Can i use octane on Macbookpro ?

[Amplitude]

Hi,

try this:
load your scene in octane but before clicking on any node (i.e. before actually loading the scene into the gpu ) go to the device manager and click the "add" button next to "inactive device".
If it works, you should see at the bottom right corner in the main octane viewport something like "multi gpu mode (2)"

[SurfingAlien]

@Boom: yes you can use Octane on your MBP, even in multi-GPU mode... I would say it's "usable", meaning that you can do some simple stuff but not anything.

about performances: the 9400m is 16 CUDA cores, the 9600GT is 32... so we have 48 cores in multi-GPU mode and that's not a lot if you think a GTX260 has 216 and a GTX 480 has 480 (I think) so we can't expect too much. but I have to say the main problem is vRAM, where everything has to be loaded: with 256Mb I've been able to render simple and "optimized" scenes, even in pathtracing, with sun system and up to 2048x2048 but forget about HiRes HDRIs, HiRes bitmap textures, HiRes films, billion-polys meshes and the like.

BUT, honestly, I got a license at 99€ knowing I could only "play" with it until I upgrade my hardware... at 49€ I would buy even if I couldn't use it right now, that's my advice

cheers,
A

[SurfingAlien]

I have a desktop windows machine with a 8800GT...

you simply need to save some bucks for a GTX4xx card then (unfortunately I have to build a brand new one )

[SurfingAlien]

Boom,

I did a quick search and a "desktop" 8800GT should have 112 CUDA cores... that's 3,5x the 9600GT and 7x the 9400m (2.33x both, assuming a perfect "scaleability" - which I'm not sure of atm). so this explains quite well the difference in performances (if it was "double" as you said the MBP would be still the winner in speed per core, but this is quite meaningless I think)

I'm running natively under OSX in my MBP, I used the win7 bootcamp partition only for the first alphas/betas when the OSX version wasn't ready yet. I think Win only sees the 9600GT but I'm not sure (and i cannot test it anymore). A good thing would be if we could tell the Mbook to use the 9400m for display (and the 9600GT for Octane) when "high performance mode" is selected but I'm afraid it won't happen. ATM you can use the 9400m for display only in "battery save" mode AFAIK, but then the 9600GT is invisible for Octane...

about "optimization" it's just like when you got few money and lot of wishes (it always happens to me ): you know you have to compromise, choose what you really need/want more and that something it's simply not affordable... no secrets then, I'm just talking about poly count (remove un-needed subD, retopo+maps if possible, etc...), use low res HDRIs (like those in the demo suite), lower your texture resolution as much as you can, re-use textures (octane load it only once), use procedurals, don't try exaggerate resolutions, use floatimages (B/W) instead of RGB images if possible, etc... You can load a couple of HiRes textures if you're rendering a low resolution, or you can render higher resolution if you have a simple scene, and so on... what will make your render?
Oh, and I guess my 50Mpixel wood floor arroway texture is out of reach for now

cheers,
A

[Alain]

I have an MacBook Pro as well.
I run Win XP with Boot Camp.

Has anybody tried or does anybody know if octance would run "under" Boot Camp as well ?

I just need to know if I have to buy the Mac or the Windows version of octance but I prefer the Windows version


Kind regards
Alain

[SurfingAlien]

I have an MacBook Pro as well.
I run Win XP with Boot Camp.

Has anybody tried or does anybody know if octance would run "under" Boot Camp as well ?

I just need to know if I have to buy the Mac or the Windows version of octance but I prefer the Windows version


Kind regards
Alain

as i said, I used previous Octane releases under Win7/bootcamp. it should be fine but Win may not "see" the second card (the 9400m in my case).
You better ask Radiance but I guess you can use one license on both Win and OSX if the machine is the same, since it's hardware related. What i'm sure (since i asked myself) is you can swap licenses a few times (i.e. not daily... but when you change your hardware config) from machines/OSs... so I'd suggest to stick with the native OSX release, unless you have some good reason to deal with Win and bootcamp.

cheers,
A

[radiance]

yes, you can.

Radiance

[Alain]

OK, I'll buy one as well, I'm sure I'll find a place to play with

[Invivia]

Would it be possible to buy a good nVidia card and use it externally on the macbook pro in some way?