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Bought Octane Render for 3ds Max a few days ago. Spent those few days trying to complete a decent render which has been completely unsuccessful. I have gone through every setting Octane has to offer in the last 3 days. I'm frustrated and ready to give up, but maybe i'm doing it all wrong and could use some help.

When I bought Octane render I thought I was going to be able to render photo-realistic images in 1/10 of the time that lets say Vray would take. I haven't found this true in the sense that I can't find photo-realistic settings with Octane, and if I even get close to it, I'm looking at 10 Hour render times and fire flies that would take another 10 hours to clean up! Octane was also only able to Convert about 5% of Vray Materials which was a bummer, but is another story all on its own.

Below I have attached two images that took around the same amount of time to render. Both are originals and have not been touched up.

--OCTANE-- Render Time 2 Hours 1 Minute 1280px by 720px
Max Depth: 8 / Direct Light imp: 0.53 / Exporation_stre: 0.5 / Max rejects: 569
Kernel type: PMC / Max Samples 2500 / FIlter size: 1.5/ rayepsilon: 0.0 / rrprob: 0.0

--VRAY-- Render Time 1 Hour 47 Minutes 1280px by 720px
Image sampler: Adaptive DMC / Anti aliasing filter: Mitchell-Netravali
Primary bounces: Brute Force @ 8 subdivs / Secondary bounces: Light Cache @ 700 Subdivs


Operating System:
Windows 7 64-bit
Mobo: Biostar TA990 FXE
CPU: FX-4100 Overclocked to 4.5Ghz Liquid Cooled
Memory: Overclocked G.Skill Ripjaw 4x4GB
GPU: Nividia Geforce GTS 450 1GB DDR5


.... How can I get Fast Render times that look similar to Vray????

Hello leblanc,
while GTS450 is low-end card (approximetly 1/3 in power of gtx580 which majority of people posting here use) I see problem on material/render settings side. Front lights material is too emissive causing lot of fireflies. Placing few invisible lights (lightbanks) around card could speed up rendering too.

Fireflies tutorial http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=878

Octane can do better than this. If models in scene are free maybe you could you post this scene here so we can check.

Peter, I appreciate the quick response time.
I'm really sad to hear my video card is under powered. I'm trying to build a portfolio and just dropped precious $$$ on Octane thinking it would speed up my workflow. I have a 2 month old baby and can't afford to drop another $500 into a better video card.
For the price of Octane and a higher end card, I could have built another computer and run Vray between two pc's to divide the time anyways.

I will however try to find better settings for something that is usable for a few more hours. I believe in Octane, but just haven't seen results yet.
Turned down max rejects, bumped up direct light imp, max samples at 2525 PMC

I turned all the lights to invisible, had to bump them up a little so the reflect onto the headlights which took the realism out of the image but did get rid of alot of fireflies, but its still not comparable to vray. And I would still be looking at a couple hours of render time.

Here is an update. took 42 minutes of render time only at 853px by 480px which is still slow.

I look at the scene. see the problem
1)wrong scale! learn how to configure correctly 3dsmax
2)try PMC
3)material shader terrible
4)Vray render your looks just not pretty

Hi leblanc980,

I would try the different Kernels, Path Tracing and direct lighting. You may find you are happy enough with the results of the direct lighting kernel (make sure to tweak the ambient occlusion distance so the scene is not over-bright) this kernel is not as photo realistic as PT or PMC but it is a LOT faster. PMC is the slowest kernel but is capable of getting the most photo-realistic results.

Cheers
Chris.

hi leblanc980,

this is a quick render, rendertime ~ 10min
(i know this is not perfect )

i dont have time to render it better but i think for 10min rendertime the result looks okay.

settings: direct light + diffuse and some lights just try to render it with this settings and you will see it works better because you have a low card.
dont try to render it with pmc.


greeting
said

I adjusted a few materials slightly, (Taking some glossiness off of the red car helped out a lot for better realism).
Adjusting the settings and especially taking the maxdepth down from 8 to 2 helped out the most with render time.

I'd like to stay with PMC for final renders, to see what kind of results I can get. But will definitely try the others.

Here is my latest trial, I will also include my settings. Took 27 Mins.
It honestly looks great to me finally. Looks like I could add some more hidden lights to reflect better, but its in the right direction.

I really am thankful for all of your guys input. I really want to nail this thing.
said, could you take a screen shot of your direct light settings?

I hope this topic can actually help people who are looking into purchasing Octane.

Thanks again.

Took direct light for a run. Had to add twice as many lights to get a great effect, but was not time consuming to do so at all.
Render time 7 Minutes 44 Seconds at a very low and quick 1800 Max Samples.

However, I duplicated the scene with Vray and lowered Vray settings as well to compare.
Render time in Vray: 7 Minutes 9 Seconds.

Hi leblanc,

Check the imager settings, the gamma seems low and therefore it looks like you have pumped up the exposure to compensate?
This is going to make for an extremely contrasted image.
If the scene is too dull with the default values then more lighting is probably a good idea. A texture or daylight environment works very well as additional ambient light, especially for the direct lighting kernel.
Also remove the stereo image tickbox - it doesn't look like you are wanting a stereoscopic render?
Also you might want to reduce the aperture to bring the whole car into focus.
Double check the material on the floor, does it have full specularity and zero roughness? Doing this should help the noise on the floor clean up quicker.
I am noticing for some of the comparison images and said's one that there is no haze of lights on the floor - the roughness may be the reason here.

Lowering the max depth down to 2 will start introducing image quality problems as rays will not bounce around enough to find a light source.
You will start noticing that shadows will be exaggerated causing high contrast.

Cheers
Chris.

leblanc980 wrote:I have a 2 month old baby and can't afford to drop another $500 into a better video card.

I can imagine hundreds options where money could be spent. But after 12 months of using Octane and considering all associated investments into mobo + GPU + powersource i find it worth every penny. Iam savy person, i have waited for great deals on secondhand stuff.

You might want to check this blog. http://jeffpatton.net/2010/10/iray-studio-scene/
Jeff Patton was kind enough to provide scene with HDR studio setup. Its HDR lightning where render engines like Octane and iray shine. He is using unbiased rendering for production of some amazing car advertisments for Mercedes Benz. http://jeffpatton.net/portfolio/

When i was starting with octane i have made this render on one gtx460 (maybe 50% more powerful than gts450) in around 30 mins if i recall correctly. http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12424

Iam sure you are heading in right direction. Best luck. Peter