OTOY Forums

Honestly, guys, the only thing worse than not having a feature is not having a reply to questions about a feature. The Octane Maya integration, right now, feels really neglected, and you're in danger of losing a lot of us who are really trying to support you. There just comes a point where too many "It can't do that"s force us to call it a day.

Things like viewport display of textures and environments have really got to go on the "essentials" list or the whole thing feels clumsy and half-baked. Help us help you!

Best,

_Mike

mverta wrote:Honestly, guys, the only thing worse than not having a feature is not having a reply to questions about a feature. The Octane Maya integration, right now, feels really neglected, and you're in danger of losing a lot of us who are really trying to support you. There just comes a point where too many "It can't do that"s force us to call it a day.

Things like viewport display of textures and environments have really got to go on the "essentials" list or the whole thing feels clumsy and half-baked. Help us help you!

Best,

_Mike

Thank you for the direct feedback. We value it. We are in the process of bringing on additional resources to support the Maya plug-in. This will allow us to integrate customer feature requests with much greater frequency.

mverta wrote:... Things like viewport display of textures ...

There are no problems with "viewport display of textures" if they are properly set up... But I agree the manual could be better 'cause I've just looked into it and haven't found there any mention about that... As I remember, the importance of texture transforms in this regard was only discussed on this forum...
The manual will be improved too with additional resources dedicated to this plugin. Right now I just can't stop the current work and switch to manual writing and full-time forum support - 'cause you all are waiting for the versions 3.0 of Blender, 3ds Max and Maya plugins...

Cheers for the info, Jim.

Any snippets/previews on the new features for Maya?

I agree with alot of previous writers.
Its to much for Jimstar to develop several plugins, answer forum questions and update the manual, so its good to hear that he's getting additional resources.

I've gone over to Maya from Max, and the biggest differences I find are that the Max Octane plugin is much more interactive, you can switch camera or set new materials without having to update your renderview and when move around in the scene the renderview updates in realtime (and not only when you stop, as in Maya) and from what I've heard the C4D plugin is even more interactive. It would be great if we could get that in Maya aswell in the future, because I really think thats where Octanes strength lies, the interactivity.

Goldorak wrote:

mverta wrote:Honestly, guys, the only thing worse than not having a feature is not having a reply to questions about a feature. The Octane Maya integration, right now, feels really neglected, and you're in danger of losing a lot of us who are really trying to support you. There just comes a point where too many "It can't do that"s force us to call it a day.

Things like viewport display of textures and environments have really got to go on the "essentials" list or the whole thing feels clumsy and half-baked. Help us help you!

Best,

_Mike

Thank you for the direct feedback. We value it. We are in the process of bringing on additional resources to support the Maya plug-in. This will allow us to integrate customer feature requests with much greater frequency.

This is now known widespread. Christophe Desse (naughty dog), also explains his feelings towards octane integration in maya in hos gnomon tutorial.
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/ ... qFXHVL783c
So I also hope that the plugin integrates better and get more people for development of the Maya plugin.
Brecht Van Lommel left blender foundation for the development of Solid Angle's Arnold GPU development, that would most probably increase competition.

zboog wrote:Our studio began to use Redshift just this month and the number one reason was the lack of support for the Octane Maya plugin.

Not only do many questions go unanswered on this forum, but when they do, the answers from Otoy staff are often condescending and too brief to be useful.

Also, it's not unusual for features in the plugin to be in place for months before there's any documentation, and even when the documentation gets written it's often not sufficient to understand how to use the plugin. More example pics and videos, please!

Octane for Maya is quickly becoming a third or fourth option for our studio even though it was extremely popular with our artists as recently as last year.

Those condescending and misleading answers were what made me seek alternatives last years too. In my case I began to push less photorealistic renders to my clients instead of searching for another path tracer.

Specially getting those half answers regardless if the post is a "help me please" RTFM kind of topic or a systematic and very illustrated isolation of bugs, issues or needed features. It's ok to have a software with known limitations developed by a small staff if it is trying to help the users, but being falsely lead to believe that the problem is on our end is more harmful for the added waste of time without resolution instead of thinking on a workaround.

It would also be ok if support wouldn't know the answer or wouldn't understand the question, but the default support routine of "are you sure the power cord is on", "wait 10 minutes and reboot. Then call again if the problem persists", "we can't reproduce on our side, the problem is with your third party software" does not fit Octane usage and (I believe) educated user base.

It's very frustrating to walk on eggshells to post an issue to have it dismissed anyway. We stop having issues - on the bad way. We stop frequenting the forum giving answers that we know.

I'm very happy to know about reinforcements. Hopefully on our side of the workload war.

""
This is now known widespread. Christophe Desse (naughty dog), also explains his feelings towards octane integration in maya in hos gnomon tutorial.
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/ ... qFXHVL783c
So I also hope that the plugin integrates better and get more people for development of the Maya plugin.""

lol ..
yes i still feel the same about octane in maya
a great render engine , and i was one of the first peoples to chant it praise online .. but i decided to stop using it based on the fact that :

- maya integration is lacking big time
- forum support is unfriendly at best

i am still lurking ..
hopping for thing to get better ( integration in maya and interaction with customer )

jagger wrote:I saw some opinions saying that octane wasnt´t very integrated in maya, and those people were jumping to redshift.

I have never used redshift, but seems like an vray (because of the lot of settings to tweak) but in gpu.

And some people are doing really interesting addons for maya and redshift: https://vimeo.com/149367376

More renders engines to the game, this never ends!!

Personally I was a beta for Redshift in the early days, we decide to go with Octane for the faster renders and quality,
Today some times we wonder if will be enough support on Octane and V3 need be not a reason for it but if we need support need to happening is part of business, many times I was wondering to changed to Redshift I kind fighting to keep for the speed reason ( thing we know at the industry is something can be manage and changed really quick with new technologies ) but after all problems sometimes is kind hard also for us to stay with Octane. Iray as well have a huge improvement from the beta and the new release.

After use standalone for so long time now I can see a huge difference in the other plugs 3dSMax and C4D, I think OToy really need think about that.
For us personally will be to much cost to switch of soft as Maya in pipeline with a huge number of licenses and artists. to switch soft for Octane.

I hope this changes will happen soon as possible so before the release of Octane 3 we have a strong PLUG with all Maya features included, because pay for a new version and continue on the same way will be definitely not the good choice.

Best
JO

Jolbertoquini wrote:

jagger wrote:I saw some opinions saying that octane wasnt´t very integrated in maya, and those people were jumping to redshift.

I have never used redshift, but seems like an vray (because of the lot of settings to tweak) but in gpu.

And some people are doing really interesting addons for maya and redshift: https://vimeo.com/149367376

More renders engines to the game, this never ends!!

Personally I was a beta for Redshift in the early days, we decide to go with Octane for the faster renders and quality,
Today some times we wonder if will be enough support on Octane and V3 need be not a reason for it but if we need support need to happening is part of business, many times I was wondering to changed to Redshift I kind fighting to keep for the speed reason ( thing we know at the industry is something can be manage and changed really quick with new technologies ) but after all problems sometimes is kind hard also for us to stay with Octane. Iray as well have a huge improvement from the beta and the new release.

After use standalone for so long time now I can see a huge difference in the other plugs 3dSMax and C4D, I think OToy really need think about that.
For us personally will be to much cost to switch of soft as Maya in pipeline with a huge number of licenses and artists. to switch soft for Octane.

I hope this changes will happen soon as possible so before the release of Octane 3 we have a strong PLUG with all Maya features included, because pay for a new version and continue on the same way will be definitely not the good choice.

Best
JO

We are bringing on more development resources to the Maya plug-in. It's a high priority for all of us. We're all in this together, and we really do appreciate your guys' support and feedback to help make Octane the best it can be.