Refractive Software (Octane), purchased by Otoy.

[matej]

Thanks for the answers.

I don't have much hope for a Blender integrated plugin, but as long as the standalone version will have support & tools to get the most out of Octane on a professional quality level, then it will be fine.

[ROUBAL]

If a Blender plugin is not developped, full animation of big scenes will not be possible (80 minutes for exporting and loading per frame for a 2.8GB scene, I don't call that "possible").

So, at least, we definitely need the ability of keyframing the camera and its parameters inside Octane to create easily walthrough videos without using an external tool like OPT, which is currently the only available choice, but tedious to setup and use.

[radiance]

Hi All,

Sorry for not replying earlier but i have been quite busy lately...
The venturebeat article came out too early and i was going to write an official announcement on the site today. (will follow soon)

First of all, I sold Refractive and Octane to OTOY Inc.
As you all know, our baby is growing up and needs to leave the home into the world, to grow up.

I have worked myself into hospital (twice) over the last years to create almost single handedly (and with the help of a few other excellent programmers after the first 6 months),
a renderer that competes favorably with iRay, Arion, you name it.
I cannot continue like this, it is bad for my health.

Also, due to the recession, It is not possible for RS to grow past 3-4 employees, limiting growth.
There is also a possibility that RS goes bankrupt within say the next year and then nobody has nothing anymore, and I am stuck with debt for life.
Selling RS has secured my personal future, I never need to worry about money again, and while you may be very envious of that, think of all the free time i will have to develop new projects in the future, and I have a lot of good ideas.

Here are a few very important answers to your questions:

1. Nothing will change for you and your licenses. Prices, free v1.0 final for beta licenses, etc... everything remains the same.
2. v2.0, which is still a long way off, will not become expensive.
3. OTOY Inc. is only 40 people big, so not a big corporation.
4. They develop cloud technology and actor capturing technology so they do not have people right now (at this very day) to start work on Octane, they will be hiring/expanding, so expect things to slowly chang during the next few months, it's a lot of logistics work. I can say that Sam Lapere is joining us in a couple of weeks (a coder with an excellent blog), and much more coders during the next months, development will skyrocket.
5. We will have offices in NZ (development) and LA (development, management), so we can offer faster support in different timezones.
6. Octane standalone and the plugins will remain as they are, and cloud versions will be optional, eg, you will be able to buy Octane v2.0 or whatever in the future to run on your machine.
7. Autodesk HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. OTOY Just develops cloud tech for them that's it. They have no say or any contact at all with the octane team. They cannot interfere with it either as they do not have any control whatsoever. I personally don't even know anyone at Autodesk, it's a cloud thing between the cloud department at OTOY and Autodesk only. The AutoCAD plugin is purely coincidental.
8. Regarding blender, we are still evaluating options for a blender plugin product. It's quite difficult due to the GPL restrictions on linking the octane engine into blender, and we wonder if the demand is big enough, since brecht joined our company, only to vanish 2 weeks later with a copy of our engine code and 4 months later announce 'cycles', which is now integrated into blender. Maybe a poll would be in order here to see what demand there is, as it costs time and money to develop these plugin products.
9. I (eg, Radiance) will stay working in the OTOY New Zealand and LA offices, managing octane development, aswell as all the current staff of Refractive Software LTD, eg nobody is going to go. I will be titled 'Chief Graphics Architect' at OTOY Inc. (sounds pretty spiffy eh I don't care much for titles though, they came up with it )
EDIT: 10. OctaneRender(R) standalone edition will remain as is and keep being improved as is, we are not switching over %100 to plugin products only, standalone wil remain too.


I understand some of you will reconsider helping new customers with questions on the site due to this announcement, but the truth is that it's going to take us at least 1-2 months to train people to provide support, so I ask everyone considering stopping offering help to reconsider for a short while, until we have the trained manpower we need. Just do it for me, and my gift to you of a 99 Euro GPU engine


I hope this answers most of your questions, and please ask me more, I will respond here...

Radiance

[ROUBAL]

I hope this answers most of your questions, and please ask me more, I will respond here...

@Radiance :

Well, even if it was not obvious in my previous post, It was meant as a question, and it is imho very important for Blender users :

While waiting for a pluging for Blender that may or may not be done in the future, do you plan to include in Octane Standalone in a very close future the ability of keyframing at least the camera and its parameters, in order to avoid the use of third party tools requiring a tedious setup, like OPT ? Several months ago we were adviced to not use this tool and wait for the built in animation feature, but there is still nothing else available to make walkthrough animations of big scenes.

[jipe]

I'm sorry, but what are you complaining for?! Octane costs 99 Euros, which is NOTHING compared to what it offers, even if it's far for being complete. [...] Sure, there are lots of features missing, and lots of bugs, but for the price we paid, it is great.

Octane is still far from being a viable option for my animation needs (and I'm not alone). The history of Octane's development is trail of missed deadlines, buggy builds, and too many excuses to count. I'm happy that some here have managed to make use of the current builds, but the software's progress has been underwhelming and inconsistent. I spent 7x as much on Renderman for Maya but my return on that investment has been many times larger -- not to mention, Pixar releases consistent stable updates and provides world-class professional support to customers. The fact that Octane costs less is not a buffer that should deflect any and all criticism; it reflects poor business strategy, and it does mean that after two years we should be asking for a finished product with all the promised 1.0 features.

[t_3]

The fact that Octane costs less is not a buffer that should deflect any and all criticism;

not any and all, this is true. enthusiastic programmers too often miss their own deadlines. not the best thing to watch, but still radiance pulled out a quite competitive product, even if you can't use it.

you know how long renderman is developed already? did you write that same statements, when renderman was 2 years old? i'm curious to know what you would have done instead? quietly developing 5 yerars to see competitors marketing half-done products and then take over the market with a shiny perfect product? of course if you are a millionaire you could do that. doubt it would work though...

[jipe]

I'm fully aware of how long PRMan has been in development. My point was not to make any kind of direct comparison, only to respond to the comment that I should try out a renderer that costs $1k (I have, and the experience was extremely productive).

I didn't come here to dump on Octane. I wouldn't have purchased if I didn't think it showed promise; likewise for still visiting the forums nearly two years after the first beta release. I still have hopes that it can become something really solid, just like everyone else here. But every aspect of this announcement was communicated poorly, in a manner that I've unfortunately come to expect from Refractive. Enthusiasm is great and I fully realize that planning projects of this scope isn't easy. But people who have themselves together don't make excuses and they don't work themselves into health problems, and they don't blame countless external factors over and over again. They make difficult decisions and they ship products, and they keep their promises. Octane still has a lot to deliver.

[r-username]

/

Interesting, tough crowd.

- I think it's fair to say that no one should purchase software on what it will do sometime in the future, this will always lead to a bad outcome. That's my experience any way, from any size company.

- i have only been using the product for a few months so I may not know the entire history but it is not easy to start a company or develop a technology, much less see any return on your investment. 90% of startups fail, so if he made it to a sale I'm not sure why the sour faces?

[DayVids]

Being a self employed guy, I can only say, WAY TO GO RADIANCE!

That's a pretty substantial accomplishment to build a business to the point of sale, and be able to then never have to worry about money for you and your family again is even better. You have earned it I'm certain, and thanks for letting us know that we're at least semi secure in our product choice for the near future.

I'm a blender user who is definately interested in seeing a plug-in. I'd certainly be willing to plunk down a couple hundred or so $US to have it in my production workflow.

Hi All,

Sorry for not replying earlier but i have been quite busy lately...
The venturebeat article came out too early and i was going to write an official announcement on the site today. (will follow soon)

First of all, I sold Refractive and Octane to OTOY Inc.
As you all know, our baby is growing up and needs to leave the home into the world, to grow up.

I have worked myself into hospital (twice) over the last years to create almost single handedly (and with the help of a few other excellent programmers after the first 6 months),
a renderer that competes favorably with iRay, Arion, you name it.
I cannot continue like this, it is bad for my health.

Also, due to the recession, It is not possible for RS to grow past 3-4 employees, limiting growth.
There is also a possibility that RS goes bankrupt within say the next year and then nobody has nothing anymore, and I am stuck with debt for life.
Selling RS has secured my personal future, I never need to worry about money again, and while you may be very envious of that, think of all the free time i will have to develop new projects in the future, and I have a lot of good ideas.

Here are a few very important answers to your questions:

1. Nothing will change for you and your licenses. Prices, free v1.0 final for beta licenses, etc... everything remains the same.
2. v2.0, which is still a long way off, will not become expensive.
3. OTOY Inc. is only 40 people big, so not a big corporation.
4. They develop cloud technology and actor capturing technology so they do not have people right now (at this very day) to start work on Octane, they will be hiring/expanding, so expect things to slowly chang during the next few months, it's a lot of logistics work. I can say that Sam Lapere is joining us in a couple of weeks (a coder with an excellent blog), and much more coders during the next months, development will skyrocket.
5. We will have offices in NZ (development) and LA (development, management), so we can offer faster support in different timezones.
6. Octane standalone and the plugins will remain as they are, and cloud versions will be optional, eg, you will be able to buy Octane v2.0 or whatever in the future to run on your machine.
7. Autodesk HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. OTOY Just develops cloud tech for them that's it. They have no say or any contact at all with the octane team. They cannot interfere with it either as they do not have any control whatsoever. I personally don't even know anyone at Autodesk, it's a cloud thing between the cloud department at OTOY and Autodesk only. The AutoCAD plugin is purely coincidental.
8. Regarding blender, we are still evaluating options for a blender plugin product. It's quite difficult due to the GPL restrictions on linking the octane engine into blender, and we wonder if the demand is big enough, since brecht joined our company, only to vanish 2 weeks later with a copy of our engine code and 4 months later announce 'cycles', which is now integrated into blender. Maybe a poll would be in order here to see what demand there is, as it costs time and money to develop these plugin products.
9. I (eg, Radiance) will stay working in the OTOY New Zealand and LA offices, managing octane development, aswell as all the current staff of Refractive Software LTD, eg nobody is going to go. I will be titled 'Chief Graphics Architect' at OTOY Inc. (sounds pretty spiffy eh I don't care much for titles though, they came up with it )
EDIT: 10. OctaneRender(R) standalone edition will remain as is and keep being improved as is, we are not switching over %100 to plugin products only, standalone wil remain too.


I understand some of you will reconsider helping new customers with questions on the site due to this announcement, but the truth is that it's going to take us at least 1-2 months to train people to provide support, so I ask everyone considering stopping offering help to reconsider for a short while, until we have the trained manpower we need. Just do it for me, and my gift to you of a 99 Euro GPU engine


I hope this answers most of your questions, and please ask me more, I will respond here...

Radiance

[mainframefx]

I can't understand why people are so angry about the development time. 99$ is a joke for this kind of software. Sure his doesn't qualify developers for being lazy and reject any kind of critizm but they DID NOT do that, at all. Anyone who bought this product believing he would buy something that would be ready to use in daily work soon has definitely wrong expections on this kind of software development.
See this as a kickstarter project "Back us with this amount of money and we can start developing" and imo they did this really well so far. Ocatne is an astonishing engine and I'm happy to hear that the company is growing without comprimising any promises they made.

Hearing that someone worked that much on a project that he brought himself to the hospital is awful. The better is the news that they have financial backup now and get more coders on this project.