Octane 3 for 3ds max

[riggles]

The good news is that these are all things that can be fixed. The bad news is that, until they are, I won't be a Max plugin customer. And if things don't turn around, I won't be an Octane customer anymore in general. There are other renderers, backed by companies who make it clear that rendering is their priority.

Thanks for the direct feedback. We're adding more resources to speed up development and feature request ingestion, just as we recently did for Maya.

You're welcome. I do want Octane Render to succeed. In fact, I feel a bit bad about being critical here, because it's company leadership that sets the overall direction, and it's the developers that have to both follow that direction and absorb any fallout from it.

Thank you for listening.

[Goldorak]

The good news is that these are all things that can be fixed. The bad news is that, until they are, I won't be a Max plugin customer. And if things don't turn around, I won't be an Octane customer anymore in general. There are other renderers, backed by companies who make it clear that rendering is their priority.

Thanks for the direct feedback. We're adding more resources to speed up development and feature request ingestion, just as we recently did for Maya.

You're welcome. I do want Octane Render to succeed. In fact, I feel a bit bad about being critical here, because it's company leadership that sets the overall direction, and it's the developers that have to both follow that direction and absorb any fallout from it.

Thank you for listening.

Look for the 3.0 Max plug-in to come out in tandem with V3 Alpha 8 release this week.

[DonFarese]

Yes Goldisart,

"Max. noise" in Vray RT is major! cuts render times down tremendously without much visual impact if not any. Octane needs this!

[JimStar]

"Max. noise" in Vray RT is major! cuts render times down tremendously without much visual impact if not any. Octane needs this!

Guys, please, things like this, and most of the other things mentioned here - are the subject to discuss in standalone forum section. Because it is nothing to do with 3ds Max plugin, it's how Octane rendering core works. The plugin can't implement rendering engine's features, it just uses the services provided by current version of Octane rendering core.
So if you need all these features - they need to be implemented in Octane rendering core. It does not make sense to ask all these in 3ds Max plugin section. It even makes things worse, 'cause it becomes hard to see the meaningful user requests regarding 3ds Max plugin among all the standalone rendering core requests in a lot of different threads of 3ds Max plugin forum section... And the developers working currently on standalone do not see the rendering core requests from 3ds Max plugin sections. For 3ds Max plugin features requests you are always welcome to use THIS thread. This is a first place I look at when I finally have some time to implement something requested for the plugin by users...
This is why such requests are immediately deleted from plugin's current versions testing threads of "Releases" subforum - because these threads are used instead of "ticket system" by developer and they need only contain plugin's meaningful bug reports of currently released test version.

You are always welcome to start the thread in standalone section with all these rendering core features requests...

[mbetke]

You are right Jim, but most of us end-users are not familiar with coding so it is not possible to jdge from our point of view what is possible in the core or plugin.

[oguzbir]

From where I stand and see this topic started as,
Why there is no max / maya v3 alpha plugin available where others has.
Then it's mentioned after the GTC.
People (not me) asked max is important, why after GTC?
It's mentioned that All first-party plugin developers are also working on Octane 3 itself.
People saw the presentation and asked the secret work in progress regarding max maya blender.
We've heard about the octane engine API later on.

And myself included people got frustrated to see why this is API utter most important to Max.
Why there is no news for previously mentioned begged and requested real features for MAX are not being mentioned or cared enough. People are sad to see their plugin developer works on V3 apart from plugin.
And I guess it's the user reaction to all this. not about making amends or features.
Maybe it's my bad or ignorance, I didn't see that octane engine thing most important to a vast majority. and asked why there are no other feasible features aren't mentioned like other renderers already has.

I personally tried many times to ask for a feature or two in first standalone forum. Then max forum.
Got positive reply from abstrax. And he said he can add "that" to pipeline. And it was added in a later build.
I was able to persuade standalone devs to implement "neutral tone mapping", "Clay mode" (which still needs to be global custom material override) and maxscript integration need to be done.
Which I think these were important features and team agreed to have these.
We have tons of wishlist that is essential to Core or Plugin still needs addressing.

But for some I got negative reply that it was related to max plugin then I posted on max User requests. And I got no reply from there as well. This happened couple of times. So I gave up some point.

It's really mind-bogglingly frustrating trying to climb all the stairs to standalone forum. Ask for something.
Then let max plugin dev at that time there is this I asked in standalone, Would you mind try to making it easy and talk with standalone developers. vice versa. It is really tiring whilst working.

It's like a hierarchical bureaucracy thing you cannot get your head around.

I among others have asked possibly 2 years ago for another octane staff to work around the forums and help developers and users to help communicate effectively.
Where as reporting a problem to a plugin dev. If it's something related to standalone. He or she can report that issue to the standalone devs. in a brief way that octane render team can understand.

Take a lightlister request for max for example.
I don't know if it's a octane core thing. Or if it's the developers objective to create?
In both cases Goldorak or Jim must have said " Guys we won't be implementing this lightlister, it's not our job to do. You're on your own on this." fullstop.
Or Goldorak or who is in charge should address this to standalone devs or managers. We have this request coming along lately. we need you(managers) to spare time for jimstar and let him do this for users. something like that.

If Jim or any other new devs do want to implement this but can't because of their workload.
it's just sad to see this. Nothing to be done then wait for unknown timeframe..

In such a way that take iTOO forest pack, railclone and ephere Ornatrix examples for a second.
We (users) have asked for specific features for these cause they are industry standard plugins for max, some for maya as well.
It really becomes a dead-end when plugin developers says "I don't have a licence for that plugin". I would be so absurd to go to standalone devs and ask them for getting say eg. JimStar should have this plugin license and blabla.

I personally simply do not care at this point. More features are implemented or not.
As always I do take what's been given. Applaud the work done by developers Karba and Jimstar. And work on projects with that given features.
But this super cool feature kept secret and revealed after GTC. Was presented something like a major feature for both max and maya and we'd be using that feature a lot. but it's unlikely at this point.

Lastly and if you ask me, developers should not be bothered to spend time, cloud their head and get in debates like this. This must be the PR staff job to do. If that case could not be handled alone, Octane Render directors managers should get in and set the scene for both user base and developers.

That's how I see it.
No hard feelings about it.
Best,

[RobSteady]

Period.

[Gestaltdesign]

Totally agree, I think the feelings of the community have been very succinctly put.
Going forward, it seems a clearer reporting system with confirmations and updates would help, backed up with advice on how to discern a plugin feature from an engine feature.
I think a good starting point is a set of OTOY managed stickies that are regularly updated listing 'acknowledged' requests, current missing features and limitations and WIP features with progress reports.
That way everyone know what is going on and it would save time for Mods who could just redirect to stickies for commonly asked questions.
It would also provide transparency and clarity to the community and help OTOY see a clearer picture in their own organization.

[azen]

Totally agree, I think the feelings of the community have been very succinctly put.
Going forward, it seems a clearer reporting system with confirmations and updates would help, backed up with advice on how to discern a plugin feature from an engine feature.
I think a good starting point is a set of OTOY managed stickies that are regularly updated listing 'acknowledged' requests, current missing features and limitations and WIP features with progress reports.
That way everyone know what is going on and it would save time for Mods who could just redirect to stickies for commonly asked questions.
It would also provide transparency and clarity to the community and help OTOY see a clearer picture in their own organization.

One way to clarify things better for the community will be improving the documentation. Due to the high demands of development, the workflow for producing thorough documentation is in the midst of being revamped across the board. This should contribute a lot of existing ambiguity for users - particularly for the benefit of plugin users.

[coilbook]

i agree about 3ds max plugin and how it was always behind others. Especially no motion blur for liquids. We even requested Karba many times to fix it and it is all about some API bug with 3ds max. This issue should've been resolved 2 years ago when octane 2 first got motion blur. How hard it is to contact Autodesk and discuss API bug with mb for liquids