Quote - 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.

Okay, but realize in my case I didn't purchase my computer or video card to be able to use Octane, it's the same computer I was using for Poser+firefly.  So for me, the total cost of implementing Octane was the cost of Octane itself.  My video card gives me very fast render times, but it isn't necessary to have a top notch video card to get very high quality renders from Octane.  My initial post was just to share my enthusiasm for the Octane renderer, not really to focus on the speed of the render.  To me that is just a bonus. 

Quote - Dustrider wrote: 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.

Hey Dustrider, I think you and I have similar experiences.  I was just always so frustrated with lighting in Poser and I never got very good at it (totally my own failing there), but since Octane simulates real light I find it just so much easier and predictable.  I actually have a lot of fun setting up lighting now, and I'm having a blast with Poser again.  I was like you in thinking (basically)... do I really want to spend this much for a renderer?  Now I'm just so glad I did because for me too, it was worth it.

Quote - aeilkema wrote: 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.

Just to be clear, other than the cost of Octane itself you don't have to spend a lot of money.  If you have a Nvidia GeForce 8000 series or higher card you're good to go, although it is optimized for the GTX series of cards, and a CUDA compute 3.0 card would give you more texture slots, etc. (info from Otoy website).

Quote - 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.

Wow, that really isn't my experience at all, I've actually have the opposite experience.  In the vast majority of renders I do I can go from loading the meshes to final render much faster using Octane.  A big part of the reason is that you get instant feedback when you make changes, meaning, the image is rendering in a window in real time and as you make changes they are reflected instantly in the scene.  My experience with materials is much the same as Dustrider's -- now that I understand the basics of the material system it takes me 2 or 3 minutes to make adjustments if I need to. 

Quote - 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 :-)

Well, in my experience, not really.  :-)  Don't get me wrong, I've used Poser for years and years with its built in render engines and loved it.  I just now much prefer rendering within Poser using Octane and, for me at least, I find it faster to set up and easier to use and I like the results a lot more. 

Quote - aeilkema wrote: 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 :-)

I hear you, but these are two very different things.  :-)  I bought Octane because I wanted what for me would be a better renderer that I could use within Poser.  If my goal was to render great landscapes and things, I would buy Vue (and I might at some point, I've been looking at it for a long time). 

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

You're right of course and I totally agree!