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