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ORC was available for the public to use in RTM last May and June on orc.otoy.com. It completed renders for 1500 users during those months without any issue (some of those renders even won). If we felt that was the right time to launch it we certainly could have done so then.

The final release of ORC is coming with V3. This has been said before. We have several reasons for doing this in tandem with he 3.0 release, after gathering data for years during our user facing tests with ORC. There are features we specifically added in V3 that make the cost of cloud rendering much less onerous on the customer.

More details at GTC in a little over a week.

Goldorak wrote:The final release of ORC is coming with V3. This has been said before.

Do I have to quote how many times you wrote it was a V2 release?

We also were gong to do an OpenCL port before we ported/cross compiled CUDA to AMD. Things change and there's a reason why they do. You got to use ORC last year with 2.x for free. With V3.0 we're charging and there's a lot of thinking that went into picking that point to jump off from for a commercial release.

Let's talk after GTC.

Sure, let's talk after the conference, but in the meantime, you are losing users to other render engines because even the people who can afford having a 4X GTX rig (or bigger) are having problems to hit deadlines. Yes, Octane is faster than anything I have tried, but the inability to outsource the rendering process always puts the user in trouble. I can't afford to render locally 1000 10-15 min frames on my twin 980ti system, and even if i had the time, i can't have my computer bricked during those render hours. It's simply not practical.
I understand volumetrics are important, and that the CUDA port will get you more users, but the ones you have right now are REALLY struggling to use Octane in production. I also understand that you want to dominate the GPU rendering market, but you need to be at least for now a bit more flexible. Many renderfarms are willing to invest in GPU racks, but the EULA doesn't leave room for any practical use of remote servers.
Sorry guys; I REALLY love Octane and my work has never looked better or has been more pleasant, but right now it's difficult to support the product completely. I recommended Octane to a lot of friends and studios I work with, and they all want to kill me because of the bottleneck they have gotten into. Even studios with 6+ computers have a difficult time balancing the cost and benefit of buying 6+ licenses to use network rendering, when it's probably not gonna be enough.
I WANT to use Octane all the time, and support every release, but you need to help us too.

Thanks for reading.

esteban_diacono wrote:Sure, let's talk after the conference, but in the meantime, you are losing users to other render engines because even the people who can afford having a 4X GTX rig (or bigger) are having problems to hit deadlines. Yes, Octane is faster than anything I have tried, but the inability to outsource the rendering process always puts the user in trouble. I can't afford to render locally 1000 10-15 min frames on my twin 980ti system, and even if i had the time, i can't have my computer bricked during those render hours. It's simply not practical.
I understand volumetrics are important, and that the CUDA port will get you more users, but the ones you have right now are REALLY struggling to use Octane in production. I also understand that you want to dominate the GPU rendering market, but you need to be at least for now a bit more flexible. Many renderfarms are willing to invest in GPU racks, but the EULA doesn't leave room for any practical use of remote servers.
Sorry guys; I REALLY love Octane and my work has never looked better or has been more pleasant, but right now it's difficult to support the product completely. I recommended Octane to a lot of friends and studios I work with, and they all want to kill me because of the bottleneck they have gotten into. Even studios with 6+ computers have a difficult time balancing the cost and benefit of buying 6+ licenses to use network rendering, when it's probably not gonna be enough.
I WANT to use Octane all the time, and support every release, but you need to help us too.

Thanks for reading.

Can't agree more.

esteban_diacono wrote:Sure, let's talk after the conference, but in the meantime, you are losing users to other render engines because even the people who can afford having a 4X GTX rig (or bigger) are having problems to hit deadlines. Yes, Octane is faster than anything I have tried, but the inability to outsource the rendering process always puts the user in trouble. I can't afford to render locally 1000 10-15 min frames on my twin 980ti system, and even if i had the time, i can't have my computer bricked during those render hours. It's simply not practical.
I understand volumetrics are important, and that the CUDA port will get you more users, but the ones you have right now are REALLY struggling to use Octane in production. I also understand that you want to dominate the GPU rendering market, but you need to be at least for now a bit more flexible. Many renderfarms are willing to invest in GPU racks, but the EULA doesn't leave room for any practical use of remote servers.
Sorry guys; I REALLY love Octane and my work has never looked better or has been more pleasant, but right now it's difficult to support the product completely. I recommended Octane to a lot of friends and studios I work with, and they all want to kill me because of the bottleneck they have gotten into. Even studios with 6+ computers have a difficult time balancing the cost and benefit of buying 6+ licenses to use network rendering, when it's probably not gonna be enough.
I WANT to use Octane all the time, and support every release, but you need to help us too.

Thanks for reading.

+1

Just one point: you shouldn't give your clients too tight deadlines. Deadlines should be realistic.
I know that clients comes to you, wants you to create a stunning, Hollywood quality animation, in two days and it should cost 1000$ (including taxes).
If people agrees to do this, it really is not anyone elses fault if the deadlines are not met.

Clients in general don't know how these things are made. They don't have a clue and they don't even care to know. Still, when negotiating about the deadline you should be able to say what it realistically takes and what it costs. Give them examples from Hollywood, like "in this scene it took them three days to render one frame".. Unrealistic deadlines, unrealistic promises - and if someone is able to pull it off in two days with Hollywood quality and 1000$ - these all erode and screw up the whole business. Clients will get that idea that this is easy, this is cheap and so on.
If it takes a month to render, you should say it takes month and a half and you should charge month and a half. Leave room to fix errors.

One more thing.

I think it would be a good idea if the ORC pricing would be confidential and made available only to Octane license owners. It would give more room to artists to negotiate about projects and fees.
What do you all think about this?

ristoraven wrote:Just one point: you shouldn't give your clients too tight deadlines. Deadlines should be realistic.
I know that clients comes to you, wants you to create a stunning, Hollywood quality animation, in two days and it should cost 1000$ (including taxes).
If people agrees to do this, it really is not anyone elses fault if the deadlines are not met.

Clients in general don't know how these things are made. They don't have a clue and they don't even care to know. Still, when negotiating about the deadline you should be able to say what it realistically takes and what it costs. Give them examples from Hollywood, like "in this scene it took them three days to render one frame".. Unrealistic deadlines, unrealistic promises - and if someone is able to pull it off in two days with Hollywood quality and 1000$ - these all erode and screw up the whole business. Clients will get that idea that this is easy, this is cheap and so on.
If it takes a month to render, you should say it takes month and a half and you should charge month and a half. Leave room to fix errors.

Thanks, I appreciate the advice, but I've been working in the Industry for over 17 years now, and even when I'm not the greatest negotiating with my clients (it's not my favorite part), I've been managing good enough I think. I understand your point, but for a freelancer like me (my customers are 90% other studios) it would be silly to underestimate them. They know exactly how things are done, and what they want. And more importantly, they also know WHEN they want it.
Anyway, my initial post was not about client managing, but having the flexibility within Octane that other render engines are offering and we are missing (for now).
Thanks for you comment

cant wait for GTC!