Octane: Blender Particles, NLSE, GPU memory & Version releas

[Squiggles]

Dear Octane render,

Hello ! I've got a few questions. For your info, I'm using Blender. Here they are:

1. Does Octane render support particles (like hair particles, water particles, fume particles, etc)? If so, may I gain an approximate time period when this feature may be present: e.g. this year, next year, etc?

2. In light of Blenders Video Sequencing Editor & Adobe's Mercury Playback engine, is it likely that Octane will be supporting the rendering of data from Blenders VSE, like as a plugin? I ask, because I'm not that much of a fan of forking out vast quantities of cash for Adobes MPE, if the miracle that is known as Octane Render may be able to do so!

3. I read a recent post where Radiance explains that memory size will not longer be a limitation. Please may I gain a rudimentary understanding of this feature. I ask, because if someone has bough two cards that have 1GB in memory size, will these memory add up (like 1GB + 1GB =2GB), or will Octane Render be using the system memory?

4. Is it highly probable that the first version of Octane Render will be release this month/next month/this year? I appreciate how it is fairly difficult to give an estimate, but I would be grateful if I could obtain a ball park figure. Thanks!

Thank you in advance,
Kind Regards,
Squiggles, 16/10/10

[matej]

1.) The Blender exporter atm does not export particles as mesh and Octane currently imports scenes through .obj file format.

3.) VRAM does not stack up and Octane won't use system memory. Memory optimizations like instances will come in the future.

4.) It's highly probable that Octane 1.0 final will be out this year

[Squiggles]

Thanks for your reply.

In response for Question 3, may I ask, what are instances?

Thanks

[matej]

Instances are copies of the same object that together wont use more memory than a single object, but will allow transforms to be applied on them. If you have three chairs, Octane now loads geometry data into vram for all three of them. With instances it will load only one chair.

[matej]

In additional response to 1.) you could export those particles to Octane that are visualized as (mesh) object, but strands are not supported

[radiance]

Morning,

Thanks Matej, you pretty much hit the nail on the spot.
I can't divulge any information about the solution to the GPU memory issue other than that i would still recommend to buy at anytime a decent GPU or more with at least 1GB or 2GB for consumer cards (geforce), or higher end ones if you need them and can afford them in a high-end environment.

Yours,
Radiance

[Squiggles]

Thank you Radiance for the response

Also is the dev team unable to diverge in the topics of whether Octane may produce a plugin enabling rendering of the data from Blenders VSE interface? I ask, because the only program on the market that allows rendering of data from a NLSE is in Adobes £769.99 Premiere Pro, via its Mercury Playback Engine. £769.99 is 8.9 times more expensive that Octane Render atm. Hence the query!

Thank you.
Squiggles, 17/10/10

[steveps3]

As a plus to question 1, you would also have to "Make duplicates real" before octane will render them.