Hi, I am just ramping up on maya, I have been using Octane with other 3D Apps, im curious if there are some points you could share why Octane may be better than say Vray or even Mental Ray? Is it speed?
Thanks
Benifits of Octane over Vray etc..
Moderator: JimStar
I did try to adopt Vray RT into my workflow for a long time, but it was too unreliable to really depend on it. Unreliable because:
1. It would crash a lot. Sometimes with basic interaction, like restarting the preview.
2. Many features behave differently from CPU render. Making the fine tuning misleading or even incapable at times.
With Octane you can't bake to texture (although GPU vray in Maya couldn't too - at least as of version 2), but today this is less of an issue. Octane is palpably faster and more complete than Vray RT. Vray RT would update the modeling scene while previewing, but the crashes were too often to really consider it a working feature.
Vray has cheap and user-friendly farms like Rebus to batch render, but Octane is fast enough to render lots of stuff overnight. An unbiased render will often take longer even on GPU for a similar scene on a biased renderer, but the time and uncertainty of properly configuring biased GI are rarely worth it anymore.
One downside of Octane is that it only works with it's own materials and nodes.
So yes, I do recommend Octane:
1. for it's speed (you really need to see the difference to believe, an objective benchmark is not so easy to produce between engines).
2. for it's stability and predictability.
3. for it's features being a path tracer.
1. It would crash a lot. Sometimes with basic interaction, like restarting the preview.
2. Many features behave differently from CPU render. Making the fine tuning misleading or even incapable at times.
With Octane you can't bake to texture (although GPU vray in Maya couldn't too - at least as of version 2), but today this is less of an issue. Octane is palpably faster and more complete than Vray RT. Vray RT would update the modeling scene while previewing, but the crashes were too often to really consider it a working feature.
Vray has cheap and user-friendly farms like Rebus to batch render, but Octane is fast enough to render lots of stuff overnight. An unbiased render will often take longer even on GPU for a similar scene on a biased renderer, but the time and uncertainty of properly configuring biased GI are rarely worth it anymore.
One downside of Octane is that it only works with it's own materials and nodes.
So yes, I do recommend Octane:
1. for it's speed (you really need to see the difference to believe, an objective benchmark is not so easy to produce between engines).
2. for it's stability and predictability.
3. for it's features being a path tracer.
GTX 1080 8gb, GTX 970 4gb, I5 4590, Z97-E, 32gb RAM, Win 10 64bits, Octane for Maya
Is the OP talking about Vray or Vray RT?
VRay and MR are both biased renderers that run mostly on the CPU, so whether or not they're faster or slower depends on your CPU vs. your GPU hardware. Because they're biased, they're also more complex to setup than Octane, and the materials are pretty complicated. But they are also industry standards (at least VRay is), if that matters to you. Also, MR (and maybe VRay? Don't have enough experience with it) can render NURBS and other stuff that Octane can't (yet).
Since I only have one CPU but lots of GPU power, I've been using Octane for some things and Redshift (GPU-based biased renderer) for other situations where I need noise-free results in complex interiors. I think the main benefits of Octane for me are the interactivity (awesome for IPR) and great photorealistic results without a ton of complicated materials and settings.
VRay and MR are both biased renderers that run mostly on the CPU, so whether or not they're faster or slower depends on your CPU vs. your GPU hardware. Because they're biased, they're also more complex to setup than Octane, and the materials are pretty complicated. But they are also industry standards (at least VRay is), if that matters to you. Also, MR (and maybe VRay? Don't have enough experience with it) can render NURBS and other stuff that Octane can't (yet).
Since I only have one CPU but lots of GPU power, I've been using Octane for some things and Redshift (GPU-based biased renderer) for other situations where I need noise-free results in complex interiors. I think the main benefits of Octane for me are the interactivity (awesome for IPR) and great photorealistic results without a ton of complicated materials and settings.
Core i7-3770 / 16GB RAM / 2x GTX 780 6GB / Windows 7
dsyee wrote:Is the OP talking about Vray or Vray RT?
VRay and MR are both biased renderers that run mostly on the CPU, so whether or not they're faster or slower depends on your CPU vs. your GPU hardware. Because they're biased, they're also more complex to setup than Octane, and the materials are pretty complicated. But they are also industry standards (at least VRay is), if that matters to you. Also, MR (and maybe VRay? Don't have enough experience with it) can render NURBS and other stuff that Octane can't (yet).
Since I only have one CPU but lots of GPU power, I've been using Octane for some things and Redshift (GPU-based biased renderer) for other situations where I need noise-free results in complex interiors. I think the main benefits of Octane for me are the interactivity (awesome for IPR) and great photorealistic results without a ton of complicated materials and settings.
That helps, so its not me with indoor shots and the noise with octane... Is this something Octane will resolve or is trying to get better at? Every indoor / mesh light scene I render has it, seems HDRI is the only thing i can get to render clear and crisp consistently but that don't help much with 4 walls and a cellling :-/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Win 7 64bit, Titan 6 Gig and GTX770 4Gig, Intel 3.75GHZ, 24Gig RAM, Poser 2014 patched
Win 7 64bit, Titan 6 Gig and GTX770 4Gig, Intel 3.75GHZ, 24Gig RAM, Poser 2014 patched
It's not just Octane, it's a problem for any path tracer. There are other algorithms that can help, but apparently they don't so work well on GPUs (I asked here: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=41253). But it sounds like they're working on it.
Core i7-3770 / 16GB RAM / 2x GTX 780 6GB / Windows 7
In my opinion, the two main advantages of Octane vs other renderers are, in order of importance to me:
- better looking renders and more photorealistic results (it's the best imho!)
- 20x faster rendering time
What do you need other than this?... For large pipelines and more complex work some disavantages may arise, but I must say that Octane has given me the best results when I was working as a freelancer, and it even has saved a few projects where other renderers were not giving me the wanted results (you can also blame the artist hehe).
disavantages for me are:
- hard to script (!), does not use maya nodes, and to integrate in a complex production involving other renderers
- does not support maya fluid
- rely only on the gpu, cannot use the cpu
- does not ouptut render passes (diffuse, reflection, etc)
We use Arnold in our studio and we have very difficult deadlines, I often think how it would be if we were using octane, our render times would be so diminished and we would achieve the look we want in less time. But we're on macs
- better looking renders and more photorealistic results (it's the best imho!)
- 20x faster rendering time
What do you need other than this?... For large pipelines and more complex work some disavantages may arise, but I must say that Octane has given me the best results when I was working as a freelancer, and it even has saved a few projects where other renderers were not giving me the wanted results (you can also blame the artist hehe).
disavantages for me are:
- hard to script (!), does not use maya nodes, and to integrate in a complex production involving other renderers
- does not support maya fluid
- rely only on the gpu, cannot use the cpu
- does not ouptut render passes (diffuse, reflection, etc)
We use Arnold in our studio and we have very difficult deadlines, I often think how it would be if we were using octane, our render times would be so diminished and we would achieve the look we want in less time. But we're on macs