I currently own an octane license with a quadro FX 4800 1,5 gb.

On my experience I have trouble on half scenes I make. Texture size is easily managed with resizing all of them (50% make the job) after collecting all them, as the octane look for textures in the same folder as the geometry. It's quick!.

For textures number it's more complex. For exemple: V4, Marai from Surreality, UraalNys clothes from Awfulsoul, Midnight summer dream hair, path scene from vikike: 120 textures approx!! The only solution I found was 2 or 3 exports from Poser, geometry object node in octane, 2 or 3 renders and after postwork!

MMmmmmm, I was sure I reponded to this, but Rendo eat my msg.

For textures number it's more complex. For exemple: V4, Marai from Surreality, UraalNys clothes from Awfulsoul, Midnight summer dream hair, path scene from vikike: 120 textures approx!! The only solution I found was 2 or 3 exports from Poser, geometry object node in octane, 2 or 3 renders and after postwork!

Whilst FX 4800 is listed as around $700, a $200 GTX 600 series card with double the cuda cores is about $200, and this should give you 256 rbg textures and 128 grayscale textures, which would fit the large scenes you are rendering.

@face_off - Quick question: does the Octane Render Viewport update the pose or just materials/camera position?

Quick question: does the Octane Render Viewport update the pose or just materials/camera position?

If you have the Auto Refresh toggle button on, poses/morphs etc get automatically updated in the viewport.  The video at https://vimeo.com/51657952 demonstrates the process (although it's a little dated now).

Paul

A quick thanks to Zay for the clarification that whilst the new 600 series GTX cards support 256 rgb texturemaps, the cuda/Octane limits are:

144 LDR (8 bit) RGBA texturemaps, 68 LDR (8 bit) greyscale texturemaps, 10 HDR (16 bit) RGBA texturemaps, and 10 HDR (16 bit) greyscale.

So still over double the capacity of the 500 series cards, but not as I previously advised in this thread.

was just about to buy octane and the poser plugin and to my surprise its gone up to 279 euros, thats me out. im going to wait for reality3. it was a stretch for me at 179, oh well. all the best.

The instancing build of the Poser plugin  has now been released (as a "development" version).  See https://vimeo.com/54438243 for details.

Quote - was just about to buy octane and the poser plugin and to my surprise its gone up to 279 euros, thats me out. im going to wait for reality3. it was a stretch for me at 179, oh well. all the best.

It kinda caught me by surprise when I got the email about that, too. Fortunately, I had already bought a copy back when they first announced the beta. For a minute I was afraid I had missed out on the Octane for Poser special price, though.

I've just made available a new test version (1.01d) to all customers.  It includes:

• Texture compression script
• Improvements to Instancing
• Genesis compatibility
• Compiled against Octane 1.0
• A range of stability improvements, memory reporting, etc
• You can now save Octane materials back into the Poser Material (as save as a MAT pose)
• Paste a material to all skin materials (retaining their texturemaps)

Paul

There is a few new quite amazing renders from the plugin at ww.facebook.com/poserphysics.

Paul

I'm looking for a couple of ppl to test the DEMO version of the plugin prior to it being made available to the public.  If you are interested in a sneak peek, pls email me (at the "support" address at the bottom of the PoserPhysics link below).

Paul

Quote - Cool shot of the new Instancing in beta.

Is there a fast way to use Octane render?

If it normally takes you 4 hours to complete one scene in poser, what's the least amount of time you'd need to take in Octane render? Is there a quick render option?

Example of fast workflow in Octane Render.

1. File Open choose poser scene

2. Choose Quick Results

3. Render

4. Better than what poser looks like, PROFIT

The render time probably adds what, like 20-40 minutes? So the most time you'd spent in octane is maybe 45 minutes tops?

Is there a fast way to use Octane render?

If you watch the videos it gives an idea of the rendertime (altho that's on my low-spec card) and the workflow (https://vimeo.com/53821805).  Some renders are complete in < 1 min (ie. 800x600 full body render of Alyson2).  The most I've ever left a render for is about 15 mins (1200x900 close-up portrait with transmapped hair).  There are 2 dials which remove noise, so you can terminate early if needed.  But overall rendertime will depend on your scene and hardware.

Paul

The render time probably adds what, like 20-40 minutes?

To give you an idea....this render was 2mins on my old graphics card - there is no SSS in it.  The SSS version took about 3 mins to get to the same point.

Paul

To give you an idea....this render was 2mins on my old graphics card - there is no SSS in it.  The SSS version took about 3 mins to get to the same point.

Paul

Quote - The render time probably adds what, like 20-40 minutes?

To give you an idea....this render was 2mins on my old graphics card - there is no SSS in it.  The SSS version took about 3 mins to get to the same point.

Paul

Woah, guys. This is amazing.

What about workflow? How much time do you have to spend tweaking before render? What's the minimum amount of time you can spend?

PLEASE don't make me watch the video.

Is it better to do lighting & shader stuff in poser, or just pose figures & props and then do the lighting & shader stuff in octane render?

I broke down and watched the video.  You basically do everything in poser which is nice.

What about workflow? How much time do you have to spend tweaking before render? What's the minimum amount of time you can spend?

The render above was with zero tweaking (think I just loaded one of V4's skin texturemaps as the IDL light!!! - so there are not even any geometry lights).  So it was load the plugin, load the light map, copen the viewport, wait.

PLEASE don't make me watch the video.

I get many emails per day, and have gone to the effort of making the tutorial video's and writing the manual the try to maintain my sanity and not answer the same question many times :-)

Is it better to do lighting & shader stuff in poser, or just pose figures & props and then do the lighting & shader stuff in octane render?

Most people are doing all the shaders and lights in the Octane render - since you can tweak and then see the results immediately.  Once complete, you can optionally save the Octane material back into the Poser material and save as a mat pose if you want to keep it for another render.

Quote - What about workflow? How much time do you have to spend tweaking before render? What's the minimum amount of time you can spend?

The render above was with zero tweaking (think I just loaded one of V4's skin texturemaps as the IDL light!!! - so there are not even any geometry lights).  So it was load the plugin, load the light map, copen the viewport, wait.

PLEASE don't make me watch the video.

I get many emails per day, and have gone to the effort of making the tutorial video's and writing the manual the try to maintain my sanity and not answer the same question many times :-)

Is it better to do lighting & shader stuff in poser, or just pose figures & props and then do the lighting & shader stuff in octane render?

Most people are doing all the shaders and lights in the Octane render - since you can tweak and then see the results immediately.  Once complete, you can optionally save the Octane material back into the Poser material and save as a mat pose if you want to keep it for another render.

Is there a demo we can try for poser? Or is the only way to buy a license right now? Just curious.  For example a demo could watermark the final render in ways making it impossible to photoshop out.

Email me (at the "support" address at the bottom of the PoserPhysics link below) regarding the demo version.

Attached Link: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=25983

Attached Link: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=25529

Sunset reflected in the shades. I added a car to have something else to reflect as well

Attached Link: http://youtu.be/KiIGvoyt0zk

Quote - Here an experiment with the new daylight system

Sunset reflected in the shades. I added a car to have something else to reflect as well

 

Hi,

the reflection effect is very cool!   I like that image a lot.

Best regards,

   Michael

Attached Link: http://blog.smithmicro.com/2013/01/07/poser-3d/octanerender-for-poser/

Has anyone tried to use the plugin with dynamic hair? How does that work out?

I've run some tests, and the geometry gets loaded OK into Octane.  However my new PC build doesn't have many dynmaic hair props, so I couldn't really give it a thorough test.  From what I could see, hair with lots of vertices and many strands looked great.  Hair with few vertices and few strands showed the figures scalp.

If you have a specific hair prop, send it to me and I'll try it out.  You have the same video card as me, so you could try the demo version too.

Paul

Re: Poser dynamic hair in Octane for Poser

Hi, I've tried making a dynamic beard prop for Genesis and got both into the plugin okay. Looked beautiful, too. However, about eight minutes into the render, the Cuda device failed with multiple error messages that kept popping up, and I finally had to kill Poser via the task manager. (Win 7, 64 bit, Nvidia 540 M on a laptop with 12 Gig RAM.) It's a reproducible phenomenon.

Since this only happens with other renders if I'm close to the card memory limit, I suspect there's a memory issue there because of too many vertices. No idea why it takes so long to crap out. I'll experiment with reducing vertices per strand and/or number or strands.

tl;dr: In principle, it works. In practice, it's a memory hog. :)

Thanks Elena.

The revised 1.02q version of the plugin should stop the multiple error messages - so if you re-download 1.02q that should help part of your problem.  I am reasonably certain it will be a hardware issue for you - the 540M has 96 cores, so at the low end of the hardware spectrum.  Have you tried reducing the ray bounces (kernel->maxdepth) right down to maybe 4?  Also, which kernel are you rendering with?  Is there is any chance you could email me the hair prop in question, I can try it on my PC?

OK, enough questions from me :-)

[EDIT] I doubt it's a "number of vertices" issue.  I've had 500million vertices in my 1Gig card (with instancing).  And non-instancing I've had 4million polygons, and I would have guess a beard would be in the hundred's of thousands of vertices rather than the millions.

Thanks for the reply! I enjoy the plugin very much. It replaced my old workflow (export from Carrara, import into DS to fix Carrara smoothing issues, export, import into Octane) with neat in-scene rendering. I even decided it warranted uprading from Poser 7, and I still think it was worth every cent.

Yeah, I know I'm at the lower end hardware-wise, but it's a laptop and I can't change cards. I've looked into external graphic cards options, but it seems I need a card slot for it that I don't have, and there's currently no USB support for external graphic cards. Oh well. My next computer will certainly take graphic card performance into account, lol. In the meantime, I'll just reduce scene complexity and do closeups rather than scenic renders.

I'm currently at work, away from my Octane setup, but I'll see if I can send you the prop later today, when I'm home. But you're probably right about the vertices. I've done instancing resulting in many more vertices than I have in this scene, and it never was an issue.

I'll re-download the current plugin version first thing when I get home (I don't think I have the latest one) and see if that fixes it. Thanks again for your work and quick response to user issues. Mucho appreciated. :)

2 quick points Elena.  Remember to turn on Progressive Save (set to save every few hundred samples), so it your card has issues, you'll still have a saved version of the render for reference.

Also, if version 1.02q of the plugin detects a graphics card issue, it will (attempt to) pause the render.  From there, you may be able to save the render.

From the Octane forums, issues like this are generally caused from overheating.  So winding the maxdepth back may work the cuda cores a little less :-)

I found the culprit for the memory hog, and it's not the strand-based hair at all, but a hair prop called WildHair Male (which I love, but have been having trouble with in Carrara as well). Once I eliminated that from my scene, the Cuda errors ceased.

Since I'm working with a Genesis figure anyway, I substituted the Wildhair with the WildMane hair (for Genesis), and the render is currently in progress. :)

Thanks for your help, face_off. Very happy to be able to continue with a scene despite the Cuda errors with the fix of the current beta. Keep up the good work!  

I have bought Octane Render + Poser Plugin last week. Results are impressive in some parts but I'm still struggling to get realistic and bright looking eyes, specially with reflection eyes on daylight environment.

I've tried to modify default eyes materials with no real success.

Quote - I have bought Octane Render + Poser Plugin last week. Results are impressive in some parts but I'm still struggling to get realistic and bright looking eyes, specially with reflection eyes on daylight environment.

I've tried to modify default eyes materials with no real success.

The trick here is to decrease opacity on the eyesurface to 0.7 or lower.
Try that and work from there.  I think the eye materials in a gen4 figures need to be carefully tuned to eachother, so to get a perfect match will be quite challenging (if at all possible with the choice of eye material zones in gen4)

I also think you will have better results with the PMC kernel - it tends to do specular surfaces better

get realistic and bright looking eyes, specially with reflection eyes on daylight environment.

As Wim said, PMC is the preferred renderign kernel for figure, so use that.

Which figure are you using?  Eye surfaces vary between figures (some have an eye covering over the whole eye, and some only over the iris). 

When I add a reflection map on the cornea in Poser, the plugin convert it to a specular node and the maps image files are not included, tried to tweak the reflection node with no success.

As you see in the picture above. The eyes lack of definition and reflections.

Hi bblogos

Her eyes look pretty good to me!  The reflections look great.  If you want some more sparkle, add a light emitter just behind the camera, so that it will illuminate her face a little plus reflect off her eyes.

To increase render speed, you can reduce imager->hotpixel_removal to 0, and adding some caustic_blur will help (maybe 0.3).  Also, if most of the render is finished in 1 min, but one section (like Eyes) are taking another hour, adjust the kernel->direct_light_importance (check the Octane Standalone manual for details).

The general rule in Octane is to "not fake it".  So the preference is to use the environment for reflections (in her eyes) - which is what the plugin has done in your scene.  If you really want to use mapped reflections, convert the eye cover (cornea) from specular to glossy, set the opacity to something small (0.3???) and set the diffuse pin to the reflection map (as an image node).

Also, you can stop the plugin coverting the cornea to a specular node by setting the transparency value in the Poser material to < 0.5.

Paul

Thanks Paul, I will try your advices.

By the way, when I run the "create emitters from lights" script, Poser always ask me to locate the ball.pzz or else prop located in the folder :Runtime:libraries:Props:Primitives. So I always have to manually locate it. Why ?

I'm also considering to update my GPU card. For now I have a GTX 660 Ti for Octane render and a GTX 650 for display or use both when I don't need to do something else in the computer when rendering. GTX 580 seems for the moment to be the best price/speed value but the max textures limitation can be a problem with Fermi generation cards. If I run a Fermi + a Kepler card, will the texture limitations increase or will be still limited by the Fermi card ? I also read that the Octane developpers team is working to optimize the Kepler performances for the future versions of Octane render. Does is it still worth to invest in a Fermi card if in the future Kepler cards will be more efficient. I say that because power consumption and overheat of Fermi vs Kepler, the choice is clearly made.

I added a GTX680 to my GTX580, mainly to increase memory to 4GB and texture slots to 144. I use the GTX580 for my display. You'd be better off adding a 600 series of cards to increase the GPU's for speed without lowering the limits

By the way, when I run the "create emitters from lights" script, Poser always ask me to locate the ball.pzz or else prop located in the folder :Runtime:libraries:Props:Primitives. So I always have to manually locate it. Why ?

I suspect your primitives folder has been moved.  Edit "Poser Pro 2012RuntimePythonposerScriptsScriptsMenuOctaneRender for PoserCreate Emitters From Lights.py" and put the full path into the lines that read:

poser.Scene().LoadLibraryProp("/Runtime/Libraries/Props/Primitives/Ball.ppz")

If I run a Fermi + a Kepler card, will the texture limitations increase or will be still limited by the Fermi card ?

It's recommended to not mix 500 and 600 series cards.  And as Wim says, the 600 series is the way to go.

hi all,

I did not wade through about all 7 pages of this forum threat, sorry for that, but can someone shine some light on the economics of all this?

PoserPro costs $500 when SM is not in cheap mode ($250 then), Octane+PoserPlugin will cost say $350 and I need another say $150 to ramp up my video cards to make this a worthwhile investment.

Why should I double / tripple the costs of my Poser software? It does not speed up my development time which is at least 80% of the time required anyway, and thanks to queue manager I can render while developing, and also overnight.

What do I miss? Just asking.

Does anyone have advice on a reasonably priced external PCI-E X16 expansion box? The ones I could locate thru Google cost more than a new computer. I only have one slott for the time being, and I don't think I will be buying a new computer anytime this year (my car's transmission just went out).

Thanks!

lmk

Quote - hi all,

I did not wade through about all 7 pages of this forum threat, sorry for that, but can someone shine some light on the economics of all this?

PoserPro costs $500 when SM is not in cheap mode ($250 then), Octane+PoserPlugin will cost say $350 and I need another say $150 to ramp up my video cards to make this a worthwhile investment.

Why should I double / tripple the costs of my Poser software? It does not speed up my development time which is at least 80% of the time required anyway, and thanks to queue manager I can render while developing, and also overnight.

What do I miss? Just asking.

Octane is a high quality unbiased render engine able to produce better pictures in capable hands. So it gives you a more choice in render options

@wimvdb

I understand that, it's the pricing thing.

3DSMax is say $3000, VRay is another $1000 so say $400 (10-15%) for Octane+Max-plugin makes sense especially in a professional environment which have the high end hardware available anyway.

But Poser is say $500 and used mainly in hobbyist environments. That makes me wonder about the economics. $100 (20%) would make some sense, but what is the justification for doubling the costs (or tripling if SM is in 50% mode again). Quality of the result? Faster rendering? For large stills of anymation? What's the market for this, at this pricing level? 3? 300? 30.000?

I still don't get it, moneywise.

Octane itself is not tied to any 3d software package, so the price (199$) has no relation to the Poser market. The Poser plugin is set at 99$ and this is identical to the plugin price for Maya. I think the prices have been set by Otoy.

The price for the additional hardware depends on how much speed and resources you need. I spent over 500$ on a new videocard and felt it was worth the investment.

Is there a market for it at these prices? There are many poser users who spend a lot more money on content every year, so if they think that this render engine will improve their renders, they may find it worth the money. Best thing to do to see if this really worth your money is to download the trial versions and see for yourself.

Compare it with a tool like ZBrush. For some people this tool is invaluable, but for other users Poser's morphing tool is more than enough and think it is overkill at that price.

I did not wade through about all 7 pages of this forum threat, sorry for that, but can someone shine some light on the economics of all this?

The ecomonics all depend on how much your time is worth, and how long you spending working on rendering in Poser.  For many Poser users, we spend days working on a single render - tweaking this, adjusting that....Much of this time is spent waiting for renders to run to see the impact of an adjustment that's been made.  The ability of the Octane plugin to give incredibly quick feedback of the adjustment that's been made means many hours saved per scene.  So the payback (for users like me) is very quick. 

***It does not speed up my development time which is at least 80% of the time required anyway.***For some users, development time is much lower than this.  I can easily spend 2hrs putting a scene together and tweaking in ZB, and then 2 days getting the lighting right and adjusting the skin shaders.