For anyone who hasn't seen the post by Muphasa over in the DAZ Carrara forums - development of the Carrara plugin for Octane Render is underway. More information can be found here:

http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=36332

I downloaded the Demo version of Octane and the demo Poser plugin today and all I can say is WOW!!!. I tried the last two Poser scenes that I did with Reality/Lux, and was easily getting results that would take 12-70 hours with Lux in less than 30 min. (yes, that's right, 70 hrs.) 

If you can live within the texture map and RAM constraints of your video card (Nvidia only), Octane is definitely worth a serious look!!! I have a Geforce 670M with 3Gb RAM in my laptop (think 560 in a desktop), and I was able the render and image with StoneMason's Castle in it with over 2Gb left over (but it did exceed the 32 gray scale map limit) with fantastic results in about 30 min. The same image (Castle Mage in my Gallery here) took 70 hours to render in Lux - plus my system didn't get as hot as it does when rendering with Lux.

The Carrara plugin looks quite nice so far. Of course the other real issue besides a good graphics card, is the cost (about $450 for the Octane/Poser plugin). But, if your using software that is truely aimed at the professional market like Octane, you really have to expect higher prices than what we typically pay for Carrara and related plugins (not that they aren't good, but it's what the market "expects").

If your interested in Octane, I'd definitely recommend testing the Demo version and the demo of the Poser plugin if you can. The results are so impressive that I'm seriously considering taking the plunge. It's really not to hard to see the value of getting lighning fast renders in your workflow (well maybe not lightning fast, but amazingly fast for sure). 

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