Attached Link: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23642

The last couple of renders in my gallery were done using Octane.  Incredibly impressive product.

That's SOOOO flipping awesome! I'm glad to see this. We need ports to other render engines :). First Luxrender, now Octane. Hopefully, we get one for Kerky at some point. LOL

That's great!

Laurie

this seems really cool.. I must confess that I dont know much about octane, though being as fast as it seems to be it must be great for animators.  Its hard to tell from the gallery on octanes site how well it does organics like skin, most of what I looked at were plastic or other tyoes of inorganic surfaces

Whats the current Poser to Octane method...or is there one?  (off to search after I asked :tongue1: )

Quote - Whats the current Poser to Octane method...or is there one?  (off to search after I asked :tongue1: )

I think you can export to .obj and use that in Octane, but don't quote me on it ;)

Laurie

Yea I just found that in an old post...I notice that on that board they also announce/show the new DS plugin they are making as well.  Guess they are after Paolo's target audience   Some renders do look nice though...but you can say that about any renderer in the right hands.

I did like the video and the change camera angle, etc options.  That was cool.  Downloading the limited trial to see if my laptop can even handle it...

Will the plug-in be charged or free of charge?

Thanks in advance

In the DS post, they says, "The launch date and pricing is still TBA"...so I figure same goes for the Poser one, but thats just a guess.

I think you can export to .obj and use that in Octane

Yes, I've been doing that for a while.  It becomes tedious after a while, since when you go back to Poser or ZB to tweak the mesh, you need to reconnect all the materials in the Octane application.  So the plugin saves a massive amount of time.  The plugin will almost render animations, whichI don't think would be viable using just the Octane application.

Downloading the limited trial to see if my laptop can even handle it...

Octane requires an Nvidia Cuda capable card.  I run it fine with a 192 cuda core card - a $120 GTX 550 Ti (probably the lowest spec card you would use for Octane).  Even with my low-spec card, the rendering performance is staggeringly fast.  I can't imagine what multiple higher spec cards will do!

Will the plug-in be charged or free of charge?

I don't think so.

One question for ya Paul ;)....can ur script allow that we be able to use Octanes material tweaking? I mean, can we us Octane's GUI to tweak the shaders? I was looking at Octane's features and I LOVE the look of the shader gui. Has nodes, but you don't HAVE to use them. Get a clue, Smith Micro. LOL.

BTW, I new someone that ran Octane with no problems on a budget Nvidia card. So, I don't think you have to have the latest and greatest. If Blender Cycles runs fine for me on a GT240 I don't know why Octane wouldn't ;)

Laurie

One more thing to keep in mind: I believe (and I think I'm right on this) that your scene size is dependent on the amount of RAM on ur graphics card. Once you go over that limit there won't be any rendering. Unless Octane is using something I don't know about ;). That's where you have the benefit with Luxrender as I see it. You can do either GPU or CPU or a combo of both.

Laurie

Mine is a GEForce GT 540M, 96 Cuda cores...it works  (though I did need the latest NVidia driver)!  Still watching videos, so I am not sure if this is like lux (i.e it can go on forever)?

For mine, at 2 minutes I had 700/16000 s/px, now at 1200 and it looks darn good!  (spaceships scene)

Quote - Mine is a GEForce GT 540M, 96 Cuda cores...it works  (though I did need the latest NVidia driver)!  Still watching videos, so I am not sure if this is like lux (i.e it can go on forever)?

For mine, at 2 minutes I had 700/16000 s/px, now at 1200 and it looks darn good!  (spaceships scene)

As far as I know any unbiased render will go on and on until you tell it to stop ;).

Here is a snippet at around 5 minutes...seems to have some specs that may mean more to others than they do to me.  I am just interested in a nice render!

.can ur script allow that we be able to use Octanes material tweaking? I mean, can we us Octane's GUI to tweak the shaders?

My implementation uses a tree structure to represent the nodes.  You can add, remove, change anything you can in the Octane App.  The only thing you cannot do is connect one node output to 2 separate node input.  However this is a copy and paste function which gets around that.  So, no, there is no node editor like in the Poser Material Room - it uses a tree structure instead, like the Poser Heirachy Editor.

I believe (and I think I'm right on this) that your scene size is dependent on the amount of RAM on ur graphics card.

Correct.  I've yet to use more the 50% of the memory in my $120 card.

Here is a snippet at around 5 minutes

Nice!  I've found the best "bang for your buck" rendering is to simply load a Poser IBL into the enironment node and set the power to about 3 or 4, and not worry about emitters.  Or use the sunlight environment.  And use glossy rather than diffuse nodes on the materials (turn the specular down to about 0.001). 

Whats interesting is that a normal render, my laptop fan is killin' itself...with this, it barely runs or gets hot!  Thats a good thing!

with this, it barely runs or gets hot!  Thats a good thing!

Well your CPU is not working that hard - it's all being done by the graphics card.  You can even setup your PC so it's using the onboard graphics for displaying Windows, and only using the Nvidia card to rendering - that way your PC runs at normal speed during the Octane render process.

Wow......

Excellent !!

it is nice to see the  poser users  get more rendering options outside of firefly with a nice back& forth integration as well

great Work Paul as usual!!!

Cheers

Exciting news Paul! I can see me buying a new graphics card soon :-)

This looks really promising and is exciting news!

I must confess, I recently bought me an Octane Redener licence as well.

It's realy an amazing thing and fast, holy moly! I just hope my GTX570 won't explode =D

But I have yet to find a good work flow from Poser to Octane. My next aim is incorporating mesh lights into Octane or lights in general. This will be ... fun? LOL

question is how much will octane render be? as the beta is $99 for a single licence,with a reduced fee when its released. and me being not made of money,the reduced fee could be anything.

I think that was 99 Euros, which is around $129

Yeah, if you're in the states it's more than $99 dollars. Still tho, not bad ;). If I can visually tweak materials to my heart's content, it'd be worth it. LOL

Laurie

Though when I do this, it restarts the render.  I don't have to re-export everything else, but it's not like it comes without a cost...

So I have been toying with it, since I have some B-day cash to spend :)

I have been using the Ariana Elite texture, which comes in with a bluish specular, set to RGBSpectrum of 0.3/0.4/0.5.  I find I need to dial that down, (i.e. 0.1/0.2/0.3)...or I can change it to a floattexture and flip it to around 0.3

Is there a benefit one way or another?  ...am I doing it wrong?  LOL! 

The shirt and glasses are a mess and I did not pose the eyes too well...but was just going for skin first.  Hair seemed to come out well at default settings.

PaperTiger - stunning renders.  For eyes - make sure you set the scene rayepsilon to 0.00001 (ie. the default/10) - that ensures the transmapped corneas work correctly (prob not an issue with Daz models, but it is with Alyson, Miki, etc).  That skin shader is fantastic - we should trade SSS shader node setups some time.  I suspect everyone is using the same sss shader (material mix with a glossy and diffuse), it's just the parameters that differ.

3doutlaw - comes in with a bluish specular, set to RGBSpectrum of 0.3/0.4/0.5....I've found that the rendered specular is a combination of roughness, specular and bump, so you can adjust it back through the bump and roughness.  For skin (and hair), IMO a filmwidth of 1 is the best.

Hair seemed to come out well at default settings.

From memory, hair comes in as diffuse.  I change it to glossy with a very very small specular value (0.0001?).

Though when I do this, it restarts the render.  I don't have to re-export everything else, but it's not like it comes without a cost...

If you are using the Octane Standalone app, IMO the best workflow is NOT click the obj mesh and tweak the materials.  Instead, create new glossy, diffuse, specular materials and plug them into the material connection on the mesh (even for the emitter lights).  Then if you tweak the mesh in Poser, simply reimport and replug the material nodes into the right inputs on the mesh.  They way you don't "forget" what settings you had.

Also make sure all texturemaps have 2.2 gamma, and transmaps/bumpmaps gamma 1.0.  For hair, I have been setting the transmap "power" to slightly < 1 so it is slightly transparent.

I suppose you could do an absorbtion depth in Octane? Set it to a really dark red? maybe make the depth a few millimeters? She should have blush on her boobs and buns, knees, and fingertips. May need to use a map to make that happen tho.

Laurie

damn 99 euros plus the cost of the plug in and the full licence price,and to kick me just a bit harder in the love spuds some sh#t stole my wifes phone in the supermarket today so now i have to buy a new phone, looks like im gonna have to sell my body,lol.

is there a way to find out how many cuda cores you have as after a very lengthy google quest i get a "could be 216", all i want is the specs and google thinks thats a hard question,really

Speccy tells me my gfx card has 96 "shaders unified", which I think are the cuda cores ;). I also googled "cuda cores in a GT240" and 96 came up in the description of the first web site.

Laurie

Attached Link: http://www.nvidia.com/object/geforce_family.html

Find your card in this list, then click on "Specifications"

Now I will have a good reason to dust off the Quadro card I have on the shelf.   O_o

Thanks stewer. I just looked mine up on the site and it says it has 512. That seems a bit much.

Holy cow! The GTX 690 has 3072.

I suddenly feel puny. LOL

Laurie

Quote - Thanks stewer. I just looked mine up on the site and it says it has 512. That seems a bit much.

Holy cow! The GTX 690 has 3072.

The  GTX 690 also has new designed chips  that runs more eficent  all  Cuda cores are utilized  by the CPU through new tecknology Kepler

you can watch on you-tube about how it work by GTC 2012 Keynote speeker  Jen-Hsun Huang.  Awesome looking tek

And... I'm looking forward to "Reality 3D" for poser as a plugin as a comparison... the competition is heating up... yipee!

thankyou stewer,after a trawl on nvidias site i found my card,as its not listed on the current page, turns out my card when first introduced only had 192 cores and 1gb of memory, whereas my newer version has 216cores and 1.8gb...looks like im octane ready,lol

Quote - PaperTiger - stunning renders.  For eyes - make sure you set the scene rayepsilon to 0.00001 (ie. the default/10) - that ensures the transmapped corneas work correctly (prob not an issue with Daz models, but it is with Alyson, Miki, etc).  That skin shader is fantastic - we should trade SSS shader node setups some time.  I suspect everyone is using the same sss shader (material mix with a glossy and diffuse), it's just the parameters that differ.

Thanks and you are indeed correct about the SSS shader I'm using being a material mix composed of glossy and diffuse.

I read something I didn't like in the fine print ;). We'll see...lol. My advice: read the FAQ page thoroughly.

Laurie

The Octane Render FAQ?  Read it before, but just browsed it again...hmmm, I must be missing it?

Well, you buy for the 99 euros or however many American dollars and that's just for the beta. When version 1 is released, you pay....again. NO idea how much that'll be but they inferred a lot more than 99 euros. Purchasers of the beta get a discount of course, but if the software is a thousand bucks (just a guess, I really have no idea) then a discount won't much matter to a hobbyist. If it's only, say, 300 bucks then that's a lot less of a hit to the wallet ;). Hopefully it's NOT gonna cost all that much. I'll watch what goes on. LOL

Laurie

Oh, yea I did read that, I think it just "reads that way".  It's clarified on the Beta program page:  "Your beta license will also be valid for the final v1.0 Edition release, and subsequent dot releases such as v1.1, v1.2, etc, and will allow a reduced upgrade cost to future v2.0 releases. "

http://render.otoy.com/shop/standalone.php#BETAinf

After reading that-re-read the FAQ..."...and having a full Octane Render Version 1.0 license at a much reduced rate."

If they said "and having a full Octane Render Version 1.0 license at a much reduced rate**, later.**" then it would be a problem.

Well, even so, the wording is still very confusing. I'd hate to lay out 140 bucks for someone to say "Hey, we need another 200" a few months later. Which part of the site do you believe, yanno?

shrug

Laurie

Quote - > Quote - PaperTiger - stunning renders.  For eyes - make sure you set the scene rayepsilon to 0.00001 (ie. the default/10) - that ensures the transmapped corneas work correctly (prob not an issue with Daz models, but it is with Alyson, Miki, etc).  That skin shader is fantastic - we should trade SSS shader node setups some time.  I suspect everyone is using the same sss shader (material mix with a glossy and diffuse), it's just the parameters that differ.

Thanks and you are indeed correct about the SSS shader I'm using being a material mix composed of glossy and diffuse.

How about instead of "trading" shader node setups, you "post" shader node setups for us newbie's!  We sure would appreciate it!  :tongue1:

my thoughts exactly 99 euros now and who knows how much later? how can they expect a group of customers who are largly hobbiests to commit 99euros  when they dont know the final price,i like many poser users am of a limited budget and am very wary of spending money on the beta when the total cost could end up being anything out of reach of my kind. if they want us to go for their software tell us whilst the beta is out how much it will be on final release.or is that just too logical?

They provide a pretty full featured demo.  My feeling is that if after trying it, it does not float your boat, then wait for Paolo's Lux Plugin.  Lux is free!

I am off to attempt the "create your own material nodes" suggestion mentioned before....with a scene of just V4, a dynamic robe (for decency), and hair.  Seems like even with that, its a lot of nodes to remake.

Will the new plugin actually create these nodes, or is it just modifying the obj materials?  Maybe I need to go re-read...

"My feeling is that if after trying it, it does not float your boat, then wait for Paolo's Lux Plugin.  Lux is free!"

*But Reality is not free. (Snarly's Pose2Lux is tho...)

Quote - my thoughts exactly 99 euros now and who knows how much later? how can they expect a group of customers who are largly hobbiests to commit 99euros  when they dont know the final price,i like many poser users am of a limited budget and am very wary of spending money on the beta when the total cost could end up being anything out of reach of my kind. if they want us to go for their software tell us whilst the beta is out how much it will be on final release.or is that just too logical?

I think the term "beta" has a different meaning there. As far as i can remember the beta started somewhere in 2010. Since then the requirements for the hardware as well as the pricing have changed multiple times, the company was sold to another owner, etc. With this in mind, they probably simply cannot make any price commitment, because they do not know themselves what they will have in 2015, what the Euro will be worth then, and what  kind of graphics cards the users will have when the final is released (if a final is released). So you should just base your decision on what you will get now, not what a final version would cost at some unknown point of time in the future. Think of it as buying a finished software, accidently called "Octane-Beta" like the "Shure Beta-58" (there is no "Shure Final-58" either and probably never will be).