Purchasing Octane Render

[averagepanda13]

Hi, I'm and architecture student and I do visualizations and renderings part time.
I've recently bought a GTX 780 hoping to save time with GPU based rendering in future, and after trying out the Octane Render demo I was blown away.

I'm looking at buying octane render and have a few questions before I make my final decision.

Firstly, if I buy a license for octane render today, will that only support 1.2? Or will I receive the newer versions as well?
If so, will I only recieve the octane render 1 updates or will I also be able to upgrade to 2.xx versions?
If not will licensed users get discounts on upgrading to the next versions?
And last question on that topic, is there a plan to release a 2.xx version in the near future? in which case I would wait for that instead.

Secondly, I work in several programs, mainly Sketchup and Archicad, but I'm also starting to use Cinema 4D in the office, and may move to Revit from Archicad in future.
In the shop I see that there are single packages for plugins, are there plans for combined package deals? As buying a 199 € plugin for every program that I use may become very expensive for a student. It may be a silly question, but I am just curious.

And lastly, at the moment, how many materials can be found in the Octane LiveDB, and are they quality controlled?
LiveDB appeals to me greatly as most of my time goes towards creating and fine tuning textures, this feature may save me a lot of time.

[FooZe]

Hi Averagepanda,

1) Current licenses will be valid for all 1.x releases. 2.0 will be a paid upgrade, we don't have pricing yet, but it will be cheaper for existing 1.x users (ie: upgrade price rather than full purchase price).
2.0 will be some time off - we don't have a date yet but we do know there will be another feature release before 2.0 (1.5).

2) No, we don't have discounts on multiple plugin purchases. They are already somewhat discounted due to the fact that you only need one standalone license no matter how many plugins you run on the machine. (So you can start with one combo, and then purchase other plugin licenses only). Some people don't like this model, but it is far better than only selling each plugin as a fully priced independent product!

3) There are currently about 600 materials in the liveDB. There is minimal quality control as it's a free to use, community based system.

Hope that helps.

Thanks
Chris.

[averagepanda13]

Thanks Chris.

And as for the plugin updates, I think I will start with the archicad plugin.
Will users recieve those updates aswell, or will it have the same upgrade model as the stand alone program? Where when I upgrade to 2.x will I need to pay to upgrade both the plugin and Octane Render, or just Octane Render?

[FooZe]

Hi, Sorry, I don't know this yet. It is something we need to decide.
You will definitely need to pay for a 2.x upgrade for the plugins, but whether this takes the form of two separate payments or only one for the standalone I don't know yet.

Thanks
Chris.

[averagepanda13]

Thanks for all of the help Chris

I do hope that you guys make the right decision with that, as that will be the deal breaker for me as a student .

I look forward to seeing what is decided upon though, hopefully soon, before I make my decision

[petermax]

do you need one standalone per machine or is one standalone for all machine sufficient?

[FooZe]

You need one per machine.

[averagepanda13]

Hi Chris. I have decided to wait for v2 next year before purchasing, hopefully by then I'll have more information about the product that I'll be buying into, and how much I'll be paying when upgrading in the long run.

May I ask, do you have a rough estimate when we could expect v2?