good job!

Hi everyone,

Much of the questions everyone is asking are explained in the FAQ section of the announcement, so please read it completely…

I will provide some answers here to most other questions posed as replies to this thread. Sorry i can't individually reply to users in particular, as there are too much questions and many are identical or cover the same basic concept.

I will also update the FAQ in the announcement a bit to reflect some of this information to make things more clear.

Here goes:


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* What about other plugin products for example: Maya, Sketchup, Lightwave, C4D, Modo, Blender, Rhino, etc ???

The 3ds max plugin product is our 'pilot' plugin.
It's development started already quite a while ago, and it's development also included developing an SDK (to allow plugins like this one to be developed).

We did not want to have a community based / open initiative (like the exporters scripts we already have had for a long time, developed by community members), as we want to produce complete, commercial plugin products like this one with guaranteed future, longevity and customer support.

We are currently developing half a dozen plugin products, some of them with SDK licensed partners.

These plugin products will be %100 identical in look and functionality (to the degree it's possible in the particular 3d application it's for) and they will be sold and priced the same as the 3ds max plugin. They will be announced and sold via our website when they are, on an individual basis, ready.

It would be very frustrating for customers who are anxiously awaiting a plugin for their particular 3d package, if we announce a plugin for it, and a few weeks later, due to unforeseen factors, the plugin development is delayed or stopped. Therefore, we will announce them, just like we announced this plugin for 3ds max, when the time is right, a few weeks before they are ready, and we can show the plugin in a demo video at work.

We cannot announce which other plugins are currently in development for these reasons, so please don't ask yet, just be a bit patient until we announce each one.
We can say that they will be announced soon (during the next 1-2 months), and, we are constantly receiving additional SDK applications, so don't worry about your particular/favorite 3d package, we are confident that yours will be supported sooner or later.

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* Why does the whole scene need to be transferred to OctaneRender and revoxelised when you change geometry (eg add or move an object), and will this end up with the same problem currently with the export script and the standalone version of OctaneRender, where it can take 1 to 5 minutes to export the geometry to an OBJ file, then launch octanerender standalone, open the OBJ and voxelise it ? As this end up taking 5 minutes for a heavy scene (1M+ polygons) and the actual rendering time is only 1-2 minutes, the whole process is too slow to render animations. Why is this present in the demonstration video of the new plugin product ?

As stated in the FAQ section of the announcement, This version of the plugin product is built against OctaneRender® beta 2.55.
We are currently developing a completely new geometry processing framework for the next beta 2.6 series of releases, which will support moving/scaling/rotating objects (eg, editing transforms) in real time, and won't require a complete transfer and revoxelisation of the scene whenever geometry changes.

This will result in real-time moving/scaling/translating of objects, and the ability to render animations without transferring the whole new geometry to the engine.
When a next animation frame is rendered, only the changes to the transforms (rotation, scale and translation) will be applied to octane, just a simple and quickly as changing a parameter of a material currently.
As a result, you will not have to wait up to a minute to reload and revoxelise the whole scene whenever changing geometry transforms (eg editing object positions), it will all happen instantly. Even if you do add a new object, only that object will have to be loaded into octane's memory space and voxelised (not the whole scene), and will take only a few seconds.

The plugin is developed to accommodate our beta 2.6 branch with the new geometry system once 2.6 it's finished.
We are currently aiming to finish the 2.6 geometry framework and release it around the same time as the first beta program release of the plugin, so chances are big, that the first plugin version will have this new system.
If not, it will definitely follow shortly after in an update.

Still, disregarding the new beta 2.6 framework, the way the plugin currently works with beta 2.55, is completely different than exporting an animation frame by frame from your 3d animation package. It does not need to do the slow process of writing an ASCII OBJ file, launching octane, parsing/decoding the file and then voxelising it.
The plugin copies the mesh data straight into OctaneRender®'s engine memory space and what took 1 minute before now only takes 5-7 seconds.

The demo video attached shows this, the model has 1 million vertices, and it takes approximately 40 second for a complete transfer of the whole scene, including voxelisation and start of rendering. This would have took a least 5-7 minutes with the old export script to OBJ file, instead of 40 seconds.

So rest assured, the problem of losing a lot of time exporting and voxelising for rendering animations is reduced to very acceptable times with our current plugin product built against beta 2.55, and will be completely gone when built against the upcoming beta 2.6.

We hope to give you a demo of the 2.6 3ds max plugin animation export speed and object transform editing in real time around or before the release of this new 3ds max plugin product.

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* And what about the GPU memory? If I have a large scene and working in 3D MAX + OCTANE takes all of Graphics Memory. So I would like to close MAX and open a scene only in Octane to do 6000x4000 resolution. Is it posible to open a scene only in OCTANE after setting materials and lights in 3D MAX?

This would be identical to having a session of 3ds max open, with your heave scene loaded, and running octane at the same time. We recommend using 2 GPUs for a high-end setup, and having Octane use the 2nd GPU, so 3ds max doesn't end up using a large part of your 2nd Octane GPU's video memory.

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* Will the OctaneRender viewport be integrated or support dual-screen ?

Yes, although it's not demonstrated in the video, remember it's still an alpha product until we release it in beta form next month. We are adding support to have the interactive octane viewport embedded.
Multiple screen is already supported (but could not be shown in the demo presentation as we couldn't record both screens at once).
You can move the octanerender viewport to your 2nd monitor and make it as large/small as you want, with instant feedback while working on max on your other monitor.

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* Can i import OCM and LiveDB shared materials into 3ds max's octane material editing ?

Not at this time, but we are adding support for it during the next months. It would be a waste not to have access to the many materials created and submitted by the community to our LiveDB. We are adding functionality to our SDK to access these and our new plugin products will have the possibility of using them, once implemented.

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* Will 3ds max feature 'xxx' be supported, or other things like Render Elements / Passes ?

The 3ds max plugin implements all OctaneRender® functionality inside 3ds max.
For it to support these, we need to develop the feature in the OctaneRender® engine first.
We do have support for passes and deep images on our roadmap for post beta 2.6 development.

Regarding all other features, as soon as OctaneRender® supports it, the 3ds max plugin will too, and we adjust our development roadmap regularly based on customer feedback and demand.

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* Regarding all questions regarding licensing, price, versioning, upgrades and the reason why we are charging 99 EUR for a plugin license (which requires an OctaneRender® license to work)

The reason why we charge the same price for the plugin as the engine is not only based on value, but also on work and customer support.
We need to provide customer support, and have employees that can provide specific support for the 3d application in question. Most of the resale price of a beta license goes to this.

If you buy a plugin license, you will have to use the exact same version of the plugin as the engine.
So, if you have OctaneRender® v1.0 beta 2.62 installed, you will have to use the plugin version v1.0 beta 2.62 too.
When we release 2.63, you will also have to download and install the 2.63 version of the plugin to use it.

With an OctaneRender® beta program license, you get all current versions, all upcoming beta versions, and a v1.0 final version, plus v1.x update (1.1, 1.2, etc…)
It's exactly the same for the plugin.

Purchasing an OctaneRender® beta license, and an OctaneRender® for 3ds max® plugin beta license, will allow you to use both all the way up to v2.0 final (which is still a long time away into the future), when you will have to purchase an upgrade.

The bundle license gives you a copy of each. If you already have an Octanerender® license and buy a bundle, you'll have 2 engine licenses and one plugin license,
so you will be able to use octane in 3ds max on one machine, and use the standalone version on the same machine and on another machine.

It's very simple:

- already have an OctaneRender® license ?
Just purchase an OctaneRender® for 3ds max® plugin license, and you can use both on one machine.
- don't have an OctaneRender® license yet ?
Purchase the bundle and you will have the same as above.

Note that you cannot use one OctaneRender® for 3ds max® on multiple computers with multiple licenses of OctaneRender® standalone installed.
Note that if you have 5 PCs with 5 OctaneRender® licenses on it, you cannot buy one plugin product license and then install/use it on all 5 PCs,
you can use it on only one machine, or you have to buy 5 plugin licenses for each PC.

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I hope this explains what everyone is asking about.
If not, please ask by replying to the thread...

Replies to all your other questions are answered in the FAQ, please read it carefully…

Thanks,
The OctaneRender Team

thanks radiance for the clarifications, so at this time is not possible to create complex materials with the standalone plugin like mixing materials nodes and so on, right?
ciao beppe

Thanks for the explanation Radiance.
That made many things clear.
I have one remaining question concerning the plug in purchase.
Lets say I have a Octane Render Standalone (beta) license and also purchased an Octane for Maya license.
Will I have to pay the same price (99€) for additional plugins like Octane for Rhino?

For what I've seen the mix material is available, and if you can instance paste maps (which I'm not sure it's possible) into the slots then you can do any material... what maps are currently available in the max plugin? will you support 3ds max native maps such as gradient and procedurals?

muchas gracias radiance, aunque veo limitado las versiones del 3ds max a usar este prometedor plugin, no incluye el 3ds max 2009
saludos

Regarding additional plugin licenses for other 3d apps, we will announce a pricing scheme for those once the 2nd plugin is announced.
We need to devise a system that's fair and cannot be abused...

Thanks,
Radiance

Hi,

Yes!,

You can create complex materials and textures in 3ds max, using max's material editor in a hierarchical way,
and using max 2012+'s nodegraph editor.
We will be posting a screenshot of octane material setup via nodes in max later today, to show it in action.

Radiance

I added the screenshot of the 3ds max nodegraph example to the announcement post,
here is a copy of the example:



The plugins for other 3d animation packages in development will support nodegraph based setup too, if supported by the application in question.

Radiance

I'm thrilled, this will bring me back to Octane!

Btw. what's with the promotional price that was mentioned in the 3dsmax section?

Cheers