I am very happy to see that the new Octane + Blender plugin is available. $99.00 is more than worth it, but I have a few questions first. This plug in does not actually seem to be a plug in but an actual modified release of blender.
Question 1: Am I correct? Is this in fact a complete blender build that we have to download and use. It is not actually a standard plug in? What about all of the other plugins/scripts for blender that I already have? Is everything intact and normal in this build? Has anything been disabled?
Question 2: What does "Our render server that blender communicates with to do the rendering" mean exactly? (on the download page http://render.otoy.com/shop/blender_plugin.php) Does it mean my computer has to have internet access to render? I hope that it is merely referring to activating the blender-octane license.
Question 3: Can we really expect, within reason, for otoy to keep up with blender's breakneck pace of releases? I do not wish to be stuck using an outdated version of blender 6 months into the next release.
I would appreciate it if these questions can be answered. Thank you for your time.