Octane 1.5 features revealed!

[cfrank78]

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.

You are absolutely right. Vray is longer on the market and Octane is in some points even better than vray and of course much faster. There are reasons why more and more professionals decide themself for Octane. Its a hell of a good product.......so far. But it has a lot of points that are NOT good too.

But in my opinion thats no argument. Why? Simple. We, the users that produce renderings and animation, have our job to do. Means - we have to learn a lot of software, learn the new features that get implemented and learn what is possible and what not. A customer comes and says: "HEY DUDE - i saw in this commercial this and that effect. I wanna have that do. I pay a lot - can you do it?"
Then we have to learn - after effects, premiere, vergas, final cut, octane, vray, max, cinema4d and so on. We have to pay a lot of money to our hardware and the software we use and we have a looooooooooooooooooot to learn and we have a lot time to invest to experiment without earning a cent. This is OUR job. Its a hard, time consuming and GREAT job. But nevertheless hard. A customer who comes to you, is not interrested how LONG you do the job - he wants to know IF you can do it and how good you can do it AND, the most important point, if the customer can rely on you. If the 10 year company is not able, then he will go to the guy that only is 2 years on the market, but who can do the job well done.

Octane has a responsibility towards us and we towards our customers! This is how it works. Maybe some will not like this, but thats how business relationships work. Thats why we pay each other.

Kind regards Chris!

[ROUBAL]

It's economically not feasibly to just spend time on the "simple" things, because "small" changes don't sell a product and people forget about them as soon as they get released. Just have a look at versions 1.12 - 1.18 which fixed and improved heaps of small things, but nobody really cared.

Thanks Marcus for the answer.

but nobody really cared

Well for my own I actually cared, but these last 16 months have been hawful for me : I had to take care 12 hours a day of my old mother (she deceased one month ago), and had very few time to come here, comment and say thank you. I am sorry of that lack of presence. I still have difficulties to come back to work.

Little features are very important for users, mainly when they help saving memory and time for example.

I always come back to the example of negative scaling because it is an easy way to use instances on symmetrical objects without requiring scatter file.

It's economically not feasibly to just spend time on the "simple" things, because "small" changes don't sell a product

I agree that it is not an "impressive feature" with a strong impact on potential clients in the features list of a website, but not having it is a pain for current users.

Appealing more clients is probably a priority for a company, but making current clients happy is also important, and sometimes little features that we need everyday may be as important as complex features that we use once a month. That's just my point of view...

[mdharrington]

Have to disagree on the roadmap....
Customers need one in an unfinished product.....

Without a forward looking roadmap....octane would have probably been DOA long ago.
People invested in the potential of octane....paid money for beta software. The roadmap of future promises sold the product.

One practical example for the need to know is the developers of various plugins have looked at an interim solution to motion blur (frame blending) but do not want to take the time to implement it if octane has the real thing right around the corner. A rough idea of timelines for where we are going would be appreciated in these cases, and customers and developers can make informed decisions.

Don't forget where this all started....most users bought into beta software with lofty promises....and that's where the money came from. Now that octane is 75% the way there .....you don't want to present the attitude that customers can take a hike and be grateful for the privilege to use octane.

I realize some customers can react negatively to what should be good news.....the 1.5 release..... and that can be a little frustration at times and your tireless efforts to improve the product can seem unappreciated....but let's keep the dialogue open to where the future is heading.

And congrats on the 1.5 features....

[suvakas]

All of you 3ds Max guys who are moaning about missing motion blur - use camera motion blur effect as a workaround.
Works good.

Suv

[darkline]

Multipass motion blur can look ok sometimes, but more often than not it's useless. Choppy and 'unsmooth', rendering the frame 12 times and simply overlaying it introduces hard edged 'streaks' which is totally un-natural. Also takes up to 10 times as long to render the frame, really not efficient. Sure you can drop the sample rate per frame, but be prepared for noise.

It's an option, but for me a total last resort. Reelsmart in post is not as accurate but it actually gives a more pleasing look to the eye. It's super quick too.

[gordonrobb]

I know it's not as good, and there are times when it doesn't work, but it is possible to add it in post with things like After Effects (and I'm sure, other compositing programmes).

This was a thread about my attempt....

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 01#p146501

[pixelrush]

...the attitude that customers can take a hike and be grateful for the privilege to use Octane.

Without examining this line of thought too closely for fear of antagonising peope further thats pretty much how it does come across.
Companies that don't listen to and make for their customers ultimately tend to go out of business no matter how good they consider themselves.
I think its unlikely for instance I would want to keep on buying into Octane versions without a roadmap and knowing what was likely to arrive probably wouldnt include many if any of the 50+ odd things readily identified by community as being of practical worth to them. Many of these things are not rocket science.

[mdharrington]

Multipass can at least be accurate....
Pixel motion blur or optical flow based motion blur will never work properly through semitransparent objects as there can be only one sample per pixel....meaning the vector is applied either to the glass or the object behind.
And reelsmart and others can even be worse in this regard as they will confuse and alternate which pixel is moving which way.and they are based off the sampling of the vectors via optical flow...which are subsampled and will never be totally accurate.

They can work....especially vector motion blur...and are fast and a totally valid option, but are still a hack in terms if accuracy compared to multipass or other options sampling temporally....which will calculate accurately through transparencies (Glass, out of focus edges on foreground objects, fog/smoke ect ect)

[TBFX]

Multipass motion blur can look ok sometimes, but more often than not it's useless. Choppy and 'unsmooth', rendering the frame 12 times and simply overlaying it introduces hard edged 'streaks' which is totally un-natural. Also takes up to 10 times as long to render the frame, really not efficient. Sure you can drop the sample rate per frame, but be prepared for noise.

It's an option, but for me a total last resort. Reelsmart in post is not as accurate but it actually gives a more pleasing look to the eye. It's super quick too.

Actually multipass motion blur gives the most accurate MB possible, you just need enough samples to get it smooth and without banding, this can vary depending on the speed of movement within a frame.
The thing with an unbiased renderer like Octane is that you don't have to render every pass at full quality because averaging say 10 frames together at the end will give you approximately the same result as having rendered a still for 10 times as long so effectively if you are wanting to render and average 10 frames per finished frame you can drop the max samples you would use on a still frame by a factor of 10 and still get a similar convergence on the final frame. (in reality you may need a few extra samples but it's not as bad as you may first think) I have done tests of this and it seems to work quite well.

Please see my thoughts regarding Vector MB here: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ur#p107840

T.

[pixie]

Interesting days ahead, congrats!