octanearchicad plugin v1.10 manual

8/13/2019 OctaneArchiCAD Plugin v1.10 Manual

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Version 1.20

By: Enrico Cerica


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for Graphisoft ArchiCAD User Manual

OctaneRender for Graphisoft ArchiCAD User ManualVersion 1.20 - August 2013

http://render.otoy.com

OctaneRender for use with Graphisoft ArchiCAD Design Software OTOY, INC. 2013.All rights reserved.

OctaneRender and OTOY and their logos are trademarks of OTOY, INC.

Graphisoft and ArchiC AD are registered trademarks of Graphisof t SE and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the U.S. and/or other countries .

By Jeroen Tapper for Tapperworks


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Table of contents

Chapter 1 : Installation and Overview

1 Installation Requirements 61.1 Software and Hardware Requirements 71.2 Internet Access 8

2 Installation of the Plugin into ArchiCAD 93 GPU Settings 114 Con guration 125 Rendering Performance and Quality 13

Chapter 2 : Using the Integrated ArchiCAD Plugin

1 OctaneRender Viewport 162 Render Setup Window - Rendering Tab 173 Render Setup Window - Settings Tab 19

3.1 Post Processing 203.2 Saving Render Targets to an ArchiCAD view 21

4 Render Setup Window Materials Tab 24

4.1 Connecting and Disconnecting Nodes 275 PhotoRendering 29

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6 Render Kernels 316.1 Direct Lighting 316.2 Path Tracing 366.3 PMC 386.4 Deep Channel 416.5 Adjusting Ray Epsilon 42

7 Octane Camera 438 Octane Daylight, Emitters and ArchiCAD IBL 45

8.1 Octane Daylight 458.2 Emitters 468.3 Image Based Lighting 47

9 Material and Texture Interface 499.1 Materials 499.1.1 Diffuse Material 499.1.2 Glossy Material 519.1.3 Specular Material 539.1.4 Mix Material 569.1.5 Portal Material 569.2 Emissions 57

9.2.1 Blackbody Emission 57


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9.2.2 Texture Emmission 589.2.3 Null/No Emission 599.3 Mediums 619.3.1 Absorbtion Medium 619.3.2 Scattering Medium 629.4 Textures 639.4.1 Checks Mix Texture 639.4.2 FloatImage (Gray Scale) 649.4.3 Image (Color Image) 649.4.4 Marble Texture 659.4.5 Mix Texture 669.4.6 Turbulence Texture 67

10 Geometry Proxies and Instancing 5811 Limitations 76


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Chapter 1

Installation &Overview



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1. Installation Requirements

1.1 Software and Hardware Requirements

The plugin does not require OctaneRender Standalone Edition to be in-stalled. However you must own a license for Standalone Edition in orderto use the plugin (your Standalone credentials will be requested when youactivate the plugin). If you do install Standalone Edition, it does not need tobe the same Octane version as the plugin since they operate separately.

The plugin requires Graphisoft ArchiCAD 14, 15 or 16 to be installed. Itruns only under Windows 32 bit or 64 bit .

It is also highly recommended that you use your on-board graphics or asecond graphics card for the Windows display adapter. If you do not havean on-board or second graphics card, use the Low Priority Render Prior-ity.

If you are running a GTX 690, or multiple graphics cards, it is impor tant todisable SLI in the Nvidia control panel.

OTOY - OctaneRender for Graphisoft ArchiCAD Manual - Chapter 1 - Section 1

OctaneRender for GraphisoftArchiCAD is available for the fol-lowing operating systems :

Windows XP (64 bit)

Windows Vista (64 bit)

Windows 7 (64 bit)

Refer to Chapter 1 of the OctaneRen-

der

Standalone Edition User Manualfor more details about hardware setup.


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1.2 Internet Access

The OctaneRender for ArchiCAD plugin requires internetaccess to launch the rst time. Internet access is notrequired to use both OctaneRender and OctaneRenderfor ArchiCAD plugin.

When no internet access is present, the Live Database willnot be accessable. Upon launching the plugin for the rsttime, the user will need to log in to their OctaneLiveaccount which associated with their forum log-in information.This information can be found in the customer section of theOctaneRender website.



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2. Installation of the Plugin into ArchiCAD

Ensure ArchiCAD is not currently running on your PC, and then run the provided installation le (OctaneRen -der for ArchiCAD Setup [version number].exe). Select the install directory of your ArchiCAD 16 installation.The installer will copy all the plugin les into the appropriate place.

Then run ArchiCAD and select :-> Options -> Add-On Manager -> tick the OctaneRender for ArchiCAD addon.The OctaneRender Render should already be ticked. The plugin is now installed.

It is recommended that you add a plugin shortcut onto your toolbar:Rightclick top toolbar -> Toolbars -> Current Menu Structure -> Document -> Creative Imaging -> OctaneR-ender -> Add Selected to the "Mini Navigator" toolbar .

NOTE: You may need to restart ArchiCAD in order to do this last step .


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OTOY - OctaneRender for Graphisoft ArchiCAD Manual - Chapter 1 Section 2

To start the plugin, choose the Document -> Crea-tive Imaging -> OctaneRender , or select the Octanebutton from the toolbar if you added the shortcut asper the above instructions.

You will need to activate the plugin prior to usingit for the rst time. Enter your OctaneLive User IDand Password and click the Activate button. Onceactivated, the other tabs (ie Settings, Materials,etc) will be selectable and you can start using theplugin to render.


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3. GPU Settings

The Cuda Devices tab will display the Devices dialoge.

You can enable or disable your Cuda Devices from this window. Iffor some reason you need to reset the Cuda devices, use the Resetbutton.

You can also specify particular cards render at the currently se-lected Render Priority. To do this, tick the Use Priority checkbox,and then select High, Medium or Low as the Render Priority. If you

are using a single card for both Cuda rendering and as you Windowsdisplay adapter, it is recommended that you select the Low Prior-ity. Remember to click Apply to apply a changed Render Priority toyour video card.

In the unlikely event that you get a Cuda error from your video card ,click the Cuda Errors button to displ ay speci c details on the error.

For troubleshooting problems, refer to Chapter 1 Section 6 of the OctaneRender Standalone Edition User Manual.

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4. Configuration

In the Settings tab of the OctaneRender Setup Window is a Con-guration button. The OctaneRender for ArchiCAD plugin doesall the conversion of the ArchiCAD scene to Octane for you. How-ever, there are some set tings which you can tune to speed up yourwork ow. Mouseover each of the settings for more details.

In summary:

Specular Percent - The minimum Transparency Transmittancewhich will result in an ArchiCAD material being converted to anOctane specular material.

Emission Percent - The minimum Emission Attenuation whichwill result in an ArchiCAD material being converted to an Octanediffuse emit ter.


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Warning on Missing Textures If during the scene conversion to Octane the plugin cannot locate a particulartexturemap on your le system, a warning will be displayed if this checkbox is ticked. It is recommended toleave this option on.

Viewport Refresh Rate The number of milliseconds that the Viewport will check to see if Octane has an up-dated render image available.

Progressive Save Enabled Tick to have the plugin save the render every Save Interval samples. Useful foranalysis to determine have many samples are required for a render to be nished.

Image Save Format the format that the Viewpor t image will be saved as when you click the Save button on the

Rendering tab.

LiveDB Texture Scaling The scaling of LiveDB textures will sometimes not be appropriate for the scaling ofyour scene. Adjust this setting to increase or decrease the scale of LiveDB textures when they are downloaded.

5. Rendering Performance and Quality

A render is not nished when the kernel>maxsamples are reached. It is nished when the Viewpor t imagequality is free of noise and all details have been rendered to a ne level. For some simple scenes, this will beafter 500 samples. For some complex scenes it may take 10,000 samples.



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Tips to increase render speed (by increasing sample/sec or reducing the samples required to nish the render):

Use the directlighting kernel. This may provides a lower quality output but is much faster than pathtracing

and pmc. Only use this option if the reduction in render quality is acceptable.

Minimise the use of SSS (diffuse->scatter)

Set imager->hotpixel_removal to 0. This eliminates most re ys

Increase kernel->caustic_blur (to whatever level needed even 1'). This smooths out the noise in therender

Use a higher-powered graphics card, or add additional graphics cards to your systemIf the light illuminating the scene has come through a specular (glass) material, using pmc rather than path-tracing. In this situation you can also reduce kernel->direct_ light_impor tance to give the light that haspassed through the glass more priority. Also, you can let more direct light through the glass by reducing theglass materials opacity (from 1 to say 0.2).

If illuminating the scene by emitters, make sure those emit ters have as few polygons as possible, and are aslarge as possible. If using emitters, it is highly recommends that you an IES le in the distribution pin to direct

the light as required.IMPORTANT: Remember to adjust kernel -> rayepsilon for each scene. The rayepsilon will be smallestfor close-up renders, and increase as the camera moves further away from the subject.


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Chapter 2

UsingOctaneRender

for ArchiCAD


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1. OctaneRender Viewport

To display the OctaneRenderViewport, go to the "Rendering"tab and click the "Open Viewport"button. This will open a new win-dow and start rendering the cur-rent scene in that window.

When opening the Viewport, anyArchiCAD scene materials areconverted to Octane materials,and the default scene lighting isset to the Octane dayl ight node.

Whilst rendering the scene in theViewpor t, you can move the Archi-CAD camera around, and this will be immediately re ected in the Viewport.

NOTE: When rendering large scenes, you can continue to work in ArchiCAD, however it is recommended that youswitch to the "Internal Engine" in the "3D Window Settings".


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2. OctaneRender Setup Window - Rendering Tab

The Rendering tab contains rendering controls and statistics.They include:

Open Viewport buttonOpens the OctaneRender Viewpor t window and commencesrendering.

PausePauses the render.

ContinueContinues the render (after it has been paused).

Refresh Reloads all scene geometry and materials from ArchiCADto OctaneRender. This is used after changing elements inthe ArchiCAD scene.


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Auto Focus (AF)Click the toggle button to enable the setting of the Octane camera focal depth by clicking on an item or ele -ments in the Viewport.

Lock Scene (X button)Clicking this toggle button will means that NO changes to the scene, camera position or Octane node setupwill propagate to the Viewport (means the render will continue whilst you work on the underlying scene).NOTE. Imager and Postprocessing set tings changes will not be applied whil st the Lock Scene button is ON.

Num LDR/HDR Textures These indicators show the number of texturemap slots that the render is using on your video card. If you areusing more than the available slot s (for example RGB: 72/64), then you will need to reduce that number of

texturemaps being used by the scene.

Resolution LockIf this button is ON, then the resolution of the render is controlled by the Settings Tab resolution settins.If it is OFF, then the render resizes to the Viewport size (and you can resize the Viewport by stretching thewindow).

Save Saves the current render in the Viewpor t to le. The le type is determines by the Image Save Format in the

Con guration screen.

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3. OctaneRender Setup Window - Settings Tab

The Settings Tab tree contains all the Octane nodes de ningthe scene rendering parameters (ie. All nodes connected to therendertarget node EXCEPT the mesh pin). Click on any ofthe settings to enable the edit options in the Node Parameterswindow.

The camera position, look at direction and eld of viewcannot be changed via the Settings Tab. Instead move the Ar-chiCAD camera, or change the camera View Cone setting (viathe Settings button in the ArhciCAD Navigator properties) to

adjust these parameters.Similarly, the sun direction is not set in the Octane plugin. Ifthe Octane environment node is set to daylight, then theOctane sun position is taken from the ArchiCAD sun position,so use the ArchiCAD Settings button to adjust the ArchiCADsun position, which will immediately reposition the Octane sun.

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3.1 Post Processing

To add and adjust post processing effects, select:

rendertarget ->postproc -> posprocessing

On/Off (on_off)This is a boolean value used to enable or disable post-processing ef-fects on the resulting render. Post-processing is disabled by default.

Bloom PowerControls the size of the glow originating from an emitter, the size ofthe halo of light orginating from the sun and/or concentrated light

on re ective glossy materials to add a bloom effect to the renderedimage.

Glare PowerControls the size of the visible rays originating from an emitter, the size of the glare orginating from re ectiveglossy materials at a point where concentration of light is at the higest to add a glare effect to the rendered im-age.

Glare Ray AmountControls the number of visible rays radiated or re ected.

Glare AngleThis is used to adjust the direction of the glare relative to the object. A glare angle of -90 and 90 results to onemain horizontal glare, and a glare angle of 0 results to one main vertical glare.

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Glare BlurControls the sharpness of the glare. Smaller values will result to a crisp linear glare and this is softened as thevalue is adjusted and set higher.

3.2 Saving Rendertargets to an ArchiCAD View

By default, a camera/view is assigned to the default rendertarget.

You can save a copy of the rendertarget in the Settings tab of theplugin to an ArchiCAD View. To do this, doubleclick the view in theView Map (it MUST be under the 3D Views item). Then select SaveRendertarget to View in the Additional Options popup in the Set-tings tab of the plugin.

Now a copy of the rendertarget is saved as that view name. Notethe rendertarget pin name has changed below. Any changes madeto this rendertarget will be separate from the default rendertarget

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or any other rendertargets. If you doubleclick on another view theView Map which does NOT have a rendertarget saved to it, the de-fault rendertarget will be loaded. If you doubleclick on another

view the View Map which DOES have a rendertarget saved to it, thatsaved rendertarget will be loaded. NOTE: Materials are not savedto the rendertarget. You can also change views in the View Mapwhilst rendering and the rendertarget will change.


When Photorendering, you can select the rendertarget you wish to use from the Photorender Setting window.Any view which has a rendertarget saved for it should appear in the View Rendertarget box.

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You can set the rendertarget for a photorender, and then save to the View Settings to always photorender thatview when the view is selected from the View Map. This feature can be used to create a batch render of a numberof views with different rendertarget settings.



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4 Render Setup Window Materials Tab

The Materials Tab displays a list of all the ArchiCAD materials, along with

the Octane node structure that those materials where converted to.

Material Conversion

The rst time an ArchiCAD material is selected from the plugin, the pl -ugin will convert that ArchiCAD material to an Octane material. Once thishappens, the Octane material should be the master copy of that mate-rial, since changing the ArchiCAD material will not automatically change

the Octane material. If you need to at any point, you can re-convert theArchiCAD material to an Octane material by selecting Re-Convert FromArchiCAD from the Additional Options popup.

Material Tab Controls

Select From Materials This popup box contains a list of all ArchiCADmaterials in the scene (excluding GDL materials). Selecting a materialfrom this box will present the Octane material for that ArchiCAD materialin the tree structure.



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Select From Selection This popup box contains a list of all ArchiCAD materials (including GDL materials) for the ele-ments that are currently selected in ArchiCAD. Selecting a material from this box will present the Octane material forthat ArchiCAD material in the tree structure.

Material editing tree each tree item represents an Octane node. Click on any item, and the edit options for that itemwill appear the the Node Parameters box. You can change the node type by selecting a different node type in the NodeType popup control (only node types compatible with the selected Octane node pin will be available).

Copy Copies the currently selected node into the plugin clipboard. Only one node can be in the clipboard at any giventime.

Paste Pastes the clipboard node into the currently selected tree node. The Paste option will only be available whenthe clipboard node is compatible with the currently select node pin.

Additional Options

LiveDB This option allows you to load a material from the OctaneLiveDB database into the currently selected material. To select fromthe LiveDB, select the category from the Categories tree, and then se-lecting Materials will ll the preview window. Click OK once you havethe required material.

Re-Convert From ArchiCAD Material Select this option to reconvertthe selected ArchiCAD material to an Octane material.



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Import/Export Material Allows you to save and load materials into thecurrently selected Octane material. Material exports are saved in theUsers\[username]\AppData\Local\OctaneRender for ArchiCAD\Defaults

folder (on Windows 7).

Load/Save from Default Settings you can save the current material set-tings as Default, so when you next load a scene which does not haveany saved Octane settings for that material, the plugin will use the De-fault settings rather than converting the ArchiCAD material. Defaultsare saved in the same folder as Exported Materials (and share the same

le format, so can be interchanged).

Save All Materials To Defaults This option saves all the converted (andmodifed) materials from the ArchiCAD scene as Octane default materi-als, so they will be next used on a new scene.

Copy This Material To All Materials Copied the node setup for the cur-rent material into all other Octane materials. Useful for doing singlecolor renders. Be cautious perform this operation and then save overyour original ArchiCAD pln le, since you will loose all your origin Octanematerial setups doing this.



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4.1 Connecting and Disconnecting Nodes

The default Emission and Transmission pins of a diffuse material node will beunplugged (ie. have no node connection).

To create node connections for these pins, change the node type from notconnected to the desired type in the Node Type combo box.



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If you need to disconnect a node from a transmission or emission pin, select the disconnect note type from theNode Type combo box.



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5 PhotoRendering

For PhotoRender projection, Sun Studies and Fly-Throughs, set the PhotoRender Engine to OctaneRender Ren-

derer in the ArchiCAD PhotoRendering Settings dialog.

Rendering each of these types of renders will be done by OctaneRender, using the current rendertarget settingssetup in the plugin Setup Window. You should pay special at tention 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, sokeep this number as small as possible (without loosing render quality).



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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 Ar-chiCAD.

IMPORTANT: If you open the plugin Setup window and then open the Viewport (and optionally then close theViewport but leave the Setup window open), then the ArchiCAD scene will have been loaded into Octane, andwhen you photorender, the photorenderer will use that existing Octane scene, rather then reloading it fromArchiCAD. That means:

You can render sunstudies and animations without the photorenderer re-loading the ArchiCAD scene intoOctane each frame by opening the Viewpor t prior to starting the sunstudy/animation.

If you have animated objects in the ArchiCAD scene you will need to force the photorenderer to load theArchiCAD scene into Octane each frame, so in this case close the plugin Setup window prior to starting theanimation The photorenderer will not load geometry proxy objects into the Octane scene, so to render geometry prox -ies, open the Viewpor t prior to starting the photorenderer..



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6 Rendering Kernels

There are four major rendering kernels in OctaneRender :

Direct Lighting, Path Tracing and PMC and Deep Channel.

They are switchable by changing the type in the Node Type se-lection box.

In general, directlighting is used for drafts (although canbe used for nal copy), pathtracing and pmc are used forhigh quality rendering, and deep_channel_kernel is used foranalytical output.

6.1 Direct Lighting

Refer to Chapter 4 Section 4.1 of the OctaneRender Standalone Edition User Manual.

Direct Lighting is used for faster preview rendering. Direct Lighting is not unbiased and should not beenused when you aim photo-realism but is useful when creating quick animations or renders.

Specular Depth (speculardepth)Specular depth controls the number of time a ray can be refracted before dying. Higher numbers meanhigher render times but more color bleeding and more details in transparent materials. Low numbers canintroduce artifacts, or turn some refrac tions into pure black.



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OTOY - OctaneRender for Graphisoft ArchiCAD Manual - Chapter 2 - Section 5.1

Glossy Depth (glossydepth)Glossy depth controls the number of times a ray can be re ectedbefore dying. Higher numbers mean higher render time. Low

numbers under 4 can introduce artifacts, or turn some re ectionsinto pure black. You should setup this setting based on the complexity of the scene you are working on, andespecially based on how many re ective parallel surfaces you have.

AO Distance (aodist)The distance of the ambient occlusion in units. Always check ifthe amount is right related to your model scale. For example youdon't need an amount of 3 units if your object is a small toy. But if

your model is a house or something large, you can increase the value. The more you increase the value thedarker your render will be.

Ray Epsilon (rayepsilon)The ray epsilon is the distance to offset new r ays so they don't intersect with the originating geometry. Thisvalue should be left as the default.

Maximum Samples (maxsamples)

This sets the maximum number of samples per pixel before the rendering process stops. The higherthe number of samples per pixel, the cleaner the render. There is no rule as to how many samples per p ixelare required for a good render.



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Filter Size (filtersize)This sets the pixel size for lter for the render. This can improve aliasing artifac ts in the render. If the lteris set too high, the image can become blurry.

Alpha Channel (alphachannel)This option removes the background and renders it as transparant (zero alpha). This can be useful if theuser wants to composite the render over another image and does not want the background to be present.

Keep Environment (keep_environment)This option is used in conjuction with the Alpha Channel setting. It allows the background to be renderedwith zero alpha but is still visible in the nal render. This allows even further exiblity in compositing im -

ages.

Alpha ShadowsThis setting allows any object with transparency (specular materials, materials with opacit y settingsand alpha channels) to cast a shadow accordingly instead of behaiving as a solid object.

GI ModeThere are ve different Global Illumination modes in the Direct Lighting Kernel.

None(0)Only direct lighting from area lights is included. the rest of the image areas receive no contributionand will be black.



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Ambient(1)Use a simple ambient colour from the environment above.

Sample Environment (2)Use a simple ambient colour from the environment/horizon.

Together with ambient and none, these modes are all very fast , as no montecarlo (sampling) isrequired. These give a very unrealistic, classic z-buffer/whit ted raytracing style look , but arevery fast, and very handy for interactive tuning of complex scenes or on slow hardware.

Ambient Occlusion (3)Standard ambient occlusion.

Diffuse (4)Indirect diffuse, with a con guration to set the number of indirect diffuse bounces to include.This gives a GI quality that is in between direct/AO and pathtracing, without caustics and a decentrealistic quality (much better than AO), but much faster than pathtracing/PMC.It is very good for quick nals and animations. It is similar in some ways to 'bruteforce' indirect GI inother engines.



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Diffuse DepthGives the maximum number of diffuse re ec tions if GI Mode is set to Diffuse (4)

Russian Roulette Probability (rrprob)In path tracing, maxdepth is the maximum amount of bounces a ray can make, but, after 3 bounces, thereis a 50 % chance that the ray is killed, if you set the rrprob parameter to 0.5. So in practive it willrarely exceed more than 16-20 bounces once every million pixel samples (generating a re y usually).If the rrprob is set to 0, it uses a automatic setting. If it is set to anything else, the user directly controlsthe probability the ray is ended at random after 3 bounces and so forth.



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6.2 Path Tracing

Path Tracing is best used for realistic results. The render times are higher than Direct Lighting butthe results can be photorealistic. It can have some dif culties with small light sources and proper caustics.

Maximum Depth (maxdepth)The maximum number of time a ray can bounce/re ect /refract in a surface. Higher amounts mean alsohigher render time but more realistic results. For outdoor renders a good set ting is around 4 maxdepth.For lighting interior with natural light (the sun and the sky) you will need higher settings such as 8 or higher.While high values are possible, in reality rays will not usually go beyond 16 ray depth.

Russian Roulette Probability (rrprob)The RRprob is the probability of terminating the path randomly during ray tracing. This value should beleft as the default. A value of zero allows OctaneRender to determine the value.

Ray Epsilon (rayepsilon)The ray epsilon is the distance to of fset new rays so they don't intersect with the originating geometry.This value should be left as the default.

Maximum Samples (maxsamples)This sets the maximum number of samples per pixel before the rendering process stops . The higherthe number of samples per pixel, the cleaner the render. There is no rule as to how many samplesper pixel are required for a good render.




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Filter Size (filtersize)This sets the p ixel size for lter for the render. This can improvealiasing artifacts in the render. If the lter is set too high, the image

can become blurry.

Alpha Channel (alphachannel)This option removes the background and renders it as transparant(zero alpha). This can be useful if the user wants to composite therender over another image and does not want the background to be present.

Keep Environment (keep_environment)This option is used in conjuction with the Alpha Channel setting. Itallows the background to be rendered with zero alpha but is stillvisible in the nal render. This allows even further exiblity in com -positing images.

Alpha Shadows (alphashadows)If alpha maps are used in the scene, this setting controls whetherthe shadows will calculated from the mesh geometry or from thealpha map.



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6.3 PMC

PMC is a custom mutating unbiased kernel written for GPUs. It allows for complex caustics and lightingto be resolved

Maximum Depth (maxdepth)The maximum number of time a ray can bounce/re ect /refract in a surface. Higher amounts mean alsohigher render time but more realistic results. For outdoor renders a good set ting is around 4 maxdepth. Forlighting interior with natural light (the sun and the sky) you will need higher settings such as 8 or higher.

While high values are possible, in reality rays will not usually go beyond 16 ray depth.

Russian Roulette Probability (rrprob)The RRprob is the probabilit y of terminating the path randomly during raytracing. This value should be leftas the default. A value of zero allows OctaneRender to determine the value.

Ray Epsilon (rayepsilon)The ray epsilon is the distance to offset new r ays so they don't intersect with the originating geometry. This

value should be left as the default.




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OTOY - OctaneRender for Graphisoft ArchiCAD Manual - Chapter 2 - Section 6 .3

Maximum Samples (maxsamples)This sets the maximum number of samples per pixel beforethe rendering process stops. The higher the number of sam-

ples per pixel, the cleaner the render. There is no rule as tohow many samples per pixel are required for a good render.

Filter Size (filtersize)This sets the pixel size for lter for the render. This can im -prove aliasing artifacts in the render. If the lter is set toohigh, the image can become blurry.

Alpha Channel (alphachannel)This option removes the background and renders it astransparant (zero alpha). This can be useful if the user wantsto composite the render over another image and does not wantthe background to be present.

Keep Environment (keep_environment)This option is used in conjuction with the Alpha Channel set-

ting. It allows the background to be rendered with zero alphabut is still visible in the nal render. This allows even furtherexiblity in compositing images.



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Alpha Shadows (alphashadows)If alpha maps are used in the scene, this setting controls whether the shadows will calculated fromthe mesh geometry or from the alpha map.

Exploration Strength (exporation_strength)This speci es how long the kernel investigates good paths before it tries to nd a new path. Low valuescan create a noisy image while larger values can create a splotchy image.

Direct Light Importance (direct_light_importance)The direct light importance makes the kernel focus more on paths with indirect light. For example,imagine sunlight through a window creates a bright spot on the oor. If the direct light impor tance is 1,

the kernel would sample this area a lot, although it becomes clean very quickly. If the direct lightimportance is reduced, the kernel reduces its efforts to sample that area and focuses more on moretricky areas that are harded to render.

Max Rejects (maxrejects)This can control the bias of the render. By reducing the value, the result will be more biased, but therender time will be shorter.



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6.4 Deep Channel Kernel

The deep_channel_kernel creates false-color images of thescene, containing various types of information about the scene.In scenes where the environment is visible you should enablethe alpha channel.

The following settings are available:

Geometric normals: the vectors perpendicular tothe triangle faces of the mesh.

Shading normals: the interpolated normals used forshading. This does not take into account the bumpmap of the object. For objects without smoothingthis is identical to the geometric normals.

Position: The position of the rst intersec tion point.

Z-depth: The distance between the intersectionpoint and the camera, measured parallel to theview vec tor.

Refer to Chapter 4 Section 4.4 of the OctaneRender Standalone

Edition User Manual.



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Material ID: Every material pin is represented as a separate color. Texture Coordinates

For display these values are scaled to get values approximately between 0 and 1. All tone mapping set tingsexcept for min_display_samples and gamma are ignored. Exposure is enabled for Z-depth, and will indicatethe value which gets mapped to white. To save these channels you should use untonemapped E XR.

6.5 Adjusting Rayepsilon

The rayepsilon pin in the kernel nodes is used to ensure that geometr y does not cast shadows on itself, soprovides a gap between surfaces when calculating shadows. For close-up rendering, it should be set low, so

that these gaps are not visible. For distance renders, where the camera is a long way from the renderedgeometry, the rayepsilon will need to be increased , since the geometry being rendered will be a long wayfrom the camera and the vertices will appear to the Octane renderer to be at the same points in space (andthus cause shadow artifac ts with a low rayepsilon).

In summary:

For close-up interior rendering, the recommended rayepsilon is 0.01.

For exterior renders, the recommended rayepsilon is 0.075.

Note: A rayepsilon of 0.075 = 7.5cms.



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7. Octane Camera

The Octane camera position, target, up vector and fov (Field ofView) are all taken from the current ArchiCAD camera. Only

non-orthographic cameras can be rendered in the OctaneRender Viewport. The current ArchiCAD camera must also bescaled to 100% (which is the default), in order to be rendered inthe Octane Render Viewport.

To move the Octane camera, simply move the current Archi-CAD camera. The Octane camera will be updated whenever youmove or rotation the ArchiCAD camera.

If the A/F button (focus pick) is enabled on the Viewport, youcan click in the Octane Render Viewpor t to set the Octane focal-Depth parameter to the element distance that you clicked on.Doing so will also disable the autofocus pin.

For interior renders, there may be situations where the camerais positioned inside a wall. In this case, increase the nearClip-Depth to remove the wall from the rendered geometry.



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It is not recommended that you adjust the scale pin unless you are in othographic mode, since the fov valuewill override the scale.



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8.2 Emitters

ArchiCAD materials which have an Emission Percent greater than the plugin Con guration Emission Per -cent will be converted to an Octane diffuse emitter material. These type of materials will typically belights, and you will need to adjust the power setting on the emission node (it will generally be too high).Some ArchiCAD materials have been incorrectly con gured and have a high emission percent when theyshouldn't and you will need change the emission pin to null emission on the Octane Material in thesecases.




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8.3 Image Based Lighting

To setup Image Based Lighting for a scene, select the Set lighting to Image Based Light option from theAdditional Options popup in the Settings tab.



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Then to select an image (ie. a lightprobe image) to illuminate the scene, select the texture node from theenvironment pin in the Settings tree of the plugin. Then click the image button in the Node Parameters box.Then select the HDRI you wish to use to illuminate the scene.

Once the new image map is loaded, open the V iewport and adjust the scene lighting levels by changing thepower slider in the environment node. Once you have the right light level, it is recommended that youexport the rendertarget so that if you need to re-use that image in the future, you can simply import therendertarget rather than selecting the image and nding the right power levels again. To do this, selectExport Render target Settings from the Additional Options popup.

NOTE: Octane currently supports lat/long HDRI maps.




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9. Materials and Texture interface

9.1 Materials

OctaneRender has 5 basic materials.

9.1.1 Diffuse Material

The Diffuse value gives the mater ial its color.

Bump / NormalBoth the Bump and Normal channels can load images to control the amount of bump mapping and nor-mal mapping. The Bump channel should be set to oatimage to load a bump map. The Normal channelshould be set to the image data t ype to load a full color normal map.



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OpacityOpacity sets the transparency of the material. Setthe data type to alphaimage(if the image has an al-

pha channel) or oatimage (for black/white images)to load an image to set the transparency (use the In-vert checkbox if necessary to adjust whether black orwhite regions are considered transparent.

Normal SmoothingNormal Smoothing is a Boolean value that setswhether to smooth the normals of all meshes shar-

ing that material. When off, the materials can be fac-eted and polygonal.

EmissionThe Emission setting controls whether the materialacts as a light source.

OTOY - OctaneRender for Graphisoft ArchiCAD Manual - Chapter 2 - Section 9.1.1



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9.1.2 Glossy Material

Glossy materials have the following parametersto adjust:

Diffuse (diffuse)The value gives the material its color.

Specularity (specular)The value determines the amount of specularity onthe mesh.

Film Width ( lmwidth)This controls the thickness of a optical, thin lm onthe material. This is useful in creating rainbow or oilslick effects.

Film Index ( lmindex)This controls the Index of Refrac tion of the thin lm.



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RoughnessThe roughness determines the amount of re ection that will be present. A low roughness value willcreate blurry re ections and a high value will produce a mirror like re ection.

Bump / NormalBoth the Bump and Normal channels can load images to control the amount of bump mapping andnormal mapping (respectively). The Bump channel should be set to oatimage to load a bump map.The Normal channel should be set to the image data t ype to load a full color normal map.

OpacityOpacity sets the tr ansparency of the material. Set the data t ype to alphaimage(if the image has an al-pha channel) or oatimage(for black/white images) to load an image to set the transparency (use theInvert checkbox if necessary to adjust whether black or white regions are considered transparent.

Normal SmoothingNormal Smoothing is a Boolean value that sets whether to smooth the normals of all meshes shar-ing that material. When off, the materials can be faceted and polygonal.



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9.1.3 Specular Material

Specular materials have the following parameters

to adjust:

Re ectionThe Re ection value determines the glossiness ofthe mesh.

TransmissionThe Transmission value gives the base color to themesh.

IndexThe Index represents the Index of Refraction ofthe material. Standard values of Index of Refrac-tion (IOR) can be readily found via searching theinternet. Glass typically has a value of 1.53 andwater 1.33.




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Film Width ( lmwidth)This controls the thickness of a optical, thin lm on the material . This is useful in creating rainbowor oil slick effects.

Film Index ( lmindex)This controls the Index of Refraction of the thin lm.

Bump / NormalBoth the Bump and Normal channels can load images to control the amount of bump mappingand normal mapping (respectively). The Bump channel should be set to oatimage to load abump map. The Normal channel should be set to the image data type to load a full colornormal map.

OpacityOpacity sets the transparency of the material. Set the data type to alphaimage(if the imagehas an alpha channel) or oatimage(for black/white images) to load an image to set thetransparency (use the Invert checkbox if necessary to adjust whether black or white regionsare considered transparent.

Normal SmoothingNormal Smoothing is a Boolean value that sets whether to smooth the normals of all meshessharing that material. When off, the materials can be faceted and polygonal.




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Dispersion Coef cient (dispersion_coef cient_B)The dispersion in OctaneRender is based on Cauchy's equation which has two terms: A which

is the index of refraction and B which is the dispersion coef cient. Increasing the value increasesthe amount of coloration and dispersion in the object and in caustics .

AbsorptionAbsorption means that the material slightly absorbs light while passing through. The colorresulting from this absorption is dependent on the distance light travels through the material.With increased distance it will get darker, and if the absorption is colored it will get moresaturated.

Absorption Color (absorption_color)The absorption color gives the spectrum remaining from white light after traveling through thematerial for a certain distance. Only constant colors are supported correctly.

Depth of Absorption (depth_of_absorption)The Depth of Absorption speci es the aforementioned distance (in meters). The smallerthisdistance, the stronger the absorption will be.



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9.1.4 Mix Mater ial

The Material Mix option is used to combine two

different materials. It accepts any two materialnodes and a texture to control the mix. In the ex-ample below, a white glossy material is mixed witha red specular material. A checks texture node isused to control the mixing of the two materials .

9.1.5 Portal Material

The Portal Material option is used in pathtracingtype kernels, eg pathtracing and PMC. (not direct-lighting/ambient occlusion).



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9.2.1 Blackbody Emission

The Blackbody Emission type uses Colour Tem-perature (in Kelvin) and Power to control the colourand intensity of the light.


9.2 Emissions

In order to use a mesh as a light source, it needs to be changed to a Diffuse material type. The Emission

parameter has three different options.



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9.2.2 Texture Emission

This allows any valid texture type to set the lightintensity. This can be used to create neat effectssuch as TV screens by using an Image Texture asthe source. NOTE: Geometry in the ArchiCAD scene with anAmbient_Value > 1 will be converted to a Diffusematerial in Octane with a power of the ArchiCADambient intensity.



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9.2.3 Null/No Emission

This sets the diffuse material as a standard diffusematerial with no light emission.

The following settings are listed for the Blackbody emis-sion settings, but many of the settings are shared withthe Texture emission settings. The main difference iswhether the colour comes from the Blackbody tempera-ture or from the texture set tings of the diffuse material.

Temperature - The temperature (in K) of the light emis-sion.

Power - This is the wattage of the light source. Each lightin the scene should be set to its real world wattage. Forexample, a desk lamp could be set to 25 watts, a ceilinglamp to 100 watts, and an LED light to 0.25 watts. Thissetting should not be used to balance the lighting powerof the scene.



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Ef ciency or Texture - This setting is used to set the ef ciency of the light source. No light is 100% ef cientat delivering the power at the speci ed wattage (a 100 watt light bulb does not actually deliver 100 watts oflight). The ef ciency setting can be used to enter the real-world values.

These values can be used to create very re-alistic light settings. For example, a stand-ard 100 watt incandescent bulb would onlybe approximately 2.0% ef cient where as a25 watt compact uorescent light will be 10%ef cient. These will both produce around thesame quantity of light in real life.

Orientation - This setting is used to adjustthe direction the light is pointed in the scene.This setting only affects lights using a non-uniform distributions (textures or IES les).

Distribution - The distribution controls thepattern of the light. This can be set to an

oattexture and an image or IES le can beloaded.




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9.3 Mediums

Refer to Chapter 5 Section 5.9 of

the OctaneRender

StandaloneEdition User Manual.

OctaneRender has two types of mediums: Absorption andScattering.

9.3.1 Absorption Medium

Absorption means that the material slightly absorbslight while passing through. The color resultingfrom this absorption is dependent on the distancelight travels through the material. With increaseddistance it will get lighter, and if the absorption iscolored it will get more desaturated. It works in asubstractive way, so you need to con gure the in -verted colour instead to get an absorption colourdesired.



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9.3.2 Scattering Medium

This is a medium with single-scattering SSS, andalso absorption. To use this medium you need tocreate a volume, it will not work correc tly on simplesurfaces.

You can use it to create true unbiased SSS (althoughnot multiple-scattering yet), using various param-eters, including scattering texture, emission tex tureand various other parameters.

Note that this is single-scattering SSS, not multi-ple-scattering. It's much faster than the latter, andmuch more practical, although it does not allow afew things such as volumetric caustics.




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9.4 Textures

The Texture types allow for creating very exible materials.

These are used to create patterns that can be used alone or in combinationwith the Mapping and Colour textures to create memory ef cient, proceduraltextures that, in turn, can be used to create textures, bump maps and otheradvanced materials with minimal impact to GPU memory.

It is therefore advantageous to explore creating materials using these tex-tures before resorting to image based textures.

9.4.1 Checks Mix Texture

The Check procedural texture is useful for making stripes, checkerboard and grid patterns. It is controlled by a oat3 value. It is mostuseful when mixed with other textures.




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9.4.2 FloatImage (Gray Scale)

The image is interpreted as gray scale even if it is a full colourimage, thus saving GPU ram. The Inver t checkbox can be usedto invert the image (useful for bump and opacity maps.)

9.4.3 Image (Color Image)

Image textures use image les to create the texture.




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9.4.4 Marble Texture

The Marble texture is a procedural texture that canbe used to create marble-like noise. It is similar to

a turbulence texture but more ne-tuned to createmarble-like patterns.


An image texture is used for the parameter (mesh must be UV mapped prior to export to properlyuse the Image type). The image is interpreted as being full colour even if it is a grey scale image, andtherefore taking up more GPU memory.

When selecting an image, you can select from the list of ArchiCAD images, Octane images, or loadfrom disk.



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9.4.5 Mix Texture

The Mix textures are used for mixing two texturestogether (either linearly or according to a cosinewave).

For example, you place a Checks Mix combined witha GaussianSpectrum.




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9.4.6 Turbulence Texture

The Turbulence texture can be used to create manydifferent effects based on banded noise. This ex -ible texture can be used to create wood, marble,

esh, and many other useful textures.




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10 Geometry Proxies and Instancing

Geometry Proxies

Geometry proxies are where an ArchiCAD scene element is used as a placeholder for an external OBJ le. Todo this, add an ArchiCAD Object element to the scene positioned where you want the OBJ le to appear. Itdoesnt matter what Object you use, since it will not appear in the render.



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Now start the OctaneRender for ArchiCAD plugin, go to the Materials tab and select the Object you added in theArchiCAD preview window.

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Because the chair object is not yet a proxy, the proxy button is Not a proxy. Click that button to setup the proxyinformation.

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l k h l l b l d h l h l h b ll h


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Click the OBJ Select File button to load the proxy OBJ le. Then Close. The Not a proxy button will change toIs a proxy to indicate that object has a proxy.

Now you can open the Viewport to see the result. You will most likely need to scale and rotation the OBJ le to

get the result you are looking for, as has been done below. As you adjust sliders in the Geometry Proxy Detail sscreen, the Viewport is immediately updated.

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NOTE M i l f OBJ l h d f ll i f h OBJ l S if bj i d 5 i ll 5


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NOTE: Materials for an OBJ le are shared for all instances of the OBJ le. So if tree.obj is used 5 time, all 5instances will share the same Octane materials.

NOTE2: The proxy information is saved to the ArchiCAD Object, so if you copy and paste the Object, the proxy

information will be copy and pasted too.

Copy and Pasting Proxy Information

Select a proxy host Object and click the copy (in the Materials tab of the plugin) to copy the proxy info into theproxy clipboard. Then select a proxy or non-proxy Object, and click Paste to paste that info to that Object. It isrecommended that you do this whilst the Octane Viewport is not open (since you will need to refresh the sceneto see the result).

You can copy an ArchiCAD Object which is a proxy hos t into the ArchiCAD clipboard , and paste that Object intoanother ArchiCAD scene and the proxy information will be pasted too. Remember to save all the proxy materi-als as defaults rs t so they get picked up when you paste in the new scene.

The plugin proxy clipboard is cleared when you open a scene, or start a new scene. So you cannot copy theproxy info from one scene proxy into another scene proxy.

In summary, to get the proxy information for an Objec t from one ArchiCAD scene to another, use the ArchiCADclipboard to copy and paste the ArchiCAD Object.

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I t i g


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Instancing

Any geometry proxy OBJ le can be instanced via the Octane scatter node. The setup of this is handled auto -matically you simply need to specify a transform CSV le. The tranform CSV le will appear as follows (refer

to the Otoy forums for more detail s of how to create these transform les)

-0.62431361,0.030042023,-0.7055535,-8.0608892,0.466425251415,0.450927870912,-0.315290481408,0.0587645647066,0.626642021525,-0.305702727477,-0.541656398413,6.11109206252

-0.43438864,0.29489794,-0.87598035,4.6149906,0.136319291528,1.37187639156,0.166443532267,-0.188988202778,0.890350115699,-0.0661701051815,-0.452833197394,1.21890752159

-0.48941698,0.8175662,0.66365019,-4.5686788,-0.0575978148745,1.06715131321,-0.671893700617,-0.20106620412,-0.870145899492,-0.530481590811,-0.328803968126,-0.368719910853

-0.69556693,-0.25259736,-0.57225774,6.1048522,-0.443066979564,0.519450844134,-0.129596876879,-0.0438018755731,0.565578535567,0.0962841284689,-0.808136867406,-7.09126028028

Each line of the transform contains 12 numbers, repre-senting a the rst 3 rows of a 44 transformation ma -trix.

The following image shows 1000 instances of the treeOBJ le that is the proxy of the chair Object.

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Generating Instance CSV Files


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Generating Instance CSV Files

The plugin can generate transform les based on the geometry of a Mesh in your scene. To do this:

There must be at least 1 Mesh int he scene The mesh must not have any arcs in it You must have loaded a proxy OBJ le for this proxy host rst

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The Number of Transforms is the number of instances the generator will attached to create (it will createslightly less than this number, since some transforms which fall outside the range of the Mesh will not be saved.The high limit is 100,000.

The Rotation and Scale randomness factors all add some randomness to each transforms rotation and scale.0 represent no randomness, and 1 represents 100% randomness for that item.

To generate the transform, click the Generate button and the specify a transform CSV lename. Once thetransform has been saved, that lename will be automatically entered into the Scatter CSV File eld in theGeometry Proxy Details window.

NOTE 1: The proxy and scattering information for an Object is at tached to the ArchiCAD object, so if you copy andpaste a proxied object, the proxy and scatter details are also copied to the pasted Object.

NOTE 2: Meshes are listed in the Surface Mesh combo box by their ID. In some cases ArchiCAD will give 2meshes the same ID, in which case you will see the same ID twice in the combo box. To resolve this, simplyselect one of the meshes in the ArchiCAD preview window and change its ID name.

NOTE 3: There are limitations in the plugins ability to accurately detect holes in a Mesh, specially with curved

edges. If you are scattering onto a mesh with holes, keep the holes simple and do not used arc edges for thehole.

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11 Limitations


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OTOY - OctaneRender for Graphisoft ArchiCAD Manual - Chapter 2 - Section11

11. Limitations

- Instancing is not currently supported, but planned for a future release- Material picker does not work for Curtain Wall objec ts (go into edit mode to get material s for these elements)

- The ArchiCAD Perspective camera roll angle is not transposed to the Octane thinlens "up" pin. If you need torotate the render, manually adjust the "up" vector.- Image map rotation is not currently supported by OctaneRender, so any rotation of texturemaps in ArchiCADmaterials is ignored in the texture conversion to Octane.- Axonometry views are not supported. For orthographic renders, use a Perspective camera, and enable theorthographic pin on the camera node in the Settings Tab of the plugin.- The Octane "checks" node does not work correctly on slanted surfaces. Use a texture map instead.- Navigating an ArchiCAD via the Explore options does not work while the Octane Viewport is open

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OTOY 2013

http//render.otoy.com

info@ octanerender.com

OctaneRender for use with Graphisoft ArchiCAD Design Software OTOY, INC. 2013.All rights reserved.

OctaneRender and OTOY and their logos are trademarks of OTOY, INC.

Graphisoft and ArchiCAD are registered trademarks of Graphisoft SEand/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the U.S. and/or other countries.

octanearchicad plugin v1.10 manual

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