OTOY Forums

Hello everyone

I am Anthony Hague and ive been a pro photoshop retoucher for 25 years and I practice photography too. Ive learned 3DSMax in 2006, I modelled a brand new white van my auntie bought so I could design it livery but when I got busy I forgot how to use max. The I saw how cool Cinema 4D was on the Mac which is the staple machine of the photography and advertising business, I have learned and forgotten C4D on 4 separate occasions due to being busy elsewhere and getting frustrated with long render times. Then recently a friend showed me Arievs 'Started with Octane' video and I was hooked, I saved and borrowed all I could for my Ryzen9 5950x, 32gb ram, 2x 32" Dell displays (display 2 for running tutorials) and I ordered a 3080/90 but its been 2 months and ive had to settle with a 2080 super for now, I was 2 weeks late I expect. But ive got my Octane Studio subscription and im super happy with how powerful/fast it is.

My goal is to learn Octane and C4D for doing photorealistic pieces of advertising style work, im not interested in animation yet or cartoons etc but I remain open to future experimentation. If anybody has any special video tutorials for photorealism in Octane I would love to see them? First im going to try and replicate one of my retouching pieces off my website, its a coke can with a thick liquid dripping over it. So to start ill be trying small product photography images. Finally I wish to render simple outdoor images like cars and room sets.


Tutorials
https://www.patreon.com/vudu - This guy seems to have covered some nice photoreal room sets and his pricing is good, what do you think? Anybody seen his tutorials?

If anyone has any learning advice for photorealistic renders please let me know??


Big Thank You to Beppe and Kevin for helping me get going here, Kevin for sorting my account out and Beppe for answering my iMac questions and helping me understand what 'No Cuda Device Selected' meant. As a Apple user that had me baffled for a whole day.


https://www.anthonyhague.com is my website if you wish to look, hopefully it will be more 3d soon

Hey man, happy to see someone as excited as I was when I shifted from CPU to GPU rendering! It's a game changer. I was working on Apple for 15 years for my graphic design stuff and when I started 3D I couldn't let it go. Struggled with CPU rendering until a year and a half ago bought a PC and Octane, and I feel like that not only sped up the workflow tremendously, it also kicked my skills up by a lot. Probably because of a speedier workflow - the more you can do in a day, the more you learn in a day.

I'm sure you'll have a great transition to 3D as you already got the eye and understanding of lights and cameras which is crucial for any 3d work (great stuff on your website)

There's plenty of free information on Youtube, at the end of the day it all comes down to understanding how materials work and how lighting works, that really is the foundation of any realistic render. Beyond that, using good models and knowing how to frame your composition and what not.

Excited for you buddy! This forum might feel a little dry sometimes but don't let it fool you, you can find some great Octane resources and support here

I have some tutorials on Youtube and, even though I don't focus on the "how to's" of photorealism per se, everything I do is based on photorealism. So hopefully you can learn a thing or two.

https://www.youtube.com/c/NewPlastic/videos

Hi Jengo

Thanks for your story, I couldn't agree more with your statement "Probably because of a speedier workflow - the more you can do in a day, the more you learn in a day." Thats exactly what I was thinking, you can get so far by reading the book but to really understand anything you need to feel how it responds and thats going to take ages if your waiting 20mins for a tiny preview window. I also think slow render times is responsible for many users mediocre work, they get so far with a job and it becomes equally possible for the image to get worse as it is better, but if your only waiting 2mins with GPU, as opposed to 2 hours with CPU, you have much more time to try a few things to see if you can improve your work.

Right now im still going through basic tutorials, converting materials on a car from C4D to Octane. Its interesting though because im learning about glass, metallics, chrome, rubber and plastics. After I might try and build a basic scene to show what ive done with the materials. The tutorial Ariev did is great, but the tutorial goes a bit complex with heavy node use which put me off, so ive paused that for now and ill come back to it when I have learned nodes.

Being a pro photographer I look forward to doing a bit of cheating with my materials. Im going to photograph elements (like brushed steel for example)at the correct perspective and lighting, to bring extra reality into my renders. Thats if and when I need to cheat. Personally, I cringe when I see a piece of great work and its let down by one material that screams false.

Thanks for your link Jengo, the amount of videos you have is very impressive. Well done, ive saved your New Plastic link