OctaneRender™ 2020.1 XB1 [superseded by 2020.1 XB2]

[wallace]

I tested the hair - excuse me, HAIR Material - and I still can't seem, without bringing roughness to 0, to get the Jet black I was hoping to get. Also there is no Opacity node....so not sure if anything was added changed.

Hi Notiusweb,

Nothing changed in between, but what you have requested was always in my todo list.

1. I have added some general purpose pins including opacity and emission pins to the hair material, they will come in XB2, but please note that if you have a lot of strands, then tracing performance degrades using opacity map that affects each strand.

2. The hair brdf is a multiscatter specular model, so it's natural to have the specular reflection spread out evenly when roughness is high. I am not sure exactly what jet black you would want to get, is lowering the roughness giving you too much shiny specular reflection on the hair strand? If that's the case, I can probably do something about that.

[Goldorak]

Hi there,

some questions about the licensing, let me see if I've got it right:

1. As a 4.x user, the €499 Enterprise upgrade path would lead to the perpetual 2020.x like it does a new 699€ Enterprise Box License?
2. A new Enterprise Box License contains 1 (one) perpetual Standalone, 1 (one) perpetual DCC plugin and access to all other plugins as long as maintenance is doing, 1 year in this case, right? So how do I get another perpetual DCC plugin, as I like to buy one for lets say Modo and Blender also, beneath e.g. C4D and Houdini wich are already in my pipeline. Am I right that I have to buy 1 Enterprice Box for each more perpetual DCC Plugin, or are there some hidden paths to get there?
3. Theres one 1.x license left in my licenses. In the case I am right with #1., then I may upgrade the 1.x standalone to 4.x and then again upgrade it to perpetual 2020.x with the same €499?
4. If so, how long will these prices stay, until newyear?

Thanks in advance!

1) yes
2) yes. Contact help for additional perpetual DCC plug-ins, we don’t list them on the shop page anymore to avoid clutter, and because most users can get more than one plug-in for cheaper with maintenance now. But if you want to purchase them, they are available for another 250 per plug-in.
3) We only update V4 to 2020 perpetual, but yes, we can get you up to speed from 1.x to 4.x to 2020.x if you contact support
4) Due to the confusion on the upgrade page, which is our fault (and being cleaned up to help users out better), we will keep the upgrade/maintenance prices at this rate for at least this week. The 25% subscription BF discounts are currently timed to end on 12/3.

[Goldorak]

Same here, new pricing makes no sense for me, In Canadian dollars it's $45/month. I'm not making money of this, it's just a hobby.

The studio sub is under 14.95 euro/ month (for annual plan with today’s discount), which is 22 Canadian / month. There are now 4 plug-ins in the completely free tier too.

[Shamefestival]

Moving to REDSHIFT. Guys I love Octane! Finally Sub grid detail for volumes! AMAZING! However, I would stay if this software wouldn't crash every frame or frames with DENOISER on. It's horrible for animation workflow. I have to sit and nurse my computer all day long STOP and GO. This software is great. Just make it work! I'm even fine with the poly count limits and vram limits because I like optimizing, but I am dramatically losing confidence in OCTANES performance for Animation. I'm on the way out and I wish I wasn't.

[Goldorak]

Moving to REDSHIFT. Guys I love Octane! Finally Sub grid detail for volumes! AMAZING! However, I would stay if this software wouldn't crash every frame or frames with DENOISER on. It's horrible for animation workflow. I have to sit and nurse my computer all day long STOP and GO. This software is great. Just make it work! I'm even fine with the poly count limits and vram limits because I like optimizing, but I am dramatically losing confidence in OCTANES performance for Animation. I'm on the way out and I wish I wasn't.

This is almost certainly a driver issue - crashing every frames is not normal regardless of denoiser. It makes all the difference in the world when you are on the latest version of Octane with the latest studio driver. Have you contacted help desk to help you get to the bottom of this?

[JimStar]

Moving to REDSHIFT. Guys I love Octane! Finally Sub grid detail for volumes! AMAZING! However, I would stay if this software wouldn't crash every frame or frames with DENOISER on. It's horrible for animation workflow. I have to sit and nurse my computer all day long STOP and GO. This software is great. Just make it work! I'm even fine with the poly count limits and vram limits because I like optimizing, but I am dramatically losing confidence in OCTANES performance for Animation. I'm on the way out and I wish I wasn't.

Please don't forget that the GPUs overheat may be one of the reasons of your problems. I remember my wife (3D-artist too) getting same problems with interruptions of rendering of heavy animation sequences because of not enough cooling airflow to the GPUs - the issue went away after I installed watercooling on all GPUs in her home machine...
Just try to experiment with hardware first: open the machine, increase the airflow to the GPUs (maybe some additional air blower next to the machine), and see if this decreases the crash rate during animation rendering (or even eliminates interrupts completely)... Even if the crashes will become just less often (without disappearing completely) - this could tell that there is just not enough cooling...

[Notiusweb]

I tested the hair - excuse me, HAIR Material - and I still can't seem, without bringing roughness to 0, to get the Jet black I was hoping to get. Also there is no Opacity node....so not sure if anything was added changed.

Hi Notiusweb,

Nothing changed in between, but what you have requested was always in my todo list.

1. I have added some general purpose pins including opacity and emission pins to the hair material, they will come in XB2, but please note that if you have a lot of strands, then tracing performance degrades using opacity map that affects each strand.

2. The hair brdf is a multiscatter specular model, so it's natural to have the specular reflection spread out evenly when roughness is high. I am not sure exactly what jet black you would want to get, is lowering the roughness giving you too much shiny specular reflection on the hair strand? If that's the case, I can probably do something about that.

1 - I understand, that's okay with me!
2 - some lighting scenarios and HDRI's will cause the hair to look like mirror-hair with the roughness too low. But, then if I raise the roughness the hair color then goes grey and is no longer a jet black.
Off the top of my head, I think the Hair Material could use a Specular node, that way even with the low roughness the spec could be scene adjusted to be less pronounced. See, I can easily adjust spec, and apply spec maps, with other materials shaders, just not with this special 'Hair' material. So it would help retain the jet black without turning mirror in some lighting scenarios.

THX!

[Shamefestival]

Moving to REDSHIFT. Guys I love Octane! Finally Sub grid detail for volumes! AMAZING! However, I would stay if this software wouldn't crash every frame or frames with DENOISER on. It's horrible for animation workflow. I have to sit and nurse my computer all day long STOP and GO. This software is great. Just make it work! I'm even fine with the poly count limits and vram limits because I like optimizing, but I am dramatically losing confidence in OCTANES performance for Animation. I'm on the way out and I wish I wasn't.

This is almost certainly a driver issue - crashing every frames is not normal regardless of denoiser. It makes all the difference in the world when you are on the latest version of Octane with the latest studio driver. Have you contacted help desk to help you get to the bottom of this?

Always keep all drivers up to date. There are forums here that say the issue is exclusive to denoiser and also the higher res. I've tested without denoiser many times. It still crashes but after many frames. Lower resolutions with denoiser/low temps last a few frames longer, but my point is that I really am not getting the heavy animation vibe from my experience with Octane(Cinema 4D BTW) The renders i'm doing are optimized but rich with atmoshpere. I try to ask the most of the software. Everyone should, but I hear that Redshift doesn't crash and loves polygons and voxels. Will look bit less quality? Sure but I'm tired of dumbing down my projects for this software. I hate to say it but I don't think Octane is good for animation.

[Shamefestival]

Moving to REDSHIFT. Guys I love Octane! Finally Sub grid detail for volumes! AMAZING! However, I would stay if this software wouldn't crash every frame or frames with DENOISER on. It's horrible for animation workflow. I have to sit and nurse my computer all day long STOP and GO. This software is great. Just make it work! I'm even fine with the poly count limits and vram limits because I like optimizing, but I am dramatically losing confidence in OCTANES performance for Animation. I'm on the way out and I wish I wasn't.

Please don't forget that the GPUs overheat may be one of the reasons of your problems. I remember my wife (3D-artist too) getting same problems with interruptions of rendering of heavy animation sequences because of not enough cooling airflow to the GPUs - the issue went away after I installed watercooling on all GPUs in her home machine...
Just try to experiment with hardware first: open the machine, increase the airflow to the GPUs (maybe some additional air blower next to the machine), and see if this decreases the crash rate during animation rendering (or even eliminates interrupts completely)... Even if the crashes will become just less often (without disappearing completely) - this could tell that there is just not enough cooling...

Always keep all drivers up to date. There are forums here that say the issue is exclusive to denoiser and also the higher res. I've tested without denoiser many times. It still crashes but after many frames. Lower resolutions with denoiser/low temps last a few frames longer, but my point is that I really am not getting the heavy animation vibe from my experience with Octane(Cinema 4D BTW) The renders i'm doing are optimized but rich with atmoshpere. I try to ask the most of the software. Everyone should, but I hear that Redshift doesn't crash and loves polygons and voxels. Will look bit less quality? Sure but I'm tired of dumbing down my projects for this software. I hate to say it but I don't think Octane is good for animation.

[Goldorak]

Regarding animation, Octane+C4D was used for the captain marvel titles this year and the ant man titles last year, not to mention dozens of TV show titles like His Dark Materials and Catherine the Great. You should check them out when we add them to the gallery shortly. They are beautiful and show what Octane C4D can do in production on tight deadlines...