paride4331 wrote:there is no ETA or release date about plugin or SA.
Then what is the point of having a thread called "Hello World: OctaneRender 4 is here" with a considerable amount of web marketing and Youtube videos about it? That's quite the bait-and-switch, now isn't it?
What the announcements should have said - but didn't - was that the Octane 4 CLOSED BETA is here. I mean, criminy, not even the thread title says this. That's a bit dishonest and click-baity on the marketing end, don't you think? Not the best way to treat your paying customers.
about student versions, as already mentioned, a free version will be released for everyone.
If an updated student version is not available now, it depends on Otoy's future planning.
The problem is, why hasn't it been updated in the past 4 years? If you're going to have an entire marketing post on the website surrounding how Octane would be available with a free student license (which OTOY did), at least keep the software up to date enough so that it doesn't go completely obsolete.
The problem isn't that there isn't a free, non-trial version available. The problem is that not long after the student version was released and marketed, 3DS Max updated and was no longer supporting what quickly became an obsolete plugin. This means for the better part of 4 years, the plugin wouldn't even work anymore if you tried to install it. This screws over teachers who want to use Octane in their curriculum because the software no longer works.
I honestly do not understand what the problem is; are you not satisfied that Otoy will make the best existing render engine GPU available for free?
[/quote][/quote]
That's not remotely what I said. I was asking about student licenses, which require a valid e-mail address from an accredited educational institution (such as @nyu.edu, for example), which only students of those institutions have access to.
Again, the problem is that the versions of the plugin released for student use won't even work with current versions of Maya and 3DS Max, so for teachers who want to build a 3D modeling and rendering curriculum using Octane, it's unusable. There is zero acceptable reason for why it wasn't updated even a little, or with certain limitations, in four years. As a company, it's something they should be on top of, but it seems like there's a lot they're behind on, based on remarks by other posters here...
As for "the best rendering engine," that's a bit of a longshot of a subjective statement, but your favoritism is duly noted.
Oh, and for what it's worth... the denoiser works fine on my single GTX1080TI, so an extra one isn't needed to benefit from the feature.