upcoming beta 2.6: SSS preview renders

[picajol]

I don't think Maxwell is so slow. With interactive "FIRE" mode you can tune materials and camera angles as fast as in Octane.

Lot of talking here and lot of shiny advertising.
Has anyone here maybe did a comparison of the unbiased engines. (MW, FRY, Octane)
I would love to see someone doing that classroom scene that was very popular when MW came out...

[mbetke]

Maxwell fire is a great addon for Studio but the problem remains... a clean interior scene is really difficult and this is not something we understand when tweaking materials... Sometimes you have to let it render for 10 hours and then you realize that the left side of the image has not enough light and it will always be noisy!.

Totally aggree. This is handled great and fast with Octane.

I don't think Maxwell will ever get an unbiased mode. Its not part of their product philosophy.

@picajol:
It doesn't make sense to compare them all with the same scene because you would need to update everytime a new version has been released.

Aynway, there is a little challenge from one year ago or so which compares a dragon model with frosted-glass material in lots of render-engines. Keep in mind Ocatane has PMC now, plus other engines got large updates too in the meantime:

[picajol]

Sorry but for me this is a stupid test.
Im more into architectual area...more objects, not 1 object, big spaces, not studio eniroment, natural lightning, not studio lights....

p.s. can anyone found that classroom scene?

[kubo]

the classroom scene was done by someone (or a rather close one) in the last competition or in the gallery forum, search for it. If you are in archviz there is TONS of examples either in the WIP or Gallery forums, with really talented people and done in Octane. And that's without instances, so whenever they get here it's going to be much easier.
BTW it's not marketing, we are not trying to sell anything (we are not sales representatives) just share our work here. For me Octane is the best render out there, but that's just my opinion, and before I bought it I tried the demo for a while and really surprised me how much better and faster I could do my renders with it and mostly adjust materials and fine tune the scene. So if it works for you then it's great, if it doesn't I'm sure you can find others out there that'll suit your needs.

[picajol]

Look Im not saying anything against Octane.
Yes, there are some realy great images done with it, but so are also with other render engines wcih comes done to "Its the artist not the tool".
What bugs me is the advertisment of GPU beeing blazingly fast compared to CPU rendering.
People say around 12 hours per image with octane, and thats with 3 fast GPUs. Ok
Reading other forums and looking at gallerys from other unbiased render engines , rendring time, REPORTED by users, are around 12-18 hours with 2 Xeon worstations.
So numbers dont mach here...
Im just saying that taking one "normal" interior and exterior scene and rendering it with different engines would give people a direction in wich to maybe go.
Octane seems something worth to invest as its philosophy is something completly new...

[kubo]

well, I know you can see in the gallery lots of renders with several hours behind them, yet one of the things I'm more grateful about octane is that in many commercial jobs I had with crazy deadlines I could deliver thanks to 15min renders in PT that otherwise would have been imposible (and they look more immpressive than the same type of jobs with other renderers I used to do), but since it's the gallery we want to show off (most of the time) so we cook some stuff for far too long to get some grain off or some other subtle thing that usually when you are on a deadline you wont care anyway. Besides, I don't recall I've done any 12hr long render if it wasn't cause I left it overnight and just didn't check on it.
Like you said it's never about the tool, yet this at least for me is a tool worth having, but that doesn't have to be your case.
Also keep in mind that adding an extra GPU to your computer is pretty cheap compared to getting yourselve a new workstation, so that works fine with me.

[picajol]

Agree

[Timmaigh]

Look Im not saying anything against Octane.
Yes, there are some realy great images done with it, but so are also with other render engines wcih comes done to "Its the artist not the tool".
What bugs me is the advertisment of GPU beeing blazingly fast compared to CPU rendering.
People say around 12 hours per image with octane, and thats with 3 fast GPUs. Ok
Reading other forums and looking at gallerys from other unbiased render engines , rendring time, REPORTED by users, are around 12-18 hours with 2 Xeon worstations.
So numbers dont mach here...
Im just saying that taking one "normal" interior and exterior scene and rendering it with different engines would give people a direction in wich to maybe go.
Octane seems something worth to invest as its philosophy is something completly new...

Exteriors are very fast, at least compared to Vray.
But you are right, i expected the GPU rendering to be faster as well, in the end it ended up almost on par with CPUs. But you need to take the cost into account, thats their strongest selling point. 3 gtx580s cost about 1500 EUROs, while only one 6-core Xeon cost 1600. And you need 2 of them + dual-socket mobo and perhaps ECC RAM. Its far more expensive solution.

EDIT: Almost forgot, what i wanted to write in originally... i am soo happy about Instancing and SSS being so close to be added, but can we finally have the HDR/IBL + Sun combo in the next release? I am unable to get those nice reflections in the windows, if i go with sun only, as there is obviously nothing to be reflected in them. If i go with IBL, then there are no sharp shadows... personally i would be willing to wait more for the next release, if this was included. Thanks and keep up the great work

[picajol]

Hey Timmaigh.
I see oyu have Fractal Design R2 chasis.
Was thinking of getting one
Would you say its a quite one?

[kubo]

EDIT: Almost forgot, what i wanted to write in originally... i am soo happy about Instancing and SSS being so close to be added, but can we finally have the HDR/IBL + Sun combo in the next release? I am unable to get those nice reflections in the windows, if i go with sun only, as there is obviously nothing to be reflected in them. If i go with IBL, then there are no sharp shadows... personally i would be willing to wait more for the next release, if this was included. Thanks and keep up the great work

I guess we all have our preferences, but I can always fake those reflections fast and easy in photoshop, yet instances, those I can't fake, and I'm drooling just waiting for the next build, I'm even building my next contest entry relaying completly in instances and SSS just for the heck of it, (and SSS I can fake too, althou it looks so sweet in this teaser renders arf)