Bit worried about this plugin due to poor feedback on forum

[sachakogel123]

Hi all,

I am new to this forum, My boss is very interested in buying Octane for our company as he wants a GPU rendering solution and Octane is looking very promising.

What worries me is that I have spent a couple hours browsing the Autodesk Maya section of these forums where people have asked various questions relating to real problems I myself have faced using the Demo and what scares me is that the feedback is either very weak or doesn't exist at all. I expect questions to be answered and problems address with solutions. This plugin isn't exactly cheap and for someone like myself who has been using Vray for years to now switch to another renderer I need to know that the support for the plugin is there.

For example someone posted a question about a problem they are experiencing with normal mapping and displacement mapping and the answer to his question really worries me "cause it's broken. this is one of those things that just gets ignored when somebody brings it up, so who knows if it's going to be fixed in v3 or not. (i'm quite bitter about this problem if you can't tell)"

I would expect this to be answered and addressed, this person is probably on deadline and needs a solution...They came to Otoy to ask and posted a pic and nothing has been done about it? Not to mention that they are posting in the Licensed user section???

That is just one of many questions I found that have not been answered. This kind of thing is something that will scare potential new users of the plugin away.

I really want to use this plugin but I need to know that if I come to this forum with a problem that I at least get some kind of feedback to my question and hopefully a solution to my problem, I have opened quite a few threads where someone asked a question and not a single reply was given. This is very poor support!

Guys this is really worrying.

[Micha3D]

I have the same problem as paying customer, some problems are known but not solved. In this cases my impression is, why should old features repaired, if new ones sells - for example bad look of noise with repeating pattern. For other problems you will not get a solution because it is "Octane" - for example simple color texture of transparency. You get a wild workaround only. Or your request for simple things ends in a simple not possible often. So, finally my first enthusiasm about Octane is cooled down. It's quite limited and I stick at my good old Vray for every day. Octane is my engine for special cases only where biased rendering is to slow (scenes with a lot reflections/refractions (most biased ambient mode used only)). As paying customer I learned to see Octane as complement and to live with the weak sides.

[grimm]

I don't use Maya, so I don't know of the issues that people have been having. I have noticed, and I'm not suggesting this is your issue at all, is that sometimes people who come from a biased rendering solution expect things to work in the same way. Octane works a bit differently and those people need to modify their workflows to match, which may be something they don't want to do. Other times it's like you said that there are some limitations with how unbiased renderers work and the options they can be programed to do. Adding on top of that the limitations of GPU programming and workflows must change again.

If you could give us some examples, I and probably others might be able to help you with the workflow or other solutions you may have not thought of.

[Micha3D]

Here an example for a workflow problem without a solution (options are reset by switching kernels):
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=49765&p=246461#p246461

Here an example of simple missing option (min z-depth), but no interest for implementing a solution:
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=49763&p=246383#p246383

Here an example where a bad working feature will not be repaired (random noise not random):
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=50012&p=251199&hil ... al#p247899

...

So far a few examples of my impressions.

[Gestaltdesign]

I only purchased Octane (Max Plugin) last month and I am shocked at the level of forum /product support, organization and communication.
For all the hype on the site of the 'big name' board members and investment, the community support is an utter disgrace, the management seriously need to look how a 'smaller' less funded operation like Corona is running absolute rings around them.

However.......and this is the pinch.....the results I have got and the approach to rendering are exceptional.

I don't doubt for a minute the passion of the developers but the management needs a kick up the butt, OTOY need to employ full time support moderators (artists preferably) to help, advise and point to appropriate FAQ's (again just see how Corona do it )

OTOY need a passion and strategy to build up their forum community......it's a no brainer to increase sales and popularity!!!! Business 101 guys.

I hope this not falling on deaf ears, I hope there is an appreciation of the current state of affairs. I hope this because the product is really great and deserves a service and community equal to it.

For now the best support is from other users on the non-official Octane Facebook group, the guys there are great.

[prodviz]

Hi all

This lack of support has been raised a few times.

The plugin for Maya is very well implemented, but I too have asked several questions, on several occasions without one reply.

One of the problems (in my humble opinion), is that we should have 1 developer to 1 plugin.

In the case of Maya, it seems that the developer has not only multiple apps to develop, but has recently been given/put on another 3D app.

Octane as a render engine is awesome (with a few GPU's on hand), and I am using Octane more and more often.
Yes, the software isn't as deep and feature rich as some longer standing render engines, but for a lot of projects/areas it fits the bill

I only wish we had a dedicated guy or team who would answer the forum posts. In the end, new users might just be put off and head to another engine.

Cheers

[grimm]

I'm not a Rhino use either, I use Blender, but let's see if I can't help a little here:

Here an example for a workflow problem without a solution (options are reset by switching kernels):
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=49765&p=246461#p246461

Yep going from direct light (a biased mode) to pathtracing (an unbiased mode) will change how you set things up. This might be more of a workflow issue then a bug. I usually just choose a mode before I even start a project and leave it there. Although I can see the need for switching back and forth to test approaches.

You can set this up in standalone quite easily by having two different render targets, one for DL and another for PT. In this way, the only node duplication you have is with those nodes that have different settings between the modes. This might be a limitation with the plugins, just thinking about Blender, I'm not sure you could support multiple render targets in this way?

Here an example of simple missing option (min z-depth), but no interest for implementing a solution:
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=49763&p=246383#p246383

This might be a workflow issue as well. You mention that you are worried about wasting too much depth by not having a min setting. I can understand that if you are saving out in an 8bit or maybe even a 16bit format. But Octane supports 32bit EXR formats so you shouldn't have to worry about it in that case? Any depth you are wasting is going to be so tiny compared to the available depth that it should be a non-issue. Unless your workflow doesn't support the higher bit depths? I think that in many cases, settings like these are from when we didn't have the deep bit depth options we have now.

Here an example where a bad working feature will not be repaired (random noise not random):
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=50012&p=251199&hil ... al#p247899

...

So far a few examples of my impressions.

Octane's procedurals have not had any attention since before 1.0 days, if I remember correctly? The reason is because on the GPU it's difficult to set these up. I don't rely on the procedurals at all for my texturing, although it would be really nice to have them for sure. In this case what both of us are waiting for is Octane version 3, which will support OpenSL, which, in turn, is a far more capable system for procedural texturing. Octane is still developing and not quite up to the same level as other renderers.

Jason

[prodviz]

Several days pass without feedback, so sachakogel123, I hate to say it, but I guess you have your answer.

It's a real shame. Octane really is an awesome product, but without decent forum support, Otoy is missing out on a chunk of the market.

[stayinwonderland]

I've now had 2 posts rejected (out of 2 total posts since signing up). One where I mentioned that the demo was crashing and another here on this thread where I mentioned that they didn't approve my first post (basically agreeing with the OP that their customer service and community support is shocking).

There's absolutely no way this rendered, or any other great new technology, can survive and thrive with this kind of poor support. If this post doesn't get approved I'm going to write to main company as I don't think they would be too happy to know their forums aren't being helpful.

[Goldorak]

We have 3 general forum support staff besides me, plus 24 plug-ins with their own developer support, and 100K users on this forum many of whom are here to help others when we can't. This month is especially tight with V3 going out next week.

It may not be a perfect system, but users' feedback is important to us and always a primary consideration when we can find a way we can help - see DAZ for a recent example.

Lastly, what is the OP's question? It's not clear to me, sorry.