OctaneRender for Blender plugin product dev wanted

[matej]

Cycles started out as a one-man project, but right now there is a bunch of other developers who contribute patches & features.

[kavorka]

Also, another reason they seem to have make improvements quicker. Blender is already a fully functional piece of software, they are just implementing a different renderer. Octane is being built from the ground up.

I have a feeling they don't want to support Blender because it is looked down upon because it is a free option and a lot of people just disregard it because of that. Maybe after they fully roll out, and support all of the major modeling packages, they can look at Blender. But, as I have been told, it is a legal issue having to do with the license of both Octane and Blender not legally being able to interact. Seems like a lot of poppy cock to me, but so does most legal issues.

Fact is, if Octane gets integrated into Blender, a lot of users will use it even though cycles is a great feature. Cycles is miserably slow in comparison to Octane and the relatively small price tag of Octane will make it an easy buy for anyone using Blender commercially.

[larmannjan]

v-ray is making a plugin for blender. They seem to have a found a way to avoid and legal implications.

[kavorka]

v-ray is making a plugin for blender. They seem to have a found a way to avoid and legal implications.

I just looked this up, found this at: http://www.vray.com/vray_for_blender/

"It is implemented as an exporting script to V-Ray Standalone file format (.vrscene)."

There is already an export script from blender to Octane stand alone, and it is free. The problem happens when you want to integrate Octane into Blender so there is no exporting. If Vray ends up doing this, I would be very very happy (cause that means it may be possible for Octane).

Were you talking about something else?

[matej]

I have a feeling they don't want to support Blender because it is looked down upon because it is a free option and a lot of people just disregard it because of that.

This would be really stupid from them, something along the line of not doing a Linux build because nobody uses Linux. Blender can compete with any other 3D package on the market and nobody can afford to ignore it at this point.

No, it's all about the Octane SDK. They don't want to make the SDK public, because it might give insight to the competition into now Octane works, or something like that, I suspect.

The Vray plugin is "just" an exporter to .vrscene, but its much faster than Octane exporter because some critical parts are coded in C. Besides, the biggest bottleneck in Octane is the "voxelizing" part - make that multi-threaded and it would speedup the work-flow considerably.

[kavorka]

This would be really stupid from them, something along the line of not doing a Linux build because nobody uses Linux. Blender can compete with any other 3D package on the market and nobody can afford to ignore it at this point.

What I meant was that if they support Blender fully from the get go, then serious companies will disregard it as a program that isnt serious. If they first fully support the main programs and set themselves up in the market and get credibility, then they could support Blender more (as Vray is doing now). I's not because nobody uses it, but people disregard Blender solely on the fact it is free and open source. I don't think this choice has anything to do with number of users of each program.

I fully agree that Blender can compete with the major packages, I used to use 3DsMax, then Maya and now Blender for about 2 years. That doesnt change the ideas of the vast majority of the 3D community.

[matej]

But Octane already supported Blender from the start - when all of us had only exporters. This logic doesn't really hold, because "serious companies" that use 3DSMax or Maya shouldn't care less what other 3d suites some plugin like Octane supports, as long as it supports their 3D suite.

And AFAIK the company that makes Vray doesn't support the Blender exporter, which is coded by one 3rd party guy and it's on the scene since I remember (at-least 3 years). So, if Vray guys are not concerned about (albeit unofficial) Blender support making them look bad & "unserious", why should Otoy.

But I agree that "serious companies" think about Blender as an amateurish program, because (logically, since it's free) most Blender users are indeed amateurs. But that is a completely wrong picture.

btw, if we are technically correct, Otoy doesn't really support Blender right now, because the exporter script is "community coded"
(so they are legally safe from this ugly shame and from bullying by serious business thugs... )

[kavorka]

btw, if we are technically correct, Otoy doesn't really support Blender right now, because the exporter script is "community coded"
(so they are legally safe from this ugly shame and from bullying by serious business thugs... )

Exactly, they arnt supporting it, the community made an export script to be used. So they didnt support it from the start. Let's say Octane made an integrated plugin for Blender BEFORE they made the 3Dsmax plugin, companies would forever see it as a "Blender program" and it would have a hard time getting credibility.

I don't know if Vray is actually supporting it, I know the person doing it is doing it without funds from Vray.

[matej]

Exactly, they arnt supporting it, the community made an export script to be used. So they didnt support it from the start.

They were, because the exporter for Blender 2.4x is official by Refractive Software. The current 2.6x is not. It's just that nobody is using 2.4x anymore.

Of course I don't expect they wold make the Blender integration first, 3DSMax & Maya are a strategic business priority. But if they had intention to do it, they would make it before some marginal software like DAZ studio that has maybe 10x less Octane users than Blender.

EDIT: They could do it in secret, I promise I wont tell anybody

[kavorka]

haha, ya, I wouldn't tell either.

But, there is still the actual legal reasons (which, I honestly do not fully understand), from what I have read on the topic, because of the license of Blender, it won't allow a program with the license Octane has to be integrated. I hope there is some way around it because I want full integration but don't want to switch modeling packages as I really like Blender, not just because it's free.

As a note, I do not think a dev has every officially stated their stance on an integrated Blender plugin (or at least, I haven't seen it).