OctaneRender® 1.025 beta2.57 release [obsolete]

[jamnique]

I was hoping to see a faster development of Octane Render... it's so hard to use it for a real production... Actually I only use it for fun

We tried Octane a while ago and if it coud be integrated into our render pipeline somehow. There were too many issues and too many features missing. Octane development is just far, far too slow, it was in beta 2 years (?) ago, still is today, and god knows for how long it will be till all the promised features are implemented and it can be used reliably in real productions. Too risky. It's fun as you said, but only for playing around with it.

Depends on what you're using it for. For simple motion graphics it is actually awesome, except for the fact that motion blur sucks It's also great for turntables ;] I've been using it for work since the early days.

[ROUBAL]

I agree that Octane allows very nice still images and simple animations of slight weight scenes, but very necessary things are really missing for big scenes as well as some simple tools like shadow caster, shadow catcher and no shadow materials.

For big scenes (like forests), instances are still missing and we had no news about progresses in that way for a while.

Also, as plugins for some packages like Blender may come very late if they come ever, the ability of keyframing the camera inside Octane is very necessary. OTP users have been adviced to wait for Octane animations features several months ago, but there is still no better available solution currently.

I am an Octane enthusiastic fan since the very beginning, but I have to admit that I have less and less hope about using Octane for everything...

[jamnique]

I agree that Octane allows very nice still images and simple animations of slight weight scenes, but very necessary things are really missing for big scenes as well as some simple tools like shadow caster, shadow catcher and no shadow materials.

For big scenes (like forests), instances are still missing and we had no news about progresses in that way for a while.

Also, as plugins for some packages like Blender may come very late if they come ever, the ability of keyframing the camera inside Octane is very necessary. OTP users have been adviced to wait for Octane animations features several months ago, but there is still no better available solution currently.

I am an Octane enthusiastic fan since the very beginning, but I have to admit that I have less and less hope about using Octane for everything...

I do feel your pain. Said lack of good motion blur made me go back to mental ray recently ;] Which actually sounds kind of crazy hehe ;]

[bb3d]

Some bugs I found in this version:

- When I create an empty material macro and connect it to the mesh node, Octane will ignore any changes I make in this macro (doesn't refresh render) until I enable "viewing of material nodes when selected"
- The "AF" and "stereo anaglyph" buttons are gone. Why? How can I enable autofocus again?
- Octane crashes if I load an OBJ in a mesh node that has less material inputs than the previous version.
- When I reduce the "Specular" value of a glossy material to 0 it still has reflection. Bug or feature?

[Elvissuperstar007]

would add a built-in animation ... forward, backward, right, left the movement!
I have two years of not enough sleep .... waiting for the render! for me to render a batch will be happiness
sorry for bad english

[t_3]

- When I create an empty material macro and connect it to the mesh node, Octane will ignore any changes I make in this macro (doesn't refresh render) until I enable "viewing of material nodes when selected"

i think roeland has already confirmed that bug. another thing that helps as workaround is to disconnect a single material (anyone will do) and reconnect it, as this seems to trigger a rebuild of all mats and connections.

- The "AF" and "stereo anaglyph" buttons are gone. Why? How can I enable autofocus again?

funny, never noticed that. you can switch autofocus on/off in the camera node (at the bottom of the thinlens camera parameters).

- When I reduce the "Specular" value of a glossy material to 0 it still has reflection. Bug or feature?

it is still a glossy mat, isn't it? but if you set roughness to or above 0.01 i don't think that there are still reflections.

ps: i often update .obj with less material nodes, but haven't had octane crashing while doing that (windows 2.57 version)...

[roeland]

There is always Fresnel reflection on glossy materials, even if the reflection values are set to 0.

--
Roeland

[polytek]

Why you guys don't keep people interested by showing us a "future techview" every month (like luxology) , i don't expect timelines 4 tools to be implemented, just some possible feature tech you guys are thinking off, the lack off updates or general info starts to really bug me lately, resulting in a total lack of interest...not a good situation for a young soft.company to be in....

just my 2 cents,

High regards,
Polytek

[Elvissuperstar007]

arion 1.6 hacked Oo

[bb3d]

funny, never noticed that. you can switch autofocus on/off in the camera node (at the bottom of the thinlens camera parameters).

Ah, thank you, I found it!

it is still a glossy mat, isn't it? but if you set roughness to or above 0.01 i don't think that there are still reflections.

I know that I have to use the diffuse material to have no reflections at all, but in this case I wanted to have only subtle, slightly blurred reflections. Even at 0 the reflections were too strong. I found a workaround by mixing the glossy mat with a diffuse mat, but I think, that this behavior should be changed, because with 0 specular I expect 0 specular and not 0.01 specular.

ps: i often update .obj with less material nodes, but haven't had octane crashing while doing that (windows 2.57 version)...

Maybe there was also some other problem with my OBJ, but I could reproduce it several times.

Also, as plugins for some packages like Blender may come very late if they come ever, the ability of keyframing the camera inside Octane is very necessary. OTP users have been adviced to wait for Octane animations features several months ago, but there is still no better available solution currently.

Well, since Blender got the new "Cycles" render engine, there seems to be no need to look elsewhere anymore. Cycles is integrated very well and even in it's early development stage it already supports instances and displacement. As a Blender user I would learn how to get the most out of this new renderer now.

I am an Octane enthusiastic fan since the very beginning, but I have to admit that I have less and less hope about using Octane for everything...

I see this every day in every software forum - users complain about "their" software not being developed fast enough and/or not in the right direction. I am not a programmer , so I cannot judge about how difficult it is to make a software like Octane, but it seems to be a very tough job. For example, Chaosgroup needed about 5 years to integrate Vray into XSI. 5 years. For a plugin. I hope, that "Face" will not need that long for the Octane plugin