Random questions

[STRESS]

Really cool render impressive feature set and awesome pricing.

Too bad it's CUDA based and therefore NVidia only a shame since I just bought recently a nice new shiny ATI card. (Radeon 5850). Also considering that ATI outperforms nVidia at the moment on every scale.

Anyway I still find it interesting render but I've got a couple of questions. Maybe someone is kind enough to answer.

Are there any known limits on scene complexity or how steep is the drop off rate in performance for very large scenes (like 10-30 million/polygons). Most of the gallery images I saw or the video are very low on geometry complexity. My concern is that I guess it relies heavly on GPU card memory and they tend not to have that much.

Sames goes with large textures or lots of textures.

Will there be support for procedual textures?

Will there be other import formats (coming from a CAD background). Neither RIB, OBJ nor Collada are that common or widely supported in this area. Using 3D MultiConverter like PolyTrans or DeepExploration are not always an option or sometimes tend to screw things up.

And finally any chance we see a integration with technology demonstrated for example here (http://www.antiflash.net)

[radiance]

Really cool render impressive feature set and awesome pricing.

Too bad it's CUDA based and therefore NVidia only a shame since I just bought recently a nice new shiny ATI card. (Radeon 5850). Also considering that ATI outperforms nVidia at the moment on every scale.

Anyway I still find it interesting render but I've got a couple of questions. Maybe someone is kind enough to answer.

Are there any known limits on scene complexity or how steep is the drop off rate in performance for very large scenes (like 10-30 million/polygons). Most of the gallery images I saw or the video are very low on geometry complexity. My concern is that I guess it relies heavly on GPU card memory and they tend not to have that much.

Sames goes with large textures or lots of textures.

Will there be support for procedual textures?

Will there be other import formats (coming from a CAD background). Neither RIB, OBJ nor Collada are that common or widely supported in this area. Using 3D MultiConverter like PolyTrans or DeepExploration are not always an option or sometimes tend to screw things up.

And finally any chance we see a integration with technology demonstrated for example here (http://www.antiflash.net)

Hi,

i can't give much information about speed/triangles.
we haven't seen anything below 0.7K samples / sec on a GTX260 card with very complex scenes (2-3 million polies)

it depends on various things, it's difficult to explain all here.
i suggest you try the demo version which will be available this weekend to get a feel for scene size / performance.

octane will have an advanced/flexible node based procedural system.
at the moment it already has several procedural texturing nodes, however they won't be available in the 1st demo version,
as they need more development first.

we're focusing on developing the best possible OBJ and RIB import possible,
then we'll add more formats based on demand, which will probably include collada.

Radiance

[STRESS]

Hi,

i can't give much information about speed/triangles.
we haven't seen anything below 0.7K samples / sec on a GTX260 card with very complex scenes (2-3 million polies)

Are you sure about this number 0.7k ? 700 samples/sec that would be extremely poor performance. Or do you mean 0.7M samples/sec?

it depends on various things, it's difficult to explain all here.
i suggest you try the demo version which will be available this weekend to get a feel for scene size / performance.

Sorry no Nvidia card at the moment and I am bit reluctant to buy one (bad experience with my last one). Besides I don't like NVidia's information policy and rebranding three years old hardware philosophy at the moment.

octane will have an advanced/flexible node based procedural system.
at the moment it already has several procedural texturing nodes, however they won't be available in the 1st demo version,
as they need more development first.

Sounds great.

we're focusing on developing the best possible OBJ and RIB import possible,
then we'll add more formats based on demand, which will probably include collada.

Hmm sorry to say that but that is a bit of a strange priority you are following I understand OBJ to some extend but RIB? No application besides Houdini AFAIK supports native RIB export. And both formats are very poorly supported in CAD market space. The area that is mostly interested in unbiased rendering.

[radiance]

Hi,

i can't give much information about speed/triangles.
we haven't seen anything below 0.7K samples / sec on a GTX260 card with very complex scenes (2-3 million polies)

Are you sure about this number 0.7k ? 700 samples/sec that would be extremely poor performance. Or do you mean 0.7M samples/sec?

it depends on various things, it's difficult to explain all here.
i suggest you try the demo version which will be available this weekend to get a feel for scene size / performance.

Sorry no Nvidia card at the moment and I am bit reluctant to buy one (bad experience with my last one). Besides I don't like NVidia's information policy and rebranding three years old hardware philosophy at the moment.

octane will have an advanced/flexible node based procedural system.
at the moment it already has several procedural texturing nodes, however they won't be available in the 1st demo version,
as they need more development first.

Sounds great.

we're focusing on developing the best possible OBJ and RIB import possible,
then we'll add more formats based on demand, which will probably include collada.

Hmm sorry to say that but that is a bit of a strange priority you are following I understand OBJ to some extend but RIB? No application besides Houdini AFAIK supports native RIB export. And both formats are very poorly supported in CAD market space. The area that is mostly interested in unbiased rendering.

yeah, i meant 0.7M samples/sec , eg millions.
it's the default display in octane, MegaSamples/Sec

Radiance

[Danielwray]

Lots of applications can export RIB format, it's an open standard so I think it's the best format to go for.

Unbiased rendering isn't just for Archviz and CAD work, so having multiple open and reliable formats is a good thing.

What formats are best exported from CAD?

[Chris]

Dwg, ipt, iges, fbx etc

[radiance]

I'd like to focus on adding very good and solid support for wavefront OBJ,
which is nearly done.
Then it's RIB, also a solid implementation.

Once we're at that stage,
i'll choose another format to add,
based upon a poll or equiv then.

.dae might also be a good option as it would open up use of the free sketchup version with octane,
which does'nt support OBJ (last time i checked)

.fbx might also work well, but it's quite a complex format, will take a while to develop...

Radiance

[STRESS]

Lots of applications can export RIB format, it's an open standard so I think it's the best format to go for.

I don't know too many modeling or DCC applications which do out of the box without an additional Plug-in. Technical speaking it is not an open format per se, it is developed by Pixar and I think there are a couple of extensions which are Prman supported only. Also the Subdivision surface parts of RIB might be even protected by Pixar patents.

Unbiased rendering isn't just for Archviz and CAD work, so having multiple open and reliable formats is a good thing.

True but traditional CG animation or VFX are most often not really interested in unbiased rendering for many reasons.

What formats are best exported from CAD?

As someone mentioned before .DXF (or its successor .DWG) or .FBX are probably very good candidates. Both are Autodesk though. I know FBX is sort of open while DWG is a bit of a different story. .IGES and STEP are other alternatives. However they are not necessarily polygon based but so are lots of parts of RIB as it supports NURBS and SubD.

[radiance]

currently i'm focussing on getting the OBJ/MTL import perfect.
it's to my knowledge the most universally supported format that does carry a decent amount of information, eg materials parameters, texture maps on different channels, smoothgroups etc...

RIB support will be for animation, eg getting information from the host app into octane carrying per frame camera, instancing, motion blur info etc...

after those are fully implemented and well tested,
i'll do a poll to figure out what format to implement next,
that should be in a few weeks, and the proposed formats in the poll will probably include fbx, collada .dae and a few others.

so much to do and so little time

Radiance