aeilkema wrote: "We can go around and around with this, but for the money you've spent on your laptop or a gtx titan 6Gb and on top of the license for Octane, you can buy some extreme cpu's as well. OK, I may not get a render in 2 minutes, but I sure get a lot closer to it."

Yes, we certainly could go round and round. I'm not saying anyone should use Octane, or any other renderer. I'm just trying to share what I know, and present it in a manner that allows the user to make their own informed decision. One quick look at my gallery here will tell you a couple of things. 1) that I'm pretty much program and renderer agnostic, and 2) what someone with my level of skill, which isn't all that great, can do with different software and render engines.

As for cost, yes, getting Octane and the Poser plugin isn't cheap now, $450-$500 US. But getting a great video card to use with it doesn’t have to break the bank. You can get one that will blow doors off of mine for around $225.00 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130911).

My GPU has 336 Cuda cores. The GTX 660 I linked to above has 980 cuda cores.

So, for the same $700 you could get what, maybe 1.5-2 low end computers that could be used for your render farm (and you might have 12 physical cores)? You also need the space for those computers and to maintain them. For $1500 (GTX Titan + Octane) you could get maybe 3-4 good computers for your render farm. This is personal preference of course, but I would rather take care of one computer than several (plus the wife wouldn't be happy at all with all the extra computers).

It's all a matter of choice, and what works best for you.

aeilkema wrote: "We're comparing avarage computers with top computers now. For that kind of money I can sure get some CPU power for Firefly as well.

Anyway, that's not my point at all. I've got a nice i7 for rendering. It's fast, special build for rendering, but it sure didn't cost $$$ at all. For the kind of money you need to spent on getting octane quality and speed, I can learn to use Firefly as well and spent that kind of cash on lot's of cool stuff.

Exactly, it's all a matter of choice, and what is best for one's own personal preferences, needs, and available funds. Though an “average” computer with a GTX 600 wouldn’t be extremely expensive. I can echo mrp2284 comments about using Octane - I haven't had this much fun in years! I truly enjoy the instant feedback to changes in lighting and materials I get with Octane. Three weeks ago, like you, I was in the "for that price, I can afford to wait for my renders" camp. I made the fatal mistake of giving the demo a test run, and I was immediately convinced I was wrong. Your mileage may vary, but for me it is worth it.

***aeilkema wrote: "*The images posted from Octane look great, but so do lot's of Firefly images. 15 minutes render time doesn't impress me, I can get that with my computer as well. 2-5 minutes does impress me, but not when I do see the price tag and the images. I can get that from Firefly easily and for that kind of money, I'm prepared to wait a little longer for my image to finish."

Again, it all comes down to personal experience and preference. You can get images your happy with in 15 min. out of Poser, I can't. That doesn’t mean FireFly isn’t capable of producing drop dead gorgeous renders (or in my case, renders I’m happy with), but my final renders with Poser always take hours, rather than minutes like with Octane. Maybe you could post one of your 15 min. renders to this thread so others can have a base line to work from and see what an accomplished Poser user can do, which I’ll admit, I am not (maybe a Vue render for comparison too).

I'm really impressed with the results and speed TrekkieGrrl is getting from Lux, I certainly haven't been able to do that yet. Her 20 Min. image is pretty amazing! I wonder what she could do with Octane, 30 second renders? Pretty much the same principles apply with either program (one of the advantages to unbiased renderers).

aeilkema wrote: "But.... and we all know this but.... if you want to set up your Poser images for rendering with Octane you need time, a lot more time then when setting up your image for rendering with Firefly. We all know that. In the end what you gain in rendering time, you loose in getting your Poser scene ready for Octane. In the end it may render a lot faster, but you've lost time also, so it isn't really faster at all. Yes, it renders faster (if you have the $$$ worth gfx card), but that's only part of the story.... as we all can read from this thread and learned from experience. Rendering time is only part of the story."

I obviously wasn't very clear on how much work was done with the image I posted (actually both images I posted in this thread - not the gallery link). I didn't edit any of the materials. These were straight "out of the box" renders. Load, pose, set the lighting/intensity/rotation (an HDR), hit open viewport (render), adjust the camera values for proper exposer (this can be done interactively while the image is rendering), and it's done. Once you learn the materials system, it takes maybe 2-3 minutes to adjust the mats in simple scenes.

In my experience, unless I'm using lights provided with a given product, and nothing else in the scene other than that product, I almost always have to adjust some material settings in Poser. So for me, the notion that I'm losing render time setting up the scene in Octane doesn't hold true. Again, your mileage may vary.

aeilkema wrote: "So, it's even, doesn't matter where you render with, a project will still take about the same time from start to finish, but yours cost a lot more then mine :-) You could have bought Vue Esprit (or better) instead and saved yourself a lot of money and pump out some awesome looking images as well and gain a lot more then caustics or architectural glass along the way :-)"

Again, that all depends on the user, and what version of Vue they get. Esprit at $199.00 isn't all that much less than the Octane and the Poser plugin. If you go to Vue Complete at $599, you’re spending more than Octane. Of course you do get a simply awesome landscape creation and rendering program, but your renders won't be any faster than in Poser. Plus, you have the extra overhead of learning to use another full 3D program, material system, and renderer. You will also need to adjust your materials in Vue, just like with Octane.

I have Vue Studio, and the learning curve compared to Octane is extremely steep. Vue has a really great renderer  (though somewhat slow), is a super awesome landscape program, and is a good alternative to Posers FireFly. But, IMHO, unless you want some of the specific features found in Vue, given some of the other available alternatives, it wouldn't be my first choice.

aeilkema wrote: "Let each render in what he/she wants to render in and what works best for for you!"

I couldn't agree more!

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