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My view, which I have no ties to Refractive Software other than as a user, is that OpenCL just isn't there yet. At least one of the other unnamed GPU rendering companies came by and told me just that. They are having some serious issues try to get things working with OpenCL and are probably more like a year from getting anything workable. When I told another one that we were going to have an implementation of MLT at some point he looked at me like I was crazy. Said there was no way to put MLT in any fashion on the GPU. Radiance and the other developers have already broken new grounds that others have thought impossible with CUDA and gpu rendering in general. Some people think that GPU rendering is a fad and will go away. Most though think that Octane, and a few of the other gpu render engines, are on the cusp of a new era in rendering, like we are, and want in. The cost of the license is also working for Octane heavily. Users from many big animation and SFX companies are already using it and testing it. Not charging upwards of a $1000 makes this possible. I am amazed that there is one gpu render engine that is charging $3000 a license. Ouch!!

Oh, and the question I heard the most during all of Siggraph was "Are you Radiance?" or "Is Radiance here?" Even by people who aren't users yet, so Octane, and especially Radiance, is getting the word out there.

havensole wrote:....Some people think that GPU rendering is a fad and will go away.....

Highly doubt that could ever be, not with the Likes of NVIDIA backing it - It could only achieve higher bounds as time goes by

You could tell who were the 'opportunist' vendors there breaking into the GPU processing territory, and nobody comes even close to having any positive reproir (sp.) that Octane Provides. You have done a superb job obtaining a User base and Is a wonderful way of getting the faithful toward future sales - Very Few Get This! Not everybody out there has company backed write-off privileges
And a lot of us are completely alone in building our tool base. Thank you for providing such a powerful affordable base to build upon! Both you guys and the people over at Mcneel have been wonderful in your understanding of most of us out there.

I hope the GPU vendors realize how much you have attributed to their sales - as well as all the rest of the Hardware Vendors!

There was at least one render engine (cpu based) that specifically said that they were not going to develop a GPU render engine. They're a fairly big render engine, so I was pretty surprised to hear this. Yeah people shouldn't always go for the latest and greatest thing, but when the industry is leaning that way you might get left in the dust.

Nvidia was pretty happy with Octane and all the work it has done to stimulate Cuda growth and GPU sales. I would be curious to see a study on how many people bought the first gtx470/480's specifically for this kind of process vs. gaming. I know I bought mine for this purpose. Gaming is just a side effect.

If you did stop by our booth can you tell me what you thought of it?

havensole wrote:....If you did stop by our booth can you tell me what you thought of it?

Decent job for the limited space allotted for you. I Had thought, at the last moment, you guys didn't show because I was looking for 'Refractive Softwar' in the Vendor's list it was just by chance I recognized the 'Cubix' logo and found you. The Cubix product gives a lot of us something to aim for as hopefully our work progresses and I was glad to see it displayed in the break down you laid out. I'm sure you had Octane Running in the background but didn't 'pop' out as much as such an application to use with this product, that is, until somebody stopped by the booth to chat. But, good work for such short decision to attend!

Yeah. You don't realize how small 10x10 feet really is until you shove a bunch of stuff into it. Really need a bigger booth or smaller setup if we do it next year (fingers crossed). There were a lot of people confused by the listing thing. Many did not know we were there either. It might have something to do with only allowing a single company name per spot or something I am not totally sure. Siggraph is kind of weird about things like that.

havensole wrote:Yeah. You don't realize how small 10x10 feet really is until you shove a bunch of stuff into it...

wow, 10x10ft with all those GTX4xx running as hell... it should have been quite hot out there

The 6 gtx480's well all focused into a small area of the middle of the booth. It was actually nice as the A/C in the place was pretty high, e.i. it was friggin cold. My cubix box box had 2 gtx470's which didn't really put out too much heat with the cubix box. It was worth it as we were able to show enrico's garbage scene and one of his interiors rendering at full 4k resolution without any real effort.

Sounds like you did a very good job of representing Refractive

I just hope that I was able to get some new business for Octane and give the "competition" some worry.