Redshift VS Octane ..thoughts? Tweet

[bepeg4d]

Hi Tenth_Old_Man,
sorry but I don't understand. What you describe seems the old v2 authentication system, while the new v3 system does exactly what you want. One unique user id and pw to access at any kind of Octane service, from forum to ORC, passing through the Standalone or plugin license.
All the best,
ciao beppe

[katmachiavelli]

Hi Tenth_Old_Man,
sorry but I don't understand. What you describe seems the old v2 authentication system, while the new v3 system does exactly what you want. One unique user id and pw to access at any kind of Octane service, from forum to ORC, passing through the Standalone or plugin license.
All the best,
ciao beppe

But... that's not entirely true. I used Octane v3 using a subscription for the license (rather than a full purchase), and still needed two different IDs and passwords for the standalone and the plugin. And, when I discontinued my subscription (when I switched to Redshift), it said if I chose to cancel it, there was no way to simply renew it (I'd have to go through the process all over again, which was a massive pain in the rear to set up with my credit card the first time). In spite of v4 being a thing now for people with paid or subscription licenses, the student version of Octane is still at the same obsolete 1.20a which is too old even for student use at this point, and has been there for like 4 years without any update.

I discontinued it to switch to Redshift, and can agree with RickToxik on pretty much everything. Redshift is really fast even on my single GPU, whereas Octane gives me render output size limitations and is also quite slow when trying to render big scenes on my single GTX 1080TI. So, in my instance, Octane has been unusable for me as it won't let me render above 3500px wide in most cases, and I switched to Redshift. However, Redshift (being a production renderer) requires a lot more setup on the front end, and the camera doesn't adhere to the specs of a real camera (whereas Octane has F-Stops and lens settings, plus post-production). So, the differences which make Octane not really play nicely with the rest of the 3D rendering world are what actually make it a lot friendlier for concept artists and matte painters... assuming you have the hardware to not get punished by the render size limitations or slower render speeds, which I hope will be addressed in v4.

With the announcement of Octane 4 being free for people using up to two GPUs (though no download for this free v4 is currently present, even for beta testing purposes, and no ETA mentioned anywhere just yet), I was hoping to ditch Redshift as aside from the aforementioned issue, my biggest concern is the image quality. But, when it comes to the plugins, Octane still requires that you have to purchase the standalone version on top of individual plugins, which is nonsensical to me. Additionally, the plugins are so vastly different from one another that it's hard to follow C4D tutorials if you're a Max user, etc. It would be nice if things were a little more universal. This is an area where Redshift wins, hands-down.

This loses OTOY customers, as more concept artists and matte painters are becoming more willing to put up with Redshift's shortcomings because everything else with Octane is kind of a mess which I hope would have been addressed a long time ago. When Octane takes hours and I have to let it run overnight for renders at smaller sizes than I need (since it can't handle more than that), while Redshift can give me 12k-wide quality renders in minutes and the licensing isn't half the pain that Octane has been, and the plugins for each software are all handled by the same team, something needs to change.

Anyhoo, sorry to revive an otherwise dead thread, but felt I should chime in since what bepeg4d stated wasn't my experience at all while using Octane's paid subscription for v3, and I didn't discontinue it all that long ago, either.

[LFedit]

It will be nice if octane had a similar license model. all plugins are free at the moment which makes it very attractive if you use multiple applications.

Imagine a world where ONE LOGIN credential worked across all product lines per license?

Not having a different login for the forums, the main user account, and another for EACH AND EVERY plugin purchased beyond the standalone (which btw is another credential) would be king.

When will this horrible licensing system be gotten rid of in place of one that actually works properly? God help you if you accidentally put your user credentials into the Maya plugin. It will download a license, say its invalid credentials, THEN locks you out of the standalone saying "No license could be found".

Competitors like Redshift are coming for our beloved renderer that is unfortunately cobbled by he worlds WORST licensing model. Once RenderMan goes completely GPU, Octane will collect dust unless the licensing/DRM crap gets fixed and gets out of the way and lets the app just get to the rendering.

Ill admit I didn't read everyones post here. But I like this idea so much.

Like a steam for software apps...

[bepeg4d]

But... that's not entirely true. I used Octane v3 using a subscription for the license (rather than a full purchase), and still needed two different IDs and passwords for the standalone and the plugin. And, when I discontinued my subscription (when I switched to Redshift), it said if I chose to cancel it, there was no way to simply renew it (I'd have to go through the process all over again, which was a massive pain in the rear to set up with my credit card the first time). In spite of v4 being a thing now for people with paid or subscription licenses, the student version of Octane is still at the same obsolete 1.20a which is too old even for student use at this point, and has been there for like 4 years without any update.

Sorry but this totally untrue.
- From v3, you have only one Otoy user ID and password to activate any kind of license, Standalone or plugin, commercial or subscription, and to access to your personal account area. Probably you have misunderstood the unique identification number that you see il the personal OctaneLive page beside each license. If you have two different user ID and password for your account and forum, is up to you, and you can change the forum user ID in the Profile of your account, personally I have the same user ID/password for both forum and account.
The only difference with other software is that you always need also a Standalone license for each machine to be able to activate a plugin or several different plugins. So you always need to have both Standalone and plugin licenses deactivated, before you can activate on another machine. We have more than 20 integrated plugins by the way, personnally I have 13 commercial licenses (4 Standalone, 9 plugins), and 8 subscription licenses active in my account, and I can activate any kind of licenses on three different operating systems and four different machines with only one user ID/password, without having any issues, that’s the truth.
About renew, yes true, this is not possible, but it is absolutely not an issue, since your account is not cancelled if you cancell your subscription, and you only need to sign-in and purchase another subscription and instantly activate it, if you want. If you have issues with your PayPal accout/credit card, that’s another story.
About Student licenses, we have discontinued them almost one year ago, and temporarily replaced with the Subscription licenses:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=58419
In the mean time, we have released the Unity plugin, that comes with a free version with plugin and Standalone Prime (1x GPU):
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3 ... ene-105646
So students can already study Standalone or Octane inside Unity for free, or install the demo of the prefered plugin, and save the progress (with watermark, and resolution limit).
Since this is not enough, we have just announched that, when v4 will be stable, it will be free for all users with 2x GPUs, so, what are you talking about?

I discontinued it to switch to Redshift, and can agree with RickToxik on pretty much everything. Redshift is really fast even on my single GPU, whereas Octane gives me render output size limitations and is also quite slow when trying to render big scenes on my single GTX 1080TI. So, in my instance, Octane has been unusable for me as it won't let me render above 3500px wide in most cases, and I switched to Redshift. However, Redshift (being a production renderer) requires a lot more setup on the front end, and the camera doesn't adhere to the specs of a real camera (whereas Octane has F-Stops and lens settings, plus post-production). So, the differences which make Octane not really play nicely with the rest of the 3D rendering world are what actually make it a lot friendlier for concept artists and matte painters... assuming you have the hardware to not get punished by the render size limitations or slower render speeds, which I hope will be addressed in v4.

Again, render size limitation are only for v2, in v3, the render buffer has been moved from VRAM to system RAM. How could we render 18k Stereo Cube VR images if there it was be a resolution limit?
You can go trough the easy way, biased render on CPU/GPU, or through the hard way, unbiased render on GPU only in real time, and we like the hard way. I think you have perfectly described the difference between Octane and the competitors, We love to setup the scene, then go around with the camera, taking pictures like in real life.

With the announcement of Octane 4 being free for people using up to two GPUs (though no download for this free v4 is currently present, even for beta testing purposes, and no ETA mentioned anywhere just yet), I was hoping to ditch Redshift as aside from the aforementioned issue, my biggest concern is the image quality. But, when it comes to the plugins, Octane still requires that you have to purchase the standalone version on top of individual plugins, which is nonsensical to me. Additionally, the plugins are so vastly different from one another that it's hard to follow C4D tutorials if you're a Max user, etc. It would be nice if things were a little more universal. This is an area where Redshift wins, hands-down.

All the subscriptions comes with both licenses Standalone + plugin, and it is just the opposite, you purchase a license of OctaneRender, and on top of this you can add a plugin. Most of plugins are developed from external programmers, and they need to have their honor too. Note that Max is totally different from C4D, and so on, while the OctaneRender SDK and parameters are the same in all the plugins, but since OctaneRender is unique in it’s approach, the plugin devs need to search and find the best way to implement features that are not even present in the host application. For example Max has its own graph editor, and the plugin can work with it, while c4d does’t have the node system, so the plugin dev had to create a node graph system for c4d from scratch, totally different condition. In Skechup, Unity and other plugins, it is now possible to work in Standalone interface mode, to have exactly the same interface and workflow, but this not possible for any host app at the moment, but we are working on it.

This loses OTOY customers, as more concept artists and matte painters are becoming more willing to put up with Redshift's shortcomings because everything else with Octane is kind of a mess which I hope would have been addressed a long time ago. When Octane takes hours and I have to let it run overnight for renders at smaller sizes than I need (since it can't handle more than that), while Redshift can give me 12k-wide quality renders in minutes and the licensing isn't half the pain that Octane has been, and the plugins for each software are all handled by the same team, something needs to change.

If you need to leave Octane rendering overnight for rendering a small frame, you have surely wronly setup you scene. Please, post an example.

Anyhoo, sorry to revive an otherwise dead thread, but felt I should chime in since what bepeg4d stated wasn't my experience at all while using Octane's paid subscription for v3, and I didn't discontinue it all that long ago, either.

Sorry to hear that your experience with Octane render wasn’t good, but it’s time to give it another try, I guess, in this way you can try v4 xperimental builds, until official v4 will be ready.
Happy GPU Rendering,
ciao Beppe

[mykola1985]

I will add my two cents.

Redshift is wayyyyy better and more efficinet renderer than Octane.
Once you learn both, you will see that In complex scenes Redshift simply massacres Octane.
I've made lots of projects with both of them and Octane remains great in simple scenes only and has an amazing and very responsive realtime viewport and great image quality though

[MildMustard]

I will add my two cents.

Redshift is wayyyyy better and more efficinet renderer than Octane.
Once you learn both, you will see that In complex scenes Redshift simply massacres Octane.
I've made lots of projects with both of them and Octane remains great in simple scenes only and has an amazing and very responsive realtime viewport and great image quality though

Would you mind sharing examples? Just interested in what types of scenes you find works better in RS. Just asking as I have never used it in a project before.

[Studio21]

lol has anyone tried rendering glass in redshift? in terms of quality and looks octane wins. im only missing light linking tbh