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I think it’s a matter of time before other commercial—and non-commercial—renderers start releasing GPU versions of its own, unless the Octane team has an exclusive right to use NVIDIA’s CUDA technology or ATI cannot come up with a similar technology to utilize its GPU cores.

I’m happy that the Octane team has succeeded in informing a lot 3D “enthusiasts”—like me—as well as professionals of the potential that this technology has and that it has made it available, though, in a limited form.

But here’s what I want to say to the developers of Octane:

Secure an exclusive right to use NVIDIA’s CUDA technology for GI render. If you cannot:
I. Make the best use of the growing Blender community. (Most of the “serious” users who can afford the current commercial renderers are likely to choose to forget about Octane, once the leading 3D renderers start releasing their own GPU-rendering versions.) To do that:
a. Fix the price. “99 Euros/License”—if not “99 USD/License”—could mean the loss of a considerable number of Blender users.
b. Make a plug-in version of Octane available for Blender. (Otherwise, there would be no reason for Blender communities to publicize your existence. It was discouraging for me to see your link recently removed from http://www.blendernation.com—a famous news site for Blender users.)
II. Find a way to utilize ATI’s graphic cores as well. They are simply cheaper and more.

Octane has produced the best renders for my models so far like the ones below made in Blender. I hope to see Octane continue to be improved and publicized and be made available to more 3D artists.

What else do you folks think needs to be done to secure the future of Octane?

The Future can't be secured, but hey we already got a strong and nice dev team.
People gonna choose Octane render for the price and for the features

Secure an exclusive right to use NVIDIA’s CUDA technology for GI render.

Unlikely this option will be open to them. Why would Nvidia agree to their development system being limited?

I. Make the best use of the growing Blender community. (Most of the “serious” users who can afford the current commercial renderers are likely to choose to forget about Octane, once the leading 3D renderers start releasing their own GPU-rendering versions.)...ix the price. “99 Euros/License”—if not “99 USD/License”—could mean the loss of a considerable number of Blender users.

Not necessarily - many new products have managed to infiltrate and dominate seemingly impregnable markets in the past - Apple or the Red camera for instance. The fact that they are a garage operation means they can change course rapidly with the demands of the marketplace whereas behemoths like Arri more analogous to the RMS Titanic - changing course is a lot more difficult in a "corporate" environment with meetings and review boards. Avoiding the iceberg in this scenario is smaller outfits that can out-manoeuvre them developmentwise - just like what has happened here with the first unbiased GPU renderer to open market.

The danger with the blender community is that it comprises people who, in many cases, might have NO money - this means that there is a danger of not making any significant ROI.

IMVHO I would have thought 3 things would be necessary to ensure survival -

(1) Price : they have done this already: 200 euros for a state of the art GPU renderer is not much at all (99 if you get in early) - are you saying that 99 euros is too much!!!???

(2) Development: they should try to stay ahead of the big guys with incremental updates (like the Red or Iphone - always adding to the thing - even if users have to pay a yearly maintenance fee - I'm in if they do)

(3) Dongle protection or perhaps the program checks back to a database of users (via serials etc) or some other bulletproof system (I happen to know from the forums that Vray has no satisfactory crack that performs as well as the dongled renderer (which is admittedly a P.I.T.A as I lose it constantly putting it between my desktop and notebook but a necessary evil - plus it makes me feel good having spent money on software that isn't available for free all over the internet) - If I was them I would look into what software has proven difficult/impossible to crack and adopt that security. To a software company this is the most vital thing.

II. Find a way to utilize ATI’s graphic cores as well. They are simply cheaper and more.

CUDA is the secret sauce here = OpenCL is proving apparently much more tricky to adapt as far as I understand.


I'm pretty certain that they have thought of all of these things - easier said than done in many cases.

b. Make a plug-in version of Octane available for Blender.

Not a bad idea. The new blender version 2.5 is pretty hot.
They finally overcame their main problem - the old twisted GUI.
check it out!