OTOY Forums

Much of this might apply to Octane itself and not the plugin, but I'm reviewing it from the point of view of the workflow in 3dsMax. I really love it, but here are some things that stand out:

1) When rendering a large scene, it can take a while for the Octane Viewport to update. During this time, Max greys out like its crashed. I'd suggest making this asynchronous so it doesnt affect the Max UI, and have a status log window like VRay's to let the user know what's happening (voxelizing, problem, etc.). Right now I've been waiting for 5 minutes and I don't know if its crashed or what.

2) Glossiness is very sensitive! I posted in another thread agreeing with someone else. IMO what is currently 0.0001 should be 0.01.

3) Materials - Use the standard Max Bitmap slot of images. Maybe replicate it to include Octane specific options (float or ubyte4, etc.). The most annoying part of this is lack of UV controls. The scaling option is just awful, especially for visualisation where we all use the real-world scale option.

4) Plugin interop - I love that it works with Multiscatter! I own this, but I also own Forest Pro which I use more often. Would it be possible to support it?

That's it for now

GeorgeR wrote:Much of this might apply to Octane itself and not the plugin, but I'm reviewing it from the point of view of the workflow in 3dsMax. I really love it, but here are some things that stand out:

1) When rendering a large scene, it can take a while for the Octane Viewport to update. During this time, Max greys out like its crashed. I'd suggest making this asynchronous so it doesnt affect the Max UI, and have a status log window like VRay's to let the user know what's happening (voxelizing, problem, etc.). Right now I've been waiting for 5 minutes and I don't know if its crashed or what.

2) Glossiness is very sensitive! I posted in another thread agreeing with someone else. IMO what is currently 0.0001 should be 0.01.

3) Materials - Use the standard Max Bitmap slot of images. Maybe replicate it to include Octane specific options (float or ubyte4, etc.). The most annoying part of this is lack of UV controls. The scaling option is just awful, especially for visualisation where we all use the real-world scale option.

4) Plugin interop - I love that it works with Multiscatter! I own this, but I also own Forest Pro which I use more often. Would it be possible to support it?

That's it for now

how many ram you installed? Octane eats a lot or ram while voxeling.
Glossiness and many other parameters use fp numbers with many decimals, this is used in the standalone version too. For me to write 0.01 or 0.0001 is the same thing, two digits more.
For uvw mapping don't you use the uvw modifier?
I use FPP too, it's more powerful than Multiscatter but Karba is the Multiscatter creator...


and now my thoughts.
I use for tests Max Live (Arion) and Vray-rt, Octane for Max for productions.
The Vray-rt materials are more powerful than Octane because are integrated well in Max. In Octane you have to stacks a lot of nodes.
The Live materials are good too because use an additive system, in Octane you can't physically coat a diffuse material, it's a mix
In Vray-rt you can use whatever light you want: spot, direct, vray dome, planar, spherical, ies with photometric curve visualization, all directional or with target
In Live you have to create your mesh lights, in Octane we have standard lights, planar, spherical, ies but not directional, impossible to achieve the right target.
Live crashes often, Vray-rt produces artefacts, Octane is stable.
Octane produces the best photorealistic results.
Vray-rt is the faster but produces not photorealistic results.
Live stay in the middle.
I'm happy with Octane, it's the best rendering engine on the planet.

GeorgeR wrote:....During this time, Max greys out like its crashed....

This is also a Windows 7 issue and happens in any program. Everytime the computer is
working and you click somewhere, you get that "(Not responding)" message in the window
title bar, which can be really misleading!

GeorgeR wrote: 2) Glossiness is very sensitive! I posted in another thread agreeing with someone else. IMO what is currently 0.0001 should be 0.01.

also refer to my
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=22924
and suvakas
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic. ... 1&start=10
thread

gabrielefx wrote:...For me to write 0.01 or 0.0001 is the same thing, two digits more.

Yes, but since we are working in centimeters here, having 4 decimals can be
a real pain in the ass when i´am using the spinners (what, i guess, almost everyone is)

gabrielefx wrote: For uvw mapping don't you use the uvw modifier?

Yes, but GeorgeR is right, scaling option is awful....

gabrielefx wrote: I'm happy with Octane, it's the best rendering engine on the planet.

Last but not least: besides a couple of wishes we all have: I love Octane, too!!!

Things that annoy me:
* Octane settings don't go to default after doing a scene Reset !!! (I really hate that)
* Wireframe color gets rendered gray (when no material applied)
* Missing parameters like z depth and SSS phase function
* Glossiness range !
* No progress bar when transfering the scene to Octane/GPU (that's a minor thing though)
* No way to use standard Max camera target for focal point.
* No white balance setting (but that's octane issue not the plugin thing)

Bugs i hate:
* no unicode support (not sure if this is Octane issue or plugin specific thing?)
* Octane camera target "jumps around" when moving either camera or target. (not possible to animate focal point)
* Pressing Cancel or closing Octane view offten crashes Max (not happening in older versions)
* I've had UVW errors and geometry normal errors

Don't remember anyting else atm. Fix those things and I'll be happy
The plugin is very cool otherwise.

Suv