OTOY Forums

Copied this from Octane Render main page of features(below), I think Octane is the Greatest Render ever :
But, The 3ds Max plugin is walking towards leaving behind forever the Octane Standalone Interface.
Don't take me wrong , The plugin is amazingly good , but Octane Standalone interactive interface is a Masterpiece.
I am not alone ,Several people in this forum , complains about not having the option to work in Octane Standalone, as an option.
3dsMax is a very heavy aplication, crashes sensibly and won't rivalize with the easy of use of the Standalone Octane,
plus , until When Octane will not be able to have a timeline , or import cameras , to be ready for Production ?
Hope it comes , with official 1.0 version

Look bellow what They've written on the Features page of Octane website, and How became untrue with the development of the max plugin:

Octane Render (Commercial Version) includes free plugins for:

Autodesk 3D Studio Max
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk Softimage XSI
Blender
Maxon Cinema 4D
Sketchup
Modo

Octane Render Plugins allow for complete integration for single frame or automatic animation rendering.

Further more, the workflow for the plugins allows you to edit your materials and lighting in Octane Render in real-time, instead of having to use the traditional and tedious workflow of editing materials in your host application plugin, and then export and await the results.

Once your scene is configured in Octane Render's User Interface, you can re-render a new frame or animation using the plugin, keeping your Octane Render settings intact.

emihich wrote:Copied this from Octane Render main page of features(below), I think Octane is the Greatest Render ever :
But, The 3ds Max plugin is walking towards leaving behind forever the Octane Standalone Interface.
Don't take me wrong , The plugin is amazingly good , but Octane Standalone interactive interface is a Masterpiece.
I am not alone ,Several people in this forum , complains about not having the option to work in Octane Standalone, as an option.
3dsMax is a very heavy aplication, crashes sensibly and won't rivalize with the easy of use of the Standalone Octane,
plus , until When Octane will not be able to have a timeline , or import cameras , to be ready for Production ?
Hope it comes , with official 1.0 version

Look bellow what They've written on the Features page of Octane website, and How became untrue with the development of the max plugin:

Octane Render (Commercial Version) includes free plugins for:

Autodesk 3D Studio Max
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk Softimage XSI
Blender
Maxon Cinema 4D
Sketchup
Modo

Octane Render Plugins allow for complete integration for single frame or automatic animation rendering.

Further more, the workflow for the plugins allows you to edit your materials and lighting in Octane Render in real-time, instead of having to use the traditional and tedious workflow of editing materials in your host application plugin, and then export and await the results.

Once your scene is configured in Octane Render's User Interface, you can re-render a new frame or animation using the plugin, keeping your Octane Render settings intact.

There are several major problem to get it works.

1) Plugin doesn't generate any obj files. It ports all geometry directly to octane without any files.
So you can't open this ocs file later because of no obj files.
2) Plugin generate scene context without any node placement.
So if you will open this ocs file later - every node will be placed at one place. It is impossible to edit this heap of nodes.

Hi,

I guess what has changed here is the line between fully integrated plugins and exporter only plugins.
I believe the features page has not been updated for some time and i would like to get some time to tweak it to be a little more transparent.
When it was written i'm not sure there was even a fully integrated 3ds max plugin available, only the free exporter plugin.

Octane Render (Commercial Version) includes free plugins for:

Autodesk 3D Studio Max
Autodesk Maya
Autodesk Softimage XSI
Blender
Maxon Cinema 4D
Sketchup
Modo

There are indeed free exporter plugins for these programs, what is not free are the "fully integrated" plugins...

Octane Render Plugins allow for complete integration for single frame or automatic animation rendering.

I agree this is perhaps a bit misleading now that there are also non-free "fully integrated" plugins as well as the free exporter plugins.
I guess the ambiguous part here is the definition of "complete integration". Most of the free exporter plugins do provide integration for single frame or animation rendering (one i have in mind that doesn't do automated animation is the current free Daz one, but this is not on the list anyway)

Further more, the workflow for the plugins allows you to edit your materials and lighting in Octane Render in real-time, instead of having to use the traditional and tedious workflow of editing materials in your host application plugin, and then export and await the results.

For the exporter plugins this is true. You export your scene from your host, load it up into octane render then play with the materials in real time. Some of the exporter plugins also provide the ability to setup octane materials inside the host application but this goes back to the "traditional and tedious workflow of editing materials in your host application plugin, and then export and await the results". But there is nothing forcing you to do this.

Once your scene is configured in Octane Render's User Interface, you can re-render a new frame or animation using the plugin, keeping your Octane Render settings intact.

This goes back to the last point where you export from the host, setup the ocs file with all your materials, then use the exporter plugin to export only the new mesh and camera location for animation.


I think this whole discussion is based around the difference between the free exporter plugins, and the fully integrated plugins.
I think it would be beneficial for me to update the features page to make this a little more transparent.

Hope that helps

Cheers
Chris.

Don't want to be the black horse here arising polemic, and even look
ungrateful ,as I do use the 3ds Max plugin and I think it is worth , every penny.
It is actually a good thing that you can importa file like FBX in Max and render using Octane plugin.
But I also use the free plugin , and the OCT plugin, and I think Octane Standalone team
Could solve the problem, just adding something like FBX, and they intend Collada , anything that
allows animation soon.
The whole site has to be updated , as There are only tutorials for The Free exporter, and
The Product is developing without proper documentation.
Hope , my comments help more than disturb as I am big fan of Octane.

Hi emihich,

I understand. Thanks for the feedback - no offence taken. I just wanted to clear things up as others also may have questions relating to the plugin section of the features page.
Something like what you have said has been discussed internally - since this would be required if the standalone edition was to (on it's own) provide animation and motion blur support.

Again, thanks for the feedback.

Cheers
Chris.

Thank you .
Looking forward for every version of Octane , both standalone and plugins.

Octane should really work on integration between standalone and all plugins a mechanism to port a whole scene would be ideal, but at least import/ exporting materials for example between all plugins.

I use standalone, max and the poser plugin and could see myself using the daz and maya down the line, but setting up materials over and over again is a drag. People do use various software packages and at the current price I'd happily buy several plugin versions if the interchange between them were easy enough. The easiest customer you're going to have is an existing happy user purchasing additional plugins.

be very sad to see the standalone version go too, as I use it all the time, and prefer the
nice logical way it works

if you've written something like 'Nuke for Rendering' then why change it?

Nuke for Rendering is a good image to define Octane in a way,
and there are expensive ,still not released apps like Isotropix Clarisse,promissing every day what octane has been developing long before.
Please develop a bit further Octane Standalone, Camera and animation importing is crucial !
By the way I can't use Path tracing or pmc , only direct light on my 3dsmax plugin.
It is very dark and slow, Hope my skills improve without any tutorial to help me to do what is already easy for me in Standalone.
The plugins are not that obvious folks, tutorials please, i am asking this from other skilfull users too ! Share !

I would like to post my view on this matter and I must agree that the standalone interface is way better for handling the scene than the viewport on Max and I recently update my rig and got benefit from it but still there is something I don't lilke of Max like update geometry time and viewport lag that is almost none on the standalone even with a scene of mine counting 2200000 triangles. And it may be just me but the directlight render seems much better on the standalone than the one on max..can't say just cleaner and faster? lol...

I love the plugin too especially for the vray material conversion and scattering support that in most cases is used for vegetation and such but I would love to see some improvements of this kind on the standalone such as a scatter material (the one suggested by Elvissuperstar007) and stronger Bump (or Relief mapping as Displacement seems still far from Octane?) + UVW handling.

Maybe a good compromise would be an option to export the scene to the standalone? .. not to mention the Local material library...