iPad Pro & Octane

[pegot]

I have an ancient IPad 4 that I haven’t used for several years as I just use my iPhone 12 Pro Max for photos, email, web browsing, or video watching when away from my desktops.

However, I was just offered a great deal from Affinity to update my Affinity Photo V1 license to the entire V2 suite of applications on all platforms (Windows, Mac, and iOS) for just $30. So I am thinking about getting a 2024 iPad Pro to take advantage of those apps.

But if making that kind of investment I need to know that such a device can be usable for more complex work flows - especially with 3D.

Is Octane Render ready to reliably work with an iPad Pro? What can one currently do with Octane Render and an iPad Pro? What is the workflow and benefits?

What other apps can be utilized on an iPad Pro that would facilitate a 3D work flow (model / texture creation, model optimization, file browsing & conversion, working with and optimizing gLTF and USD formats, rendering, texture painting, photogrammetry, animation)?

My initial thoughts are that an iPad could be great for 3D sculpting, though I don’t currently do any of that except for very minimal sculpting occasionally in Blender. But it might be a good way to learn sculpting through the iPad?

Has anyone used an iPad with Octane or other 3D programs and could share their experiences?

[bepeg4d]

Hi,
I love to work on iPad Pro for 3D works, especially with new M4 version!

OctaneX works very well, and you can use it for checking/editing existing .orbx files, or create new scenes from scratch:

Here are the other apps I'm using more:

My preferred one is Shaper 3D for modeling:

And import the models in OctaneX via OBJ, or USDZ format:

I'm not a sculptor, but Nomad Sculpt and Zbrush are working very very well on iPad, while I'm using Procreate for texturing and painting the models.
Finally, I'm using Reality OBJ for converting Nomad Sculpt OBJs to USDZ to keep the vertex paint.

Happy iPad Pro GPU rendering!
Beppe

[pegot]

Wow you’re right the iPad Pro M4 does work great with Octane! I just got one a few days ago and in addition to Octane also installed Nomad Sculpt, Procreate, and Valence 3D - which seems like a nice capable polygon modeler. Can’t find anything for converting between gLTF and USD though. Would be nice if Apple’s Reality Converter was ported to an iOS App - they already have Reality Composer so why not Converter?

Wondering if Oty has plans to extend functionality of Octane App for cross platform Network Rendering? Or would it be impossible to use the GPU power of PC and Macs in this way?

I’m my initial testing with Octane App on iPad though the Save as Package and Save as Reference Package (not sure what the difference is) don’t seem to be working. Nothing is packed. The project remains blank and file size only 1Kb.

The other issue I am having is that USDZ files exported from Valence 3D aren’t showing as visible in Octane (neither iPad nor Desktop versions). Those files do show up fine in Blender though. USDZ from other sources I tried appear fine in Octane App so this is probably an issue on Valence 3D’s side and when I get a chance will have to contact developer.

[bepeg4d]

Great, nice to hear you like it!

About .orbx, correct, current version has an issue and you can only save in .ocs, I'm going to report this.

About importing geometry, when I have issues, I'm using Reality OBJ to convert from OBJ to USDZ.

ciao,
Beppe