Hi Beppe,
thanks for this update. We are aware, that every progress brings in its own complexity generating again new priorities. But unfortunalety it raises expectations as well. And we enjoyed all the progress in the last years, Otoy/Octane did.
Therefore I think we all keep the fingers crossed, that the "exploring the possbilities" is more a reliable roadmap
In-between-Solution approach.
I am not that deep into the topic as you are obviously, but
maybe one kind of solution could be:
instead of developing a perfect synched "realtime" cross platform rendering, at least to have some kind of management/Render server app, e.g. similar to maxons team render. A small octane application, where we could load up scenes and the "compiling", scene-distrubution and transformation to every octane node would be made automatically via batch job. This App could generate the distribution to PC/WIN and/or Linux and/or Mac Clients. They would get their own dedicated scene rendering part (eg separated within their platform specific connectivity). A bit like your "Cloud Rendering" where everything is collected, uploaded and automatically managed.
Avoiding the hassle of realtime sync (eg several clients collaboratively working on ONE sequence or one big rendering image). By slicing the sequence and dedicate single frames to a specific node platform cluster.
Is this possible?
Situation: At the moment its a hassle:
Creating scene on Mac (Cinema 4d), preparing distribution to production Render System via assembling files, data, textures. Copying to PC/WIN Production Render Network Master (Cinema 4d). Starting intial test renderings on Win network master (ensure valid collection of assets), again setting manually parameters (res, output file, datapathes, kernels etc.), starting render sequence. Counting Frames, Re-render drops.
To be honest – this is an annoying, time-consumptioning "process", which can - in worst case - delay and blow up a whole production scheduling.
A comparison:
In (by the way very stable) Redshift I put my job into team render app, all aviable nodes and team render clients (independent from platform) immediately are identified and connected, and all render job settings are automatically set/synched. Even coop on one 20k Single Frame is possible.
Again, the quality of octane is impressive and the only reason, why I stick with you, despite the fact that there is no such a good renderer aviable for mac ... but some other are catching up and offering a very attractive cross platform batch render process.
Thanks for your valuable work for creatives, your engagement again. Please let us know what is possible and what not ...
bepeg4d wrote:@nibbler and vurt:
Yes, we are in late with M1 support, probably for someone else was more easy, but having a spectral unbiased render engine native for M1 was not trivial!
And we are making big progress at each update.
Now in XB2, Standalone for M1 is almost complete.
The plan is to have a full native plugins SDK for M1 in XB3.
Then we will explore the possibility to have cross platform Network rendering between CUDA and Metal.
Fingers crossed!
ciao,
Beppe