Octave v3 and DAZ plugin - is it safe to upgrade?

[birdovous]

The basic question is in the topic - is it safe to upgrade from v2 to v3 at the moment when basically all I'm using is the DAZ plugin and network rendering?

If I upgrade my licenses to v3 I assume that by doing that the Octane v2 will stop working for me and I will be forced to use v3. Are there any issues that should prevent me from doing it?

And also in the DAZ studio plugin at the moment, I have quite vast library of my material presets I would definitely not want to lose because of the upgrade - is this safe too?

In advance thanks for any info or answers to those questions.

[linvanchene]

I put together a list of features that may still be missing in OcDS here:

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=54225#p275580

Nevertheless with some workarounds you can get all scene information from OcDS to OR standalone.

- - -

- I do not know if there are still issues with network rendering.
- I do not know if you may loose some presets when upgrading.

What I do know is that in general there was a warning that you may loose some OctaneRender 2 scene data when loading them in OctaneRender 3 because some functionality may have changed.

-> Finish all your current projects with OctaneRender 2.
Then upgrade to OctaneRender 3 and check which presets carry over and which you may want to adjust.

- - -

In any other cases I would strongly recommend anyone to upgrade now to OR3 if you already own an OctaneRender license.

-> face_off addressed a lot of issues in all his regular OctaneRender 3 builds. There have been countless improvements to the OctaneRender 3 engine.
It does not make any sense to still be using outdated OR 2 builds when you are starting new projects from scratch.

- - -

For new users with a limited budget there may be the question if it is worth to wait for monthly subscriptions.

slide 52 of the GTC 2016 presentation:

Source:

https://home.otoy.com/octanerender-3-an ... ap-update/

and

viewtopic.php?f=76&t=53482


9.99$ or 19.99$ a month may be more affordable for DAZ Studio users with limited budgets.
But there is not yet any information available when those rental subscriptions will be released.

- - -

For any existing users upgrading now seems like the reasonable choice.

- - -

[birdovous]

-> Finish all your current projects with OctaneRender 2.
Then upgrade to OctaneRender 3 and check which presets carry over and which you may want to adjust.

Taking the above advice would probably leave me stuck with ORv2 for something like forever

Basically I don't want to miss the recent upgrade special offers for my two standalone licenses and the OcDS plugin, but as the v2 at the moment (save for some quirks, like crashing when right clicking materials) is pretty much stable for me and I'm really worried of the "no way back" nature of the upgrade.

[Spectralis]

I upgraded to v3 and can confirm that all my previous versions are still available to download. ATM v2 is the latest download with v3 to follow once it's finally released. All the v1 versions are still available in my account to download and install so I don't see any reason not to upgrade now while the offer is available if you can afford it. It's simply a case of installing v3 over v2. I assume that to go back to v2 just install it over v3 but I like v3 so much I'm not going back.

The v3 plugin worked fine with a v2 project I'm working on. I made sure I saved the v3 project under a different name. On my system, v3 offers about 30% faster renders. The all important (for me) d-former animation works in v3 but not in v2 yet. That was fixed so quickly I doubt the final v3 plugin is far away. I've not used networking so can't advise about that. I'm using DAZ Studio 4.8 so it's not the latest version but no incompatibility issues so far.

Honestly, if you have the cash I can't see a downside to upgrading to v3 right now.

[face_off]

Yes, it is safe to upgrade to v3. I don't believe you will loose any settings.

Paul

[birdovous]

Thank you guys for your replies.

Also I just noticed this fine print at the bottom of the "Octane 3 now available" e-mail:

Please note; you can use V3 licenses to activate V2 versions of OctaneRender and the plugins.

So I guess if I upgrade I should be able to run v2 just as I did before.

[larsmidnatt]

I upgraded no issues. Old files are loading just fine. I didn't bother keeping a separate installation of 4.x, 3 is reading materials and scenes just fine for me. Pretty awesome.

[Elele]

And is it worth to upgrade to V3?

What's new in V3 both for the standalone and the plugin?
Is there an upgrade discount for a limited time?

... BTW are we out of the beta stage yet?

[birdovous]

And is it worth to upgrade to V3?

What's new in V3 both for the standalone and the plugin?
Is there an upgrade discount for a limited time?

... BTW are we out of the beta stage yet?

Yes, there is a time limited discount offer. That is why I was interested in the safety of the upgrade. Since you can upgrade for the discounted price and still keep using the v2 of the Octane and the plugin (as they will activate with the v3 license without problems (tested myself after upgrading)) it is definitely safe to upgrade if you want to save money and use the discount offer while it is up.

There are lists of new features of v3 standalone in other threads, but not all are available in v3 OcDS (and as it looks that some may never be). OcDS v3 is still in beta and I'm not using it yet so I can't comment on this from experience.

Basically, from what I remember from the other threads v3 should be faster, for me however, many of the potentially interesting features are only available in the standalone (which I practically don't use)... So I upgraded mostly just in order to use the discount offer.

[larsmidnatt]

And is it worth to upgrade to V3?

Right now, not so much from my experience if you only use the plugin. However the price for the upgrade was really fair and if they continue to expand on 3.0 like they did when 1.0 and 2.0 came out we may get something useful yet. Otoy seems to imply 3.0 isn't finished feature wise and they are just at the beginning of the 3.0 cycle.

There really isn't a speed increase (you can read more about the changes in the official thread). Without some tinkering V2 may be faster. You can tinker with "parallel samples" which can impact speed and also Vram usage to improve speed if you have Vram left.

Short of them fixing how render regions worked, no improvements yet for me. I do see the plugin has the ability to save out render passes but I haven't tried that yet. The big things like texture baking and volumetrics will need to use the standalone.