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I'm a bit nervous posting here. traditionally, unfavorable comments on internet forums lead no where.

I'm really excited for Octane. I grabbed the alpha for Windows the day of its release. I entered the competition; I submitted the stills of the MTV logo with liquid and the "scad film festival" in a room shots. But I'm getting a bit concerned.

The Octane development team has to know they are facing incredible competition. Vray RT and Arion are in development and can match visual quality and connect to external applications out of the box. I've been reading the forums for a while now and am aware of the small size of the development team. I applaud you guys for the product you've already made, but the direction you're heading is troublesome. from what I garnered from the forum, branching away from FBX to Collada is just another move away from professional production. No Host support, only RIB based animation, as of the moment, no displacement. These are all elements required for production.

Octane seems to be positioning itself as a product for the Blender Hobbyist. Nothing is at all wrong about the either. But after using the software, seeing the results, I fell in love. I want octane to be my alternative to Mental Ray. I want Octane to compete simply because Its already in our hands.

I want the best for Octane and I want to restate how much i LOVE what you guys have done. I'm just a 3D Artist submitting his concerns.

Best to everyone on the Team,

- Matt Radford

Maybe down the road for more pro support. But right now, I'm very happy that I don't have to buy and learn a big 3D package to use Octane. I'm so glad they are keeping it simple. I also am happy they are keeping the price so low!! To get to all the other features first and add more pro support would mean a longer wait and steeper price. Octane will be more of a problem to high priced software than the other way around.

From what Radience has said, more great features are on the way, but when you compare the other feature lists, they aren't that far apart. And more importantly for us, Octane will be ready and working first.

There is a but here... If Octane was to have all these so called pro features and go against the big guns, I don't think it would do so well. The big guns are well established, probably covered all rendering scenarios like SSS/Caustics, Multi GPU/CPU, etc... It would be far too early for Octane to compete, and if that was the case, the people who might use it for hobby/small business might be alienated.

I think getting as many users on board would be the best bet so far, build up the client base, make the client base feel they are investing in a quality product then who knows what will happen. Maybe then Octane will become the number 1 in GPU rendering. Exciting times for GPU rendering anyway

Hey,

We are extending our development team currently and we will soon have much more resources to develop faster.

Radiance

Note that we are also implementing FBX, we're implementing collada first, then FBX right after.

On a side note, i think a lot of people are thinking a bit old fashioned when considering the host app integration.
Sure, it would be nice for a octane to have a plugin or exporter with editor inside a host app,
but on the other side, there's a lot of things that we can do in our own environment that are not possible in a host app,
especially custom real-time, intuitive interfaces.

I think once we have enough support to comfortable load scenes from any 3d app into octane's standalone UI,
people will be very happy with the power of editing available inside the octane UI,
and i've got a lot more ideas for things to implement.

Radiance

I have very little doubt that Octane will be a great platform, I for one will be including this into my pipeline. Nice to have alternative options to Modo and LW/Fprime and given the current pricing it's a no brainer.

Looking forward to seeing this mother progress

I think the key thing you said there was that the other apps are in development. Development to release can be a long time, especially when you consider the things involved in stepping into another architecture like the gpu. It is not a simple recompiling of an existing code. The way octane is going reminds me of blender's youth. It might not all be there yet, but when it is the big boys will have to start worrying. Scripting a plugin to use octane in any app should really not be a big deal once the cli is implimented so maybe octane can source that out to the community.

I highly doubt Vray RT and Arion will be as aggressively priced as Octane is.

mradfo21 "Blender Hobbyist" - this kind'a arogant capitalistic approach. I really do not like what you did wrote. I know many businesses that use it fully with all features for doing visualizations for big and smaller Architect offices. Blender is HARD to learn but it is powerfull tool. It should not be positioned as "hobbyist software". If someone is so lame that cannot learn this system that does not mean it is limited. Octane beeing popular is also effect of that not all mentioned by you renderes have Blender exporters.

I believe McNeel/Rhino started out small too.

Here's to the future and possibilities driven by a connected and informed user base and great developer!

-Rick