OTOY Forums

Hi there,
I love the look of this software, I've just ordered a new graphics card so I can use the demo, but while I wait for delivery i have a few questions....

Are there any plans to expand the number of file formats that can be imported? I work for a design agency and a large percentage of what I do involves ProE IGES and STEP files. I've read about people using MOI to convert surfaces to polygons but it would be nice if files went straight into Octane. The design industry must be a massive potential market.

Are there any procedural textures in Octane?
Can I project textures or do I have to UV map everything before importing?
Are there any limits on the resolution of renderings or does memory become an issue above a certain resolution?

Thanks for any answers in advance.
Can't wait to play with it!

Seb

Hi,

We are currently not implementing those formats.
there are a lot of them and we'd currently propose to triangulate them via an intermediate tool.
we might offer a more advanced version of octane for CAD users with support for these formats in the near future,
after we've completed our first final version.

Radiance

That sounds good. It would be great for us arch and mechanical design people.

Cheers.

Chris

...and Industrial/Product Designers.

I am not 100% sure, but there might be license fees that PTS and Dassault Systems charge in return for direct access to their native formats. Obviously not for IGES/STEP.

i'm thinking of maybe laumching an 'Octane Render for CAD' which has support for various CAD import models, via 3rd party libraries.
However, these won't be cheap. it could end up costing 1000 euros for a license as these SDKs are not cheap at all.

Would CAD users be willing to pay such money for a CAD model import in Octane ?

Radiance

Personally, no, because I already shell out enough $ on ProE, and also because I have a pipeline for converting IGES or STEP files into meshes.

In saying that, if you went the IGES STEP route (no native support, assuming alot cheaper) then possibly yes.

If I were still in a consultancy, then they would look at direct import, for sure. People really like the hypershot/shot/blah direct import function, especially for quick turn around.

I'm just a student using the free student versions of Solidworks and Alias Automotive, so I'm definetly NOT interested an expensive CAD version.

Especially not since the previously mentioned file formats STEP and IGES are free of licensing and also often the only way of transferring files between CAD packages.

But perhaps I'm a very small minority since I'm a student who actually wants to pay for software.

Then again, if Octane Render won't support IGES, it's completely worthless to me since it's not worth the time investment effort.

I 'm an industrial designer and work with a variety of CAD packages.
I think just dealing with meshes and doing it well should be Octane's goal.

The other formats have their idiosyncrasies and dealing with them would be a distraction.
I would also not want to pay additional for expertise I already have/share with design colleagues.

My 2 cents.

Cheers!

eobet wrote:I'm just a student using the free student versions of Solidworks and Alias Automotive, so I'm definetly NOT interested an expensive CAD version.

Especially not since the previously mentioned file formats STEP and IGES are free of licensing and also often the only way of transferring files between CAD packages.

But perhaps I'm a very small minority since I'm a student who actually wants to pay for software.

Then again, if Octane Render won't support IGES, it's completely worthless to me since it's not worth the time investment effort.

Hi,

Why don't you buy moi3d or something, it's cheap and can convert your IGES to OBJ for octane.

Radiance

You "should" be able to export as stl which blender can import natively. From there you can export to obj or use the octane plugin for blender. This all depends on your modeling package, but check with blender as they have a pretty good import library and there should be something you can use.