ETA on proper v3 version

[Gestaltdesign]

AMD Firerender now enters the fray.......currently free whilst in Alpha! You snooze, you lose in this game!

[gabrielefx]

If Otoy has enough money it can find the best programmers on the planet.
Unfortunately the best cg programmers are already working on their own products.
Autodesk was the only company that bought Solid Angle and a good team of people.
I don't think it was a good idea because Arnold doesn't work on gpus yet.

For 4-5 years I maintained the same hardware, I replaced only the gpus. My old workstations had in the past the old GTX580s, now they have the new Titans and I can upgrade all gpus to the latest models.
Renderfarms can't be upgraded with new Xeons, you have to change everything.
Then the big deal is to invest on gpus.

Otoy needs great programmers that really want to spend all their time to programming.
Karba was a person that had this passion, programming was not only his job, was passion.
When a company wants to develop 100 different technologies can't focus on one only at time.
Otoy wanted more and more without having the right people. Otoy is not Adobe or Autodesk.
Jules Urbach needs to resize his company and focus his work on maximum two or three projects.
Many Octane for X platforms are only a waste of time.

Look at Corona site and forum, there are daily beautiful renders. On Otoy site I don't see very good images.
Do you think that Corona is faster or is better? Nope, the Corona owner, Ondra, is a programmer passionate for his work, he daily shows news and all his ideas will be realized, Then people and artists are attracted by this passion.

Without passion there is no future.

[RobSteady]

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=54969
Wow, one year after it was requested by the community Otoy is looking for one guy to help with Standalone development. They need at least 20 by looking at all this mess.
But all this is too late now, they screwed it up BIG TIME and they know this very well themselves.

Mr. Urbach wanted to catch up like a mad man with all the fancy tech stuff that was coming out - VR, Holographic Content, ORC (what was this again?), UE4 while the users were begging for the simplest features. That wraps up the whole octane story pretty much.

(Go read my post while you can before it will get deleted by Goldorak)

[Olitech]

I agree with everything you're saying :/ and I am less experienced with CG than you, and appreciate your input. I come from a photography and filmmaking background, shooting on actual film. Octane is the best looking renderer in my opinion, by far. But, I want to render animations. Rendering with Redshift has been very similar except I am not forced to wait so long for little areas of grain to clear. I know that Vray setup these days is much easier than it used to be. And, Redshift is very simple once learned, which is obnoxious I admit. The only reason to use photon mapping in Redshift is to generate caustics, which it does separate from GI and very fast. Redshift Brute Force is very very good. I don't care much for the settings and risk of flicker involved in Light/Irradiance Cache.

Overall, I will continue using Octane for fun and for anything that will only be a still. It simply renders beautiful images. But, the fact that they don't take their plugin development seriously and they overlook major features like dependable round edges and motion blur on liquids is very disappointing. I think the problem may be Octane's organization around a central standalone version that nobody would use if Octane simply maintained decent plugins instead. Something is holding it back.

I don't disagree with you.

Instead of a long-winded post, I should have just said, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth".

LOL!

Best,
O

[mbetke]

I think this is getting a bit harsh here. I can understand diappointment for business decision from our perspective.

If you run a big comapny like Otoy you may have an exit strategy to get bought by an even bigger company and live a good life. Like Radiance did it years ago. Old members may remember his statement that he will never have to care about money again. A lot of start-ups act like this. Found the company, get investors, get to stock market, get bought by facebook or whoever. In the case of otoy maybe Autodesk?

The Otoy devs are just people who code and do their stuff.

We are just the end-users. We are the customers but there will be lots of other customers. It's just speculation of mine but I don't think Octane Render gives a lot of profit. Its just a side product with this cheap price-tag. The focus relies on all the other stuff Otoy does. So the "user-voice" will not be so strong. It doesn't matter if some people here skip an update and don't spent 250$ for licenses.

This would apply for smaller comapnies with two or three devs. The user-voice is stronger, the way to development decisions is easier but on the other hand if one or two of those small company devs quit there will be no more development at all.

For end-users like us there is always a business risk if we rely on certain tools.
At the moment I can work with Octane but look into FStorm Renderer too so I could switch if one falls off.

[RobSteady]

I think this is getting a bit harsh here. I can understand diappointment for business decision from our perspective.

If you run a big comapny like Otoy you may have an exit strategy to get bought by an even bigger company and live a good life. Like Radiance did it years ago. Old members may remember his statement that he will never have to care about money again. A lot of start-ups act like this. Found the company, get investors, get to stock market, get bought by facebook or whoever. In the case of otoy maybe Autodesk?

The Otoy devs are just people who code and do their stuff.

We are just the end-users. We are the customers but there will be lots of other customers. It's just speculation of mine but I don't think Octane Render gives a lot of profit. Its just a side product with this cheap price-tag. The focus relies on all the other stuff Otoy does. So the "user-voice" will not be so strong. It doesn't matter if some people here skip an update and don't spent 250$ for licenses.

This would apply for smaller comapnies with two or three devs. The user-voice is stronger, the way to development decisions is easier but on the other hand if one or two of those small company devs quit there will be no more development at all.

For end-users like us there is always a business risk if we rely on certain tools.
At the moment I can work with Octane but look into FStorm Renderer too so I could switch if one falls off.

Pretty intimidated, subordinative attitude; "Otoy is a big company, they have bigger things to do than care about their end users. We're just the dispensable, little customers."
This may apply to people who bought Octane to play a little bit around but not to those who use it on a daily basis and invested a lot of time and money to build up a large asset library and have to rely on the software.
I think Otoy has a bigger responsibility than try to do stuff and write some well sounding comments in the forum to calm down customers.

[mbetke]

You are not into stock exchange or investment business, aren't you?

The goal is to please investors and stock holders not customers. Best example is Autodesk which is also an Otoy investor as far as I remember.
If you don't please you stock holders / investors they put their money elsewhere and doors are shut. It's just that easy.

If we invest money and time into our own small 3D business we take the risk. The risk that Autodesk stops development for 3ds max and concentrates on maya, the risk that Nvidia does not put anought CUDA-cores into new generations ant make them slower for our needs, the risk of plugins not working anymore or Potoshops stopps working with new formats because Adobe wants us to get into a monthly rent model.

There is no responsibility or ethic. Large companies buy out small ones, fire all the employees and close the studio. It's all about money. Otoy bought technology and we users were just coming with it.

Do you really think Otoy needs to make money with Octane? Why is it so cheap compared to Vray? Almost no commericals or regular buzz news on CG sites? It seems they use the revenue from Octane Render to finance the developers. The focus seems to be on Cloud stuff and wherever.

There is no CEO watching the forums here and thinking "Oh poor Rob and Michael they can't run their 1.9 files anymore." He drives around with his sports car to the next golf court and enjoys the sun.

[thanulee]

"I should have just said, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth"."

Selling a beta product is not a gift horse, is horse s**t
No wonder there is no gallery page on the website. Either they do not care, or there isnt much to show other than mostly archviz and 90% still images.

"Do you really think Otoy needs to make money with Octane? Why is it so cheap compared to Vray? Almost no commericals or regular buzz news on CG sites? It seems they use the revenue from Octane Render to finance the developers. The focus seems to be on Cloud stuff and wherever.
There is no CEO watching the forums here and thinking "Oh poor Rob and Michael they can't run their 1.9 files anymore." He drives around with his sports car to the next golf court and enjoys the sun. "

Bold statement and so true same time.

[Goldorak]

We genuinely appreciate any feedback or critique that helps us do our jobs better. We've done our best to respond to everyone who posted here. This is however a product support forum, and we've drifted pretty far off topic.

I will close this thread out by saying Octane is OTOY's core product - full stop. We live or die by it as a company, and that isn't changing.