No Forum Support

[3dgeeks]

This getting ridiculous. No posts from Karba for 1 month now. We are left to answer our own posts.

I hope there is a good reason. While I wait I think ill try Redshift, has anyone tried it, it seems fast

[glimpse]

This getting ridiculous. No posts from Karba for 1 month now. We are left to answer our own posts.

this is the reason we have forum - to help each other..some engines don't even have that..so get the best out of it =)

I hope there is a good reason. While I wait I think ill try Redshift, has anyone tried it, it seems fast

..maybe he's not a robot & need a vacation from time to time or do You thing Guys work 24/7 round year?..

[3dgeeks]

As ive said before, I think Karba is doing a good job on Dev, but surely Otoy can have someone answer forum posts other than Karba, so yes I think its not up to par that we hear nothing from Otoy for 1 month. People just keep asking the same things over and over to an empty room. Silence

[RobSteady]

I just sent JimStar a message asking about the development progress for the plugin.
Karba once wrote that he's going to help him.
Let's see...

[prodviz]

The developers are doing a great job getting Octane in to the major packages but...

I agree that 1 month without reply is a little much.

It appears (could be wrong on this), that there's 1 guy per plugin.
This is fine if you have someone like Aoktar working for your 3D app, as he's right on the case with updates, help etc.

If you are working in Maya for example, then your developer is working on at least 2 apps and no matter how hard he works, or how good a job he's doing (and you are Jim ) then he's always going to be spread a little thinner, which leads to people waiting for updates, which leads to people having issues.

Even with C4D, if indeed there is just 1 guy working on this plugin, then like you say, if the developer is on holiday then there could be issues.

Maybe it's too early for Otoy, budget wise, but a way to solve this would be to have a minimum of 2 people per plugin and ideally a small team, so there would always be someone to answer queries and develop plugins/provide development builds.

Just some thoughts .

[JimStar]

If you are working in Maya for example, then your developer is working on at least 2 apps ...

Four to be precise, plus some standalone development... So, be patient please - all the Otoy developers are working hard to supply you by the new features, trying not rise too much the cost of development (and your final price as the consequence).

... and no matter how hard he works, or how good a job he's doing (and you are Jim ) then he's always going to be spread a little thinner, which leads to people waiting for updates, which leads to people having issues.

This is normal for any software. And Octane has a lot more frequent updates than a lot of other software. You can wait for e.g. a year before the next version of some 3D-apps with new features be released...

Even with C4D, if indeed there is just 1 guy working on this plugin, then like you say, if the developer is on holiday then there could be issues.

Maybe it's too early for Otoy, budget wise, but a way to solve this would be to have a minimum of 2 people per plugin and ideally a small team, so there would always be someone to answer queries and develop plugins/provide development builds.

This is obvious. The same obvious as the fact that in this case you should have been ready to pay for all this lot of developers by the cosmic price of just one plugin... You can google for the annual price of experienced C++ developer. Multiply it by the amount you need to be dedicated for the software of your choice. Then divide it by rough estimation of 3D-artists who is ready to buy and work with this software (this is named "market capacity", and this is too far from amount of Angry Birds users, even for 3ds Max). And then just think: how many of them will be ready to pay the price you got on annually basis (to support such amount of developers of just one plugin)...
If I remember correctly - VRay plugin for C4D is something about $1000 for just the plugin, has a couple of bugs complained by users, and is updated extremely rarely (somebody posted this information here if I remember correctly)...

So, the way the Octane updates - is fast enough in comparison to others, and it is the golden mean between the development speed and keeping the final price for you all as low as possible...
Don't worry guys, no plugins are forgotten. We are working hard every day on all this lot of software.
I you get no answer - this does not mean nobody have read it. Usually we just have no time to answer to all the questions, as all these answers eat a lot of time from development process. Even this answer - it's 22:56 here and I'm sitting and answering on it from my home couch instead of going to sleep. As tomorrow I will start working right from the morning, and will have not much time to read the forum. So, what I'm doing usually - I just copy-paste the bug-reports or interesting feature requests from the forum threads right into the bug-tracker and return to them when working on new version, one by one. So, perhaps you get no answer to your report - but your report has been stored as a ticket.

[3dgeeks]

Thanks for some response Jim. Maybe what could assist is a Plugin Dev Roadmap, so that we have an idea of the Major features in the pipeline by Quarter. Though I think many issues are actually small fixes and bug busting, so even have a list of items that the Devs are planning on rectifying would be helpful to all.

It may stem the constant stream of the same requested being asked on a weekly basis.

Cheers

[prodviz]

Hi Jim

thanks for your reply.

I'd agree, the Octane updates are coming fast and furious, which is great, thanks.

Compared to other render engines, I've no major complaints on the cost or frequency of updates.

As for the support query, what would be the best way to go about this?
Perhaps we should have a technical support email to support these forums?

Thanks again.

[acc24ex]

- I am guessing here, but judging from the tea pot volumetric example - that octane 3.0 is already implemented and tested in max - why else use that fugly piece of geometry - let's hope they're working on it heavily then..

- although, tends to be that a lot of us just want to play with the new things, which we (maybe) might use in a project or two down the line, and then it is just getting back to using the standard glossy diffuse specular, and concentrate on getting fast renders with good textures and lighting
- just bring out some broken alpha releases - with notices like: don't complain, this is a prealpha, you'll get crashes it's just so you see what you might get

[RobSteady]

I'm looking forward to new features of version 3.
But please first concentrate on basics like the possibility to render object masks, ies light visibility in viewport, maxscript connectivity, octane light lister, material editor and converter bugs and so on....

Also I would be willing to pay more for upcoming releases if that would help to speed up development by getting additional manpower.