Which feature do you need the most?

[adrianr]

Displacements are by far Octanes most obvious weakness. The implementation of them is terrible, and lag behind even ancient renderers like Modos. Like already stated above, vertex displacements just aren't an option for 99% of people interested in speed and efficiency.

I remember the most I realised how bad they were. I needed to add two displacements together to create slightly embossed text on a logo, and when using vertex, it added 3 million triangles to a scene that was only 820k to begin with.

Compare that to Modo where you just drop a displacement in the shader tree and you can stack them all day.

I actually don't understand why displacements are so bad in this renderer.

I want to +1 this more times than would be sensible. Displacement in Octane is such a miserable experience. Are there any hints on a roadmap that this is due an overhaul?

And one year later, displacements are still miserable

I was very excited to see the improved texture displacements coming in 2026, so we probably only have another full year to wait before we can use a stable version without a bunch of caveats

Edit: I just learnt that even the rewritten 2026 displacement isn't going to support motion blur. Absolute insanity.

[leave2]

As someone who came from a photography background, knowing none of the history of how these types of software are produced, I realise I was spoiled as a photographer with all of my software just getting consistently better over time.

The more I use Octane, the more I feel gets broken with every successive update.

Not once in the 4 years that I've been using this, has an update ever blown me away or made me feel like I actually got something.