers options for naming and saving the Nodegraph to an existing category, as well as the option to add comments and credit (Figure 3).
Figure 3: The options for uploading OctaneRender assets to the LiveDB