The Wishing Well

[ROUBAL]

@Proupin : What do you mean by discontinue standalone ?

The standalone version is the only version some people can use. Blender users still not have a plugin, and even with a plugin the standalone version will be necessary in many cases :

Working with a plugin requires to use double amount of system RAM : for octane and host application working at the same time.

On systems with low amount of system RAM this means that the loadable scenes would have to be limited to half the weight of the RAM amount available when using the standalone version !

Discontinuing the standalone would be a nonsense and would kill most interest in Octane for me ! Even on a first of april this proposal would be a bad joke !
For what I know, making Octane available to every 3D software through a standard format like obj has always been a goal, and only the standalone can give that.

[smicha]

Discontinue standalone? What a joke.

[Jaberwocky]

The stand alone version of Octane is a must......any modeling package out there that you can export in obj format you can render in octane...unless you design plugin's and all the problems that comes with it for each and every one of the huge amount of modeling programs out there.....now that would indeed be a waste of resources !

[j7th]

I would really like if they discontinued Standalone... like they say they would. Seriously, it's a waste of energy. Node editor, material editor, animation? common, this is present in host apps and most of the time much, much better than anything Otoy could pull out... I am really over redundant UI stuff that, on top of everything, usually sucks (in comparison)

Here's my updated list

[1] discontinue Standalone
[2] motion blur
[3] multiple UVs and improved UV texture handling
[4] Separate environment maps for background, illumination, reflection/refraction
[5] Object invisible to camera, to reflections, cast shadows on/off from chosen light sources
[6] better light, material and map conversion (3ds max plugin)
[7] better procedurals
[8] region render
[9] bokeh shapes
[10] Wireframe render support of n-gons

Look to Foundry Katana architecture first, my friend. Discontinue standalone is not wise decision. IMHO alembic support in standalone will solve some problems.

[andibu]

Is there any way to assign alpha values to geometry, either through material setting or through object properties?

Thanks a lot.

[Proupin]

wow, it is not fair to call this 'a joke' (and rather unrespectful), this is a wishlist and of course it's a longer term suggestion... I am dead serious and again, this was hinted by Otoy not too long ago. 85% of the requests on this thread are regarding the render engine, not Standalone. And all Standalone requests are redundant stuff already found on host apps. Not a single innovative thing that could give you an edge over a plugin.

Plugins are not a waste of resources at all since they are developed by third parties afaik, not drawing resources from Otoy for the most part. Standalone GUI DOES draw resources from what is really important, that is, the render engine. And I am NOT happy with that, like it or not. Once the Blender plugin and others are out there, I don't see why this is so bad. Once you have your plugin installed, you will suddenly not care about standalone anymore.

[ROUBAL]

Hi Proupin, I am sorry, but I really took it as a joke, because I couldn't believe it. It is not intended at all to be disrespectful. I just actually didn't thought that it could be serious.

The problem is not about a waste of developpement ressources, it is all about usability of Octane as an excellent render engine for everyone ! I am happy to know that there will be finally a plugin for Blender, but there will always be some potential users of Octane for whom there will not be a plugin, and also you must be aware that the plugin will also have its drawbacks :

Once you have your plugin installed, you will suddenly not care about standalone anymore.

I explained why it is not the case : I got confirmation in a post by Abstrax in this topic that using Blender with Octane plugin will require twice the amount of System RAM :

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... in#p134803

It is a very significant problem. My workstation can handle only 8GB of system RAM, and this not even allow to manage 3GB cards without requiring disk Swap.

Changing only the motherboard and RAM is not possible. For many reasons I would have to change the whole computer.

Using the plugin for small scenes will be fine, but I would have to change my workstation to use the plugin for big scenes if there is no more the standalone. Currently I can't afford it. I don't think that I am alone in this situation.

It may also happen to you one day. I explain : The biggest scene I have loaded so far required (according to Windows ressource monitor) more than 14 GB of system RAM. It not completely feed my 3GB cards, and required very long swap due to my limited 8GB system RAM as said previously. This means that with Octane used through Blender Plugin (with obviously the scene opened in Blender), I would need at least 28GB of RAM for this scene (plus some GB for the OS itself).

Now consider that today many people are willing to buy Titan cards with 6GB of VRAM... I fear that they will need around 64 GB of system RAM to make sure of feeding at best their 6GB cards with Blender open !

Not many motherboards can handle such amount of system RAM !

I am almost sure that most of the mother boards currently in service in Octane users hands (lucky users) can support up to 24GB or 32GB in best case.

So, it clearly appears to me that discontinuing the standalone will prevent many people from working on big scenes !

[mib2berlin]

[127] Preview icons for image/float-image loading.

Cheers, mib.

[FrankPooleFloating]

Yo - if any of you veterans that truly/deeply understands what many of these are (like some of Gabriele's hard core ones for instance) and wants to post a new list that is in a much more logical order - and that separates the wheat from the chaff, as it were (with many being moved to bottom or removed completely) - feel free to post a new reworked/reordered list and I will replace The List with it...

I have a very busy week in front of me.. and I will be the first to admit that while I am familiar with much of the stuff on The List, there are some that I do not know jack shit about - and would have trouble gauging their importance etc.

Maybe post that you are actually doing this beforehand - so there are not two or more of you doing it concurrently.

Of course, much of this is probably in vain... but we are wishful folk... are we not?

[jamnique]

Once you have your plugin installed, you will suddenly not care about standalone anymore.

Apart from using less memory and having a less cluttered interface than a nested plugin + host app, which makes standalone perfect for lookdev, standalone has the benefit of being accessible for all apps that the exporters support without additional cost. So I can have fun with Octane at home using blender, go to a client for a day and use Octane with Maya, then go to another client and use it with Max, and so on. For the price of one license. This is a HUGE benefit for me and I don't think I'm alone in this. Cheers ;]