Defending Octane against VRay Tweet

[MB]

All,

I work for a very large global architecture firm. We have had Octane for 5 years in our region and with it grown the number of people capable of producing acceptable, or better, quality renderings, movie Clips, Cubemaps etc., from under 10 with VRay to about 120 with Octane. Revit is our primary 3d authoring tool, we have our own custom obj exporter from Revit that includes cameras and scattering of multi instanced objects, we mostly use Octane standalone. IMO, Octane has proved to be easy to learn for many people who never thought they would be able to produce renderings and its speed has done much to enable us to use Cubemaps and the Gear VR with clients.

VRay is our firms 'Official' platform and we have a few 'élite' users who wash a Revit model through 3d Studio Max and produce some good work. With the recent introduction of VRay for Revit they have successful talk the highest levels of the firms management into killing Octane. Our Octane users being quite junior professionals are somewhat intimidated by our leadership and the VRay users who tend to be older professionals, so I can't count on a revolt .

I have a meeting shortly to reverse this decision if I want. I will have an opportunity to demo the 2 systems to executives, I am looking to compile a list of pros and cons, strength/weaknesses, of the systems. I'm assuming there are many people visiting this forum that know more about both systems than anyone in our firm as we have definitely split into two opposing camps on this issue, I'm very interested in your thoughts.

Speed is an issue, but i'm hearing the two systems are basically the same from some VRay users who have tried both, I would like to know more about this, however workflow, ease of use, learnability in a high turnover environment, positioning for the future of this industry etc. are perhaps more important.

What would we gain and loose by going back to being a VRay shop exclusively?
What should one include in a demonstration of the two systems?
What reference accounts and business relationships can be used to affirm Otoy's strength in its industry.

Thoughts?

Many thanks


MB

[Goldorak]

I'll follow up directly to help with this from our end.

[prehabitat]

I'll follow up directly to help with this from our end.

I’d be interested too; de-identified or via PM if required.

Firstly I think there would be lots of architecture firms with similar stories; on the one hand our industry has been going through a significant technology shift (so conversations about change and funding easier) but there is also a lot of players doing new things in this space, so difficult to get a consensus/focus.

We are a medium/large national firm (small by multi-national standards) with about 100 Revit users, about 50 of those do their front end in Sketchup and perhaps 25 are capable of doing most of that work in either FormIT or Revit (but most haven’t previously due to no easy rendering solution).
Of the whole lot we don’t have a single rendering system; we have a few really strong Vray for Sketchup users, a few very strong using Revit+photoshop, Podium, Enscape, etc etc, mostly due to each person’s (lack of) appetite for the technical. (we outsource any work for print)
On that point, of the 100 i’d wager only 5 we’re genuinely interested in rendering; most are design/project outcome/client focused, so unlikely to invest their time heavily much beyond podium/Enscape, though a few are being sold on vray and willing to pick up someone else's setup provided they're nearby to an expert and can get help when required.

...learnability in a high turnover environment, ...

Continuing from above and your high turnover/learnability point; I hear often that it’s easy for a firm to pick up Vray because there are so many materials, assets, prepared scenes, setting config’s etc available. And once the firm has been working with it they can improve upon these and its easy to library them and systemise for reuse. (There’s a good ‘consistency’ aspect too for those interested in that).
This idea of systemification plays off against the 'artistry' aspect to a certain extent - but to the point above - we already wear alot of hats so there needs to be a quick easy path to 90% result for the person/project that requires it.
The few-click solution is the biggest selling point being shoved down our throats by the vray zealots...


That’s almost a question for MB too in some respects; how much standardization did you push with the training of your 120 octane users;
Do you have an extensive library of materials and some preconfigured scene's and just teach people which nodes to change to get their scene looking OK?
You obviously have your Revit->Octane material translation sorted out for your template materials; but what about when your number of project materials extend beyond the template materials; do you hand that revit end or your users know the process at the Octane end too?
Do you leave the post up to each individual user or to you have a standard approach to that too? (maybe your Adobe/Print guru's handle all the post & layout into your presentation docs?)

You obviously have zipped up parts of the workflow via your custom exporter - we just spent the last 6 months on Dynamo and Macro's, so maybe something like that is within reach for us next.


lastly, and rhetorically; Are your 'Elite' vray users going to be collaboratively involved in generating all the standards and providing training support until you get critical mass with vray?

[Phantom107]

I think Octane far exceeds any other renderer if you get into the programming side of things... nothing is keeping you from developing custom software that powers all of the nodes in Octane! But that requires an insane amount of time, dedication and study... then that on it's own would be more of a job than the architecture you'd do in the firm.