Important questions before buying OCTANE

[kcpr-raffaEl]

Dear Friends,

I'm during the tests of OCTANE 1.2 before big work (about 1400 renders) and considering buying OCTANE for 3ds MAX.

I like it very much!


I've got some questions:

1. PERFORMANCE: During my test I've decided to use Direct Lighting engine as fastest way to get good results (I'm aware that it's NOT unbiased, and I'm OK with that ).

But I've read a few post on this forum, that OCTANE 2.x is slower in comparison with 1.2. I'm really worried about this, cause I've got very tight timeline to finish the work and can't afford longer renders. So, the question is how it is about the Direct Lighting mode performance in 2.x compared with 1.2?

2. If it is true about 2.x lowered performance can I use version 1.2 inside bought licence, or am I forced to use newest one?

3. LICENSING: I've got two computers, on which I'll render (8 GPUs and second 4GPUs). They're NOT in the network, the 8 GPUs-one is for rendering only. I want to use OCTANE with 3ds MAX. What lincenses I have to buy to make everything work correctly on both computers on the same time (first one - rendering, second one - setting up, and then rendering).

4. RENDERING RESOLUTION: I've tested OCTANE on my friends Student license, and during rendering 360 Degree Spherical Panorama, I've noticed that OCTANE can't produce 10000x5000 pixels output. The limit is set to 8250pix, rest of imaqe is black. Is this limitation of student version only or it's OCTANE limitation?

5. ANIMATION in 3dsMAX: In 1.2 version, I can't animate almost any material property, and can't animate objects visibility. Is something changed in new versions?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Best,
raffaEl

[FooZe]

Hi raffaEl,

1) I'm not sure about direct benchmarks, it all depends on your scene. As a very broad generalisation 2.x can be up to 25% slower (worst case).
2) 2.x licenses are backwards compatible with 1.x and we still have the downloads available for 1.2
3) You will need 2x "Combo's" (total 2x standalones + 2x plugin licenses) to use them at the same time.
4) The maximum resolution used to be 8129x8192 but this has been increased in later versions.
5) This should work, just use auto keying, use the octane materials opacity for the objects visibility.

Hope that helps.

Chris.

[kcpr-raffaEl]

Thank you very much for your answers.

About Direct Lighting performance - I render closed room without any external lighting, just artifical lights.
3 Diffuse bounces, speculardepth: 9, glossydepth: 5.

On some blogs I've red that DirecLighting mode was very optimised in 2.x versions and can achieve faster results.
Isn't it true?

How can I test it in 3ds MAX??

Can I "borrow" the license for 1 day to check 2.x performance?

[FooZe]

Thank you very much for your answers.
On some blogs I've red that DirecLighting mode was very optimised in 2.x versions and can achieve faster results.
Isn't it true?

I'm not aware of any major DL kernel speed-ups in 2.x.
There was some work done to generally optimise octane after the 2.0 release but as far as I know there was no dramatic improvement.

Thanks
Chris.