What's next

[PeterCGS]

Since you opened pandoras box... Would it be possible to have instances within instances (One tree, with instanced leaves, and then instance the whole tree)? Im asking too much now arent I?

[ROUBAL]

Thank you very much for giving us these informations ! Instances are very awaited !

I would like to come back on few features I asked for since the beginning of Octane. They are very basic and present in almost every render engine.

I mean Shadow Catcher material, Shadow Caster Only material and Material casting non shadow (allows environment sphere or cylinder to not obstruct the daylight system) .

The most important being Shadow Catcher, as it allows compositing of several layers. As compositing can allow big scenes when you are short of memory, it is very important to get this Shadow catcher material.

I know that I asked many times for this feature and also asked if it would be complicated to add it to Octane, but I never got a response by someone from Octane's Team.

So, some words about that would be welcome. Any chance to get these important features in a not too far future ?

Thanks in advance.

[roeland]

We are planning to work on a shadow catching material after the instancing is done.

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Roeland

[matej]

Please can somebody answer if:

1.) Instancing (and more generally; movable objects) will be available for the standalone version, ie. you will provide means for non-integrated exporters to define which parts of the mesh are objects or "instances", which will then be understood by Octane at scene load?

2.) If yes, will that mean a new export file format, as .obj standard is not suitable for this?

Since the Blender exporter is developed by the "community" (ok, one person), it would be nice if RS/Otoy releases this implementation details as soon as they are defined.

[roeland]

Instancing will be available in the standalone version. We haven't developed an exporter specification yet to allow exporters to use this feature, for now we need to do more work on instancing before we can decide what this new format is going to look like.

--
Roeland

[matej]

OK, thanks Roeland! Glad to know there will be support for the standalone too.

[ROUBAL]

Thank you very much for these informations Roeland !

[Jaberwocky]

Many thanks for the update Roeland....it's looking really good.This + 4Gb 6xx cards + Cuda 5 + increased number of maps stored in 6xx cards means massive scenes can be rendered in the future.

[gabrielefx]

@Roeland:

someone implemented distributed cuda rendering.
It works like a charm.

Why spend a lot of money for one single 8 pci-xpress barebone?

We can build silent and cheap workstations with 4 GTXs and connect them in a fast network.

The era of distributed gpu rendering is started.

[LudovicRouy]

Great news and thanks to share some of your project plan it gives us a reason to wait !