Octane 1.5 features revealed!

[Faizol]

Thanks for Alembic support. Been asking animation support for several years, glad that finally it is going to be supported.

Just a suggestion, please consider OpenSubD and OpenVDB supports too. OpenSubD also has some GPU coding examples though I don't know how hard will it be to implement it in Octane. Plus, both of them are licensed under closed source friendly License Agreement.

Thanks.

[oguzbir]

Thanks Marcus,
That really clearly helped me to understand your approach and situation towards MB.
Of course it's always to your discretion to decide whether or not to release any information for future roadmaps. But I believe there are sincere people here that are eager to hear about upcoming features. I bet it's really hard to please anyone whilst preparing massive changes in the software. I really I did't had the time to say thanks during v1.12-1.18 release, was quite busy in rendering for months. But hell yeah. Thanks for all that. Octane now running perfectly with my Titans!

One last thing though. I must stress that the smallest changes you ever add to octane that improve workflow are greatly appreciated for those who really enjoys using octane render as their main engine. And those changes really makes the software more solid and pushes us(at least me) to invest more on the hardware and software.

From my point, Octane render was an R&D thing at first in 2010. With its perfect interactivity and improvements over the past year it became the default renderer for me.
I really think that any smallest addition to the workflow should be considered as a huge selling point. I sadly don't own a big VFX studio that might attract Otoy's attention to it. But these are just my two cents.

Keep up the good work!

Cheers,
Oguz

[MOSFET]

@abstrax: I can't make excuses for some of the harsher comments made in this thread but perhaps I can give you a non-standard explanation as to why people are so fixated on seeing 3D Motion Blur implemented in Octane. Let's say half of your userbase is made up of Animation and VFX guys; they have this quick, unbiased renderer in the form of Octane that would be perfect for certain jobs but they can't use it for animation work because applying Reelsmart Motion Blur to an unbiased render (with or without a motion vector pass) in 2013 just doesn't cut the mustard. By that I mean, to someone who can spot the difference, it feels like having bleach thrown in your eyes.

So everytime a new project comes up, I check into the forums to see if certain features such as Motion Blur have been added so that I can pitch using Octane to the rest of the team. Needless to say we've never used Octane for a job because there are more than a handful of other renderers out there that while not as quick to iterate or faithfully accurate offer much more utility than what Octane is capable of at the moment.

When you see a request thread or random post about a new open source data format (Alembic, OpenEXR 2.0, OpenVDB, OpenSubD...) it's not coming from someone that is just chasing buzzwords because they read about it in a VFX magazine article (though it could be). It's because the new features afforded by each could greatly expand Octane's utility as a rendering tool outside of core improvements. If you look at the changelist for PRman, Vray and Arnold you can see them neck and neck adding these open formats. That flexibility is really what's important.

I'm ecstatic that you've implemented Alembic and that Motion Blur is being worked on. But just be aware that adding animation support to Octane is going to spawn a wave of really weird requests for features that might sound alien. For example with Motion Blur in Octane 2.0, I hope that deforming objects (ie surfaces whose vertex order changes between frames) such as mesh cached water sims imported through Alembic are handled properly. Why do I ask? Because there's this sweet personal project involving motion blurred water that I would like to render in Octane but it's going to have to wait since there's no way Reelsmart Motion Blur could handle that kind of scene.

[treddie]

I am astounded that displacement is not being addressed. I am sure for anyone using the standalone version, this is like being stuck on a raft out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

[Garrick]

I am astounded that displacement is not being addressed. I am sure for anyone using the standalone version, this is like being stuck on a raft out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Bravo and well said.
I would go as far as to say nothing replaces displacement maps for that extra look of realism on a organic model.

[Chris]

I am astounded that displacement is not being addressed. I am sure for anyone using the standalone version, this is like being stuck on a raft out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Displacement is being addressed. It takes time like everything else

[treddie]

But...am running out of....food. Need fresh...water. Can't...last...much......longer.

[Refracty]

Hi Marcus,
thanks for giving light to the Motion Blur issue.
It really helped me to understand what functionality has to set up before it will be ready.
The good thing is that the MB will depend on animation possibilities. So when MB is there the animation possibility will be around the corner too.

[cfrank78]

And as a side note about the previous pages in this thread: This whole discussion about future features confirmed my opinion that we shouldn't release any future road maps at all...

Hi Abstrax!

Sometimes i really think you guys forget, that you have end users that are not (only) hobbyists. You deliver software for users, that do serious work with your product. Our work is often very time consuming and stressy too. The customers come to us and wanna have special products.

When the guys from fantastic 4 came to you, i am sure they asked you: Is this possible, is that possible, can octane do this, can octane do that. And after some hours of discussion they decided themselfes for octane and Otoy! Right? We are nothing else then them. We do the same work. Did THESE guys wanna have a roadmap? Did they get a roadmap? Did they get access to the cloud service, what we will have in......when? I´d bet many thousand bucks, they did.

Why do we need a roadmap? Because we have to know what the product we use, can do and what we can produce with it. I get orders and have to know too - is this an octane job or a vray job!

Sure the pressure on you guys will grow then, because you have to deliver what you have promised, but hey..........what do you thing, a tv show tells me, when they say: dude, make me a 3d intro with these logo to this music and i need it in 2 weeks and i do not deliver. they would sent me their lawyer.

This is the business, the most of us do here. Thats why we need those infos in my opinion! If you think my words were harsh, youd better never speak to some of my best paying customers. They do business too. They are strict and hard business man, but they pay fair and good, when the job you do, is good too. But they also can break your neck if you fail!

I am sorry if you think my words were too harsh. I just wanted to pointy clearly why i am so sad about the infos we got here and i am pretty sure not only i was sad about these decisions you guys made.

Make a good product and get my money. I will pay it gladly! Really. I even helped a lot in these forums and spent my sparetime here and did many other things. I presented Octane when i was on stage a view times and many things more. I presented it at adobe days, in saarbrücken on a convention, in munich and so on. BUT...sorry if these words are again too harsh, my clear statement is: I am not satisfied at the moment.

Kind regards Chris!

[darkline]

Im just as keen for new features as the next guy, but in defense of Octane I will say that I think the development of it is coming along quite well when you compare it to other GPU renderers. Look at Final Render 4 - their first GPU renderer. They have been showing demos since 2010 and still nothing for customers to use. From what I hear Octane is still far better than Arion, Vray RT, and it seems to be evolving faster than Iray (tho it's yet to catch up in some depts)

It's unfair to compare Octane to standard vray because those guys have had like 10 years to get it to the feature set it is now. We all want Octane to develop faster, but at least we know it's happening. Minor releases almost monthly show this. I hope this continues.

But where I would disagree with Marcus is I think a roadmap is very important for the customer base. I remember back in the day when I was an avid combustion user and they never revealed any sneak peeks or responded to customers requests for features. Each upgrade was more underwhelming than the last, people felt like Discreet weren't listening, many switched to AE and after a promising start, Combustion was eventually discontinued.

I think a roadmap gives customers a reason to stay, it makes users feel they are being listened to, and to know that features are in the pipeline is a huge plus. Hey at least I KNOW you guys are working on MB and believe me, that's much more reassuring than you remaining silent on the matter. I may have given up hope by now otherwise

I think the whole community agrees on a few key features, MB, displacement, HDRI + sunlight, different environments. But you also get into grey areas where someone's No1 feature is irrelevant to someone else. Shadow Catcher was huge for me (needs some improvement still ), but I bet some Arch guys couldn't give a hoot. I've been banging on about lensed lights with falloff and attenuation controls, but no-one else seems to care either.

I guess what Im saying is you'll always get people snapping at your heels for features and it may annoy you... but that's part of the process of finding out the important stuff. If you can judge what your user base wants the most, then you can keep your product enticing to most. But that's a two way street. If you shut down one side of that communication by going silent on roadmaps then you start to lose the vocal community, I saw that with combustion. I don't think you do yourselves any favours. Roadmaps keep people excited, they make users feel like they are being listened to. It might be painful at times but having a good relation with it's user base, I think is key for a products success.