hi,

after some experiences with Octane demo under PoserPro 2012, I've got some additional questions. Inputs are welcome.

1. according to the otoy website, OctaneRender for Poserpro 2014 requires version 1.13u of the (demo) plugin. Is this version already available? How can I tell a version before installing? All files in the zip downloaded from otoy today are from year 2012, nothing newer. Do they work in PoserPro 2014?

2. what video-cards are recommended? I consider upgrading from my 560Ti (1Gb/384 cudas) to a nVidia 690, 780, 790 (=dual 780, expected Q3) or a Titan (6Gb/2700 cudas). I tend to prefer the last one. 

thanks

1. according to the otoy website, OctaneRender for Poserpro 2014 requires version 1.13u of the (demo) plugin. Is this version already available? How can I tell a version before installing? All files in the zip downloaded from otoy today are from year 2012, nothing newer. Do they work in PoserPro 2014?

The demo verision of the Poser plugin is very very old and out of date, and it's something I need to address in the next few days.  It will /probably/ work on Poser Pro 2014.  If you would like to try the latest demo, pls email me (paul at physicalc-software dot com) and I will send you a link.

2. what video-cards are recommended? I consider upgrading from my 560Ti (1Gb/384 cudas) to a nVidia 690, 780, 790 (=dual 780, expected Q3) or a Titan (6Gb/2700 cudas). I tend to prefer the last one.

There are a number of threads on the Otoy forums about the cards you listed above.  The Titan is favoured at the moment, since it uses less power, and is quieter than the 600 series.   I'd personally not go with the 690, since it is 2 cards put together, so you get 1/2 the RAM.  Not sure anyone has tested the 780/790's yet.  At a guess, I'd say the Titan will be around 4-5 times quicker than the 560Ti. 

Paul

The Octane demo I (re-)downloaded yesterday from the otoy site works decently in PPro2014, but probably will not address all its (new) features.  

I agree on the video-cards, the 690 (and 790 later this year) are just ways to crank FOUR 680’s / 780’s in a machine with just TWO dual-width PCI-16 slots available, and will put a drain on power and noise as well. Titan or even a 780 (70% of the price, 50% of the Vram) should do for Poser, more becomes handy when Vue rendering goes GPU as well (which seems a challenge to get the massive ecosystems into the limited amount of Vram)

just to refrase my question on the video cards:

the discriminator for a final decision seems to be the amount of VRAM (3Gb effectively in the 780/790 line, 6Gb in the Titan line). Is anyone facing the limits of 3Gb VRAM using Poser / Octane and advocating 6Gb instead? As for the same amount of money I've got to trade VRAM vs CUDAS (performance), or: single Titan vs double 780 (or a 790).

My scenes present a limited (up till 5, max till 10) amount of characters, in indoor / patio like environments, serious quality texturing and I'm doing animations (HD 200 sec music video) as well as print-size (say 5000 pixel wide) stills.

Opinions are very welcome.

is the demo full functioning?

the discriminator for a final decision seems to be the amount of VRAM (3Gb effectively in the 780/790 line, 6Gb in the Titan line). Is anyone facing the limits of 3Gb VRAM using Poser / Octane and advocating 6Gb instead? As for the same amount of money I've got to trade VRAM vs CUDAS (performance), or: single Titan vs double 780 (or a 790).

I would say that over 99% of Poser scenes are going to fit in 3GB.  And those that don't, you can use the texture compression script supplied with the plugin to reduces the memory requirement.  3Gb is a massive amount of memory to fill with polygons and texturemaps.  The texturemaps slots would be a bigger limiting factor - but with the 600 series you get 144 RGB and 68 grayscale, which is a lot!

is the demo full functioning?

It is limited in resolution (1000 x 600 from memory), and you cannot save, which means no rendering animations too (since that involves saving each frame).  And you cannot access the material database.  But it still gives you an excellent idea of the capabilities of the plugin, and how well it will run on your card.  I've just packaged up the latest demo version, so email me at the address above and I will send you a pre-release.

Paul

Number of texture slots is usually the limiting factor for poser scenes. Some props use a very large number of textures and you may run into that limit. You can partially overcome that limit by hiding out of view props or by applying different octane materials in the plugin (does not replace the poser materials)

3GB is usually enough for most scenes (I have a GTX680 with 4GB and have never ran out of VRAM). I would go to the higher VRAM versions to compensate for large output sizes.