Over the last 2 months we have been working hard on integrating Octane Render version 2019.1.1 for LightWave3D 2019.1.4 on our network. It’s not as easy as you might think. One of the issues was to get IES lights working properly in our packager and then transport them correctly to the service.
To make things more straightforward we ask that you set up your LW content directory with a folder called “IES” immediately under it and place your .IES files in there. See the example image below.
While our packager and the LightForge Render Network Cloud-UI desktop application are written to be somewhat smart using a set of logic checks to find and properly transport all files in the scene as well as the scene file itself, the fall back should it encounter a problem, is to grab all data in a directory and pull it for transport. This can result in a situation where you have a huge amount of IES files or any other files for that matter in your content directory to want to have it package up the whole thing just to be safe so as to make sure your render works out right. That has it’s obvious draw backs.
We are continuously working on refining this. If you are handy with Python, you can edit the submission plug-in that we ship with the desktop application for your own needs and pipeline integration. Should you do this we ask that you help us out by sending us your changes and then we can ensure that whatever you do change is properly handled by the LightForge Render Network Cloud-UI desktop app and is handled by our Master Nodes correctly.
Speaking of improvements, we have now increased the LightWav3D .lws (LightWave Scene file) parsing performance by a huge amount. How much? Well, in our tests we have managed to push through scene files containing several million lines of data through easily in seconds where before it was taking in some cases over 20 minutes for only a few hundred thousand lines.
IMPORTANT!
One other thing concerning Octane Render job submissions for LightForge is to make sure you use the proper saving path in the render target option.
Pretty easy to get going so long as you follow these rules. Now that we have this working we will begin finishing up on LightWave3D 2018.0.7 support for Octane Render ver. 2019.1.1 and begin testing Octane Render 2020.
We will keep you posted! Happy rendering!