Rant after 8 years of using Octane C4D Tweet

[Frez121212]

I've been using Octane for pretty much since it came out and I love it. But after 8 years of putting up with crashes, I haven't seen much improvement in the stability of the engine.
During these 8 years I've hired 4 people and taught them how to use octane.. and each time with a new hire I get more and more embarrassed to explain how the crashes are just part of the deal.

I've learned to cope with it... I know the finicky things that make octane crash.. sending the scene to render? save before.. Closing the live viewer in a big scene? Pause the render before closing the live viewer... Scene crashing when opening? Some material causing it to crash, disable material reviews and open GL and troubleshoot the scene. Opening a scene that was made with another version of octane 5 years ago? Good luck with that.
But it shouldn't be this way. I joke about it that its Octane renders PTSD. But seriously after 8 years the only marginally stable release is version 4. At least stop calling anything less stable than that "stable"

Sorry for the rant. I work at an IOT company.. and we regularly get complaints about how unstable our software is.. and it sucks to hear it.. I know its hard to stabilize a program for hundreds if not thousands of different hardware configurations. But when there are other options out there that ARE more stable, there really is no excuse.

You take pride in how ridiculously fast your engine is.. and it REALLY IS when everything works... but with the constant crashes, you're not really faster.. if I have to redo something or troubleshoot things cuz of crashes. Please, focus on stabilizing octane.. I'd rather get no new features for the next year and just get a stable engine.

[aoktar]

As you said that there's a lot of layer which affects the stability for a Gpu renderer. Drivers/graphic cards/psu/etc... Cpu rendering has this advantage. Every calculation done in Cpu without need any driver between software and and hardware. I'm not happy to hear stability issues but I believe there's an user factor. Most of users have a habit comes from Cpu rendering. Working without caring much for optimisation and system limits. What would be great that people gives better data about problems. Then fixes would come faster. BTW did you ever send reports for crashes?

[FlowFireGames]

Can we talk about how Octane is putting up some very shady nonsense as to artificially limit freeing the license through the web client
- but then also completely lock down your project files containing any octane materials when not logged in to the point I can not even remove the octane content from the file for it to work?

Also if you use a newer driver with 4 it is completely broken and corrupts all your materials so I have to use both PCs with old graphic drivers for Octane to work

[Goldorak]

The next update after 2020.1 is entire focused on stability over new features (of which we now have plenty). More details in my GTC roadmap talk posted online next Thursday.

I've been using Octane for pretty much since it came out and I love it. But after 8 years of putting up with crashes, I haven't seen much improvement in the stability of the engine.
During these 8 years I've hired 4 people and taught them how to use octane.. and each time with a new hire I get more and more embarrassed to explain how the crashes are just part of the deal.

I've learned to cope with it... I know the finicky things that make octane crash.. sending the scene to render? save before.. Closing the live viewer in a big scene? Pause the render before closing the live viewer... Scene crashing when opening? Some material causing it to crash, disable material reviews and open GL and troubleshoot the scene. Opening a scene that was made with another version of octane 5 years ago? Good luck with that.
But it shouldn't be this way. I joke about it that its Octane renders PTSD. But seriously after 8 years the only marginally stable release is version 4. At least stop calling anything less stable than that "stable"

The next version after 2020.1 will be entirely focused on stability work over features (which we have plenty of for now). More details in my GTC roadmap talk going online next Thursday.

Sorry for the rant. I work at an IOT company.. and we regularly get complaints about how unstable our software is.. and it sucks to hear it.. I know its hard to stabilize a program for hundreds if not thousands of different hardware configurations. But when there are other options out there that ARE more stable, there really is no excuse.

You take pride in how ridiculously fast your engine is.. and it REALLY IS when everything works... but with the constant crashes, you're not really faster.. if I have to redo something or troubleshoot things cuz of crashes. Please, focus on stabilizing octane.. I'd rather get no new features for the next year and just get a stable engine.

[frankmci]

Can we talk about how Octane is putting up some very shady nonsense as to artificially limit freeing the license through the web client
- but then also completely lock down your project files containing any octane materials when not logged in to the point I can not even remove the octane content from the file for it to work?

Also if you use a newer driver with 4 it is completely broken and corrupts all your materials so I have to use both PCs with old graphic drivers for Octane to work

What exactly do you mean by, "completely lock down your project files"? In my experience, If I'm not logged in with Octane I can still change materials, remove Octane objects and Tags, etc. I have learned not to open the Node Editor if the account isn't activated to avoid freezing, but there's not much reason to work in the node graph without being able to render with the Octane engine. Similarly, if Octane isn't even installed on a machine, I can still open scene files with no problem, but Octane specific items are replaced with placeholders, as I would expect.

[frankmci]

You take pride in how ridiculously fast your engine is.. and it REALLY IS when everything works... but with the constant crashes, you're not really faster.. if I have to redo something or troubleshoot things cuz of crashes. Please, focus on stabilizing octane.. I'd rather get no new features for the next year and just get a stable engine.

I can certainly sympathise and empathise, but I've been hearing that exact same thing for 30 years from the users of pretty much every 3D tool I've used, from Swivel 3D, to Strata Studio Pro, to Electric Image, to Lightwave, to 3D Studio, to Maya, to V-Ray to Octane. One of the rare, reasonably stable 3D tools I've ever used in production has been C4D, but it has still been an issue on various releases. It's amazing how unstable 3D software is in general, but also understandable, when you realize how hard they are constantly pushing the envelope.

"Please, hold off on new features and give us better stability," cry the users! But it's the wicked, corrupting power of Bells and Whistles and Flashy Siggraph Demos that inevitably tricks the dollars out of tight purses and wallets.

My personal approach, and the one I push on the rest of my company and anyone that will sit still and listen, is to only use the most stable N.x.x release of the previous major update (or two, if it's more reliable) for any kind of real production. It doesn't matter if it's a few years behind the cutting edge. The time and effort and grief saved is worth many times more than slightly faster rendering or a couple of cool effects that can probably achieve some other way. Only use the latest crowd-pleaser if absolutely necessary to solve a specific problem. Then go back to the reliable pipeline you've been using so that you can actually go home at the end of the day and have at least most weekends off.