Hi all!
Just purchased Octane. and for now I can (as expected) only use it on my Mac Pro with my Quadro 4000.
Like other Mac users I've been looking forward to the new Mac Pro but since it use AMD, Octane is not an option as for now, not off the shelf anyway.
I currently depend on Vray for C4D as the main renderer and my plan was to continue using it with the new MP until I came across Octane.
For me and my kind of work this is a (amost) perfekt render engine!
For me and other Mac Pro users, this puts everything in a an entirely different context; Do I hope for Octane to be compatible with Open CL and get the new MP, or do I stick to my old MP and put my money on expanding it?
Do I stick to Vray instead and spend the money on render clients?
Do I spend money to get an expansion solution only for Octane to work on the new MP?
These are incredible important questions for me as a freelancer.
After some searching I found a couple of Thunderbolt expansion solutions that would work on the new MP.
I have no clue if any of them will be suitable for Octane.
My reason for creating this thread is to get som kind of input on the questions mentioned above and try to gather a source for us Mac Pro users.
Cheers.
Any Mac Pro users out there?
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Hi Editroom,
I guess we all have the same (sort of) issue from time-to-time: New technology seems to make your renders better/faster/nicer, but there is hardly ever an option that fills al your needs.
For me, it's pretty simple: I need the comfort of a Mac and the power of a PC for our C4D/AE/Octane-based production pipeline. So I bought for myself and my employees a series of great design mac's (iMac, MPB, Mac Pro 2013), all paired with gaming pc's who do only the rendering. This solves a lot of issues: Money (it's not that expensive), power (CUDA is crazy fast on cheap gamePC cards) and productivity (work on the mac, render on the PC). This might work for you too?
In the end, it is your creativity and not the technology that makes great animations. Your current setup is probably already good enough to make great stuff
All the best.
I guess we all have the same (sort of) issue from time-to-time: New technology seems to make your renders better/faster/nicer, but there is hardly ever an option that fills al your needs.
For me, it's pretty simple: I need the comfort of a Mac and the power of a PC for our C4D/AE/Octane-based production pipeline. So I bought for myself and my employees a series of great design mac's (iMac, MPB, Mac Pro 2013), all paired with gaming pc's who do only the rendering. This solves a lot of issues: Money (it's not that expensive), power (CUDA is crazy fast on cheap gamePC cards) and productivity (work on the mac, render on the PC). This might work for you too?
In the end, it is your creativity and not the technology that makes great animations. Your current setup is probably already good enough to make great stuff
All the best.
Thank's for your reply!
You are of course completely right, new and better technology will always have workflow impacts but this time for me personally, it's a bit of a crossroad which way to go, CPU or GPU rendering.
Your solution with a Mac paired to a PC sounds very interesting! Could you please tell me more about it? How you connect the Mac to the PC, what PC hardware you have chosen etc.
I'm not the "techiest" man on on the planet so please be gentle...
/Göran
You are of course completely right, new and better technology will always have workflow impacts but this time for me personally, it's a bit of a crossroad which way to go, CPU or GPU rendering.
Your solution with a Mac paired to a PC sounds very interesting! Could you please tell me more about it? How you connect the Mac to the PC, what PC hardware you have chosen etc.
I'm not the "techiest" man on on the planet so please be gentle...
/Göran
hi,
in my opinion, is better to wait to buy the new mac pro and thunderbolt 2 solution until will be well supported for multi gpu rendering.
for now is better to stay with your quadro attached to one or two monitors and populate the old mp with one ore two kepler pc cards powered with an external psu, like 780, 780ti or Titan
my old mp is open from a couple of years and i have used a lot different gtx pc card in it. now i have a gt120 for dysplay and two 780 for octane, i have also a pc, but i always prefer to work with osx than windows
ciao beppe
in my opinion, is better to wait to buy the new mac pro and thunderbolt 2 solution until will be well supported for multi gpu rendering.
for now is better to stay with your quadro attached to one or two monitors and populate the old mp with one ore two kepler pc cards powered with an external psu, like 780, 780ti or Titan
my old mp is open from a couple of years and i have used a lot different gtx pc card in it. now i have a gt120 for dysplay and two 780 for octane, i have also a pc, but i always prefer to work with osx than windows
ciao beppe
I bought for myself a fairly standard iMac with a simple CUDA-capable card and put lots of RAM in it myself. This is the most affordable (but powerful) machine to do OSX-based Motion Graphics on (AE+C4D). The simple CUDA card is for previewing. Second to that I bought a game PC with pretty standard specs (i7 quad core processor, 32 gb ram) and two GeForce 770ti 2GB video cards. Those two really have the power to render all your octane scenes.
You can work with one C4D license (only one active at the time, though), and you'll need two serials for octane.
We work from a central server, but you could also use a simple network storage device (like apples time machine) to exchange your work files. That's about it!
You can work with one C4D license (only one active at the time, though), and you'll need two serials for octane.
We work from a central server, but you could also use a simple network storage device (like apples time machine) to exchange your work files. That's about it!
Thank's guys for your input!
Just installed Octane and the preview is incredibly fast on my Quadro!
@bepeg4D:
I think the solution you propose is a good one temporarily but the MP I have is quite worn out and I will have to get a new one in the near future anyway.
@MakeEmSay:
How do you pair the iMac to the PC? You hook i up via the central server? Not sure I understand the pipeline and workflow since you say you need two Octane llicences.
Just installed Octane and the preview is incredibly fast on my Quadro!
@bepeg4D:
I think the solution you propose is a good one temporarily but the MP I have is quite worn out and I will have to get a new one in the near future anyway.
@MakeEmSay:
How do you pair the iMac to the PC? You hook i up via the central server? Not sure I understand the pipeline and workflow since you say you need two Octane llicences.
We use a single central hard disk on the server (like a time machine, NAS or similar network drive) to work from. We design our C4D project on the mac, then save it to the network, open it on the Windows machine and start the render there from the server! The output files are written to the same network drive.
While rendering, we import the scene frame per frame into a After Effects project (on the Mac), so we can start compositing right away!
It's a pretty simple workflow, but it works great for us. A second advantage is that we only need to backup the network drive: The sets themselves only contain the software. All the project management is done in the cloud. Hope this helps?
While rendering, we import the scene frame per frame into a After Effects project (on the Mac), so we can start compositing right away!
It's a pretty simple workflow, but it works great for us. A second advantage is that we only need to backup the network drive: The sets themselves only contain the software. All the project management is done in the cloud. Hope this helps?
Thank's MakeEmSay!
Pretty clear now
Even if this wouldn't be my prefered workflow, it sound pretty simple!
The only disadvantage I can see is that you need to update the C4D plugins in the render machine.
Would be nice to be able to just send an Octane render stright to a GPU packed PC on a network.
Pretty clear now
Even if this wouldn't be my prefered workflow, it sound pretty simple!
The only disadvantage I can see is that you need to update the C4D plugins in the render machine.
Would be nice to be able to just send an Octane render stright to a GPU packed PC on a network.
So, I would have to buy an extra license in order to set up a "render-only" machine?