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While I'm sure a lot of this has been in the works before Redshift started taking off I can see some of these features and the pricing as a direct response to Redshift's success.
Yes Iray shader is more friendly towards Octane than 3Delight was, but you'd still have to work around things and tweak the surfaces, especially the skin shader to give it a nice look. Let's not forget that Octane comes also with Live Database of shaders always at your service to be used with the engine for free, and after a while shaders aren't that much fo a cencern when you get used to it.
As for lights, Octane comes with integrated Daylight settings that are good for environments and has HDRI option and also uses emissive lights imo better than Iray/faster either way than Iray emissives.
Also, RedSpecSSS has fairly well developed skin shading for Daz figures, and they slao have a hair shader that is pretty grateful for working in Daz. Why I weighed towards Octane when Iray took some speed is mostly because I render on my laptop and Iray hogs up in scenes that I would like to use. While yes, Octane has a steap learning curve, it's still one of the best industry engines out there.
And we're also finally getting the celshading/proper toon shader in Octane :) It's all about competition out there, but in the end, that's good for us, end customers.
valzheimer, bluejaunte, and DustRider thank you for the info!
Well going to the link seems to still be in beta phase, so will have to wait also looks like they are setting it up for volta based cards like the Titan V if it has AI support built in to Octane..
It looks quite good, and the free tier and $20 sub is going to be incredibly attractive to a lot of people. Redshift had been gaining quite a lot of popularity, many of whom were Octane users before (myself included), but this is going to be a big step to bringing people back.
I tried Redshift, and initial feeling was amazing, but it has a major flaw that affects anyone trying to render Daz figures - you can't render transmapped hair to any acceptable level of quality. I have been patiently waiting for them to fix that, but if that does not come before Octane 4 public release, i will be sticking to Octane
Yes, it's still in beta, only available to current Octane owners (probably only Octane 3??). Their open beta periods have been fairly fast, I would expect the full version to be available fairly soon. The AI features are designed to work on non-volta cards, they are working on getting everything running on volta now (their AI features are independent of what Nvidia is developing). Hopefully I get a chance to download the beta today and give it a test run. I also need to get newer drivers for my gpu.
Glad to help Kevin!
Like valzheimer noted, there is a bit of a learning curve with Octane, especially the DS plugin (though I didn't find it too bad at all). For Carrara users, the learning curve is pretty modest. The shader system is integrated into the shader room in Carrara, which keeps things quite familiar and easy to understand (no nodes - though as you advance you can use NGE to build your shaders). The Carrara plugin also supports Carrara's dynamic hair, and instancing (but nested instancing not quite as well).
The DS interface is a bit more challenging, but extremely powerful. You can stay away from NGE for the most part for those who are node challenged (or just dislike nodes), so that's not a big worry (see attached DS material editor screen grab below). DS lights don't transfer, but it's very easy to set up your own mesh lights and/or HDRI. Some shaders transfer well, others don't. I typically tweak just about everything, or set up my own shaders. For skin I usually use a specular/glossy mix or diffuse/glossy. Difuse/glossy is what comes from the translation for skin shaders, which can work extremely well as the diffuse node has SSS. Specular/Glossy can give a bit better SSS effect, but takes longer to render. As valzheimer noted, Redspec TGX makes an outstanding shader for DAZ figures (V4 through G8F and M4 to G3M) for those who prefer not to make their own (but it's a skill well worth the time investment). Also as noted before, the LiveDB has a lot of pre-made shaders (some from Otoy, and some generously shared by the user community) that are a great resource as a final shader or a starting point for your own customized shaders. These shaders include a wide variety of substances including skin, velvet, glass, metals, water, cloth, plastics, etc.
You can also export your scene to render in the standalone version of Octane, which will free up your computer to work on other things while rendering. Another feature I really like is the ability to zoom and pan the image in the render view port, it really helps to see progress, and errors quickly (no lag).
I attached a couple of sample renders. The first one is from the DS plugin with the default skin shaders as they came directly from DS, and the "cubes" are a wine shader from the Octane LiveDB, and the lighting is just an HDRI. The second image was done with the Carrara plugin, with a lot of shader tweaking, which is normal for Carrara. Great Carrara shaders will almost always be great Octane shaders, but when using DS/Poser content in Carrara, you almost always have to adjust the shaders, so the same is typically true for Octane. I really like how the Dragon came out (specular/glossy mix) but you need to zoom to full resolution to really see it. The girl (G2F) is also wearing a lot of V4 clothing, which came out pretty good (a lot of old V4/M4 vintage props too).
Octane for DS materials/shader editor
DS/Octane Render - Default skin shaders. Galley Link
Carrara/Octane Render (please zoom to full resolution to see dragon skin details) Gallery Link
DustRider, I'm tempted even more. Thanks for the examples!!
...so the Carrara version uses the Carrara shader room? Sweet. I wish Daz would have built their shader mixer on that concept as I am one of those "node challenged" types due to dyslexia.
Having a standalone, that's nice for those of us without boatloads of memory as we can shut the Daz programme and scene down once its submitted to Octane to free up more system memory for the out of core textures.
This is exciting, but I won't be using Octane again until it can read MDL. I paid the $400 and now I never use the software because the time I'd save on rendering is instead spent on material conversion.
It doesn't translate well, in my opinion.
...not needing an overpriced top of the line GPU card and being able to shut Daz/Carrara and the scene down after sending to the standalone to free up more system resources is a major bonus in favour of Octane over Iray. I've worked with Reality/Lux, which also required converting materials so no stranger to that. The nice part about Octane, I don't have to wait half day or more for a test render complete only to find a surface needs more adjustment.
Why don't you try the demo and see how it performs?
It's actually even better than that. Not only does it use the Carrara shader room, the Octane shader 'surrounds' the native Carrara shader (and pulls info from it). So the same shader works for both Carrara and Octane, and you have the ability to refine the Octane portion of the shader. The Carrara native render will ignore the Octane portion of the shader, and render it normally within the Carrara native engine, while the Octane plugin reads all the info, both Carrara/Octane and renders from both. Once built, you've got one shader that works for both renderers, no need to switch back and forth.
I'm tremendously excited by what I see in the video, Octane was already blazing fast, but the de-noise function makes this into 'blink and you missed it' territory. And apparently it will be a free upgrade? Wow, pinch me, I must be dreaming! I already have Octane and the Carrara plugin, so I wonder if I qualify to try out the beta, and if so where to go to get it... Man this looks like a game-changer :)
Sounds like we need a script that converts Iray to Octane. I'm willing to pay for this. hint hint
Oh there is time as the free version is not out yet. This is going to be a great way to get more customers. The pros will pay for the more than 2 video cards and the hobbiest will limit their renders to 2 cards. The subscription is not something I will do. I pay for what I use and don't like paying rent.
From this post on the Otoy forums, is sounds like as long as MDL is a "black box" from Nvivdia that is designed to support Nvidia GPU rendering, it may not be a top priority, given the fact that they are trying to support more than just Nvidia GPU's in the future.
It would be great to have MDL support, and better materials conversion (I tend to use Octane less than Iray because Iray requires less work too). But I can see from an economic/management point of view why OSL and other GPU support is the priority (OSL having greater industry support, and not being locked to Nvidia GPU's could potentially gain an increased user base .... like Mac users). But once your used to it, shaders setup can be really fast and easy, and Octane doesn't work my system as hard as Iray, so that's another big benefit for me. Of course with the AI Lighting and AI Denoiser features in Octane 4, It could very easily swing the time factor to a big plus for Octane.
Edited to fix the odd formatting at the beginning of the post, sorry for being soooo loud!!
Hey Jonstark!!
To get the beta, just log into the Otoy/Octane forums and go to "Octane Licensed Customer Forums > Development Build Releases > Hello World: OctaneRender 4 is here" (or click this link after logging in). Make sure your video drivers are up to date before trying to run it
I installed it and .... WOW!! I exported the scene with the girl above to ORBX (minus the bikini, so can't show the results), imported to Octane 4, and set to the PMC kernel, AI Lighting enabled, the render took about an hour, compared to 1hr 45min without AI Lighting. I tried AI Denoiser as well, but it doesn't work with PMC yet, so it wasn't clearing up at a decent rate with all of the specular shaders on the cubes (would have been about the same time as the original). Now I need to try something without all the specular materials. But a ~40-45% speed increase with only AI Lighting is pretty impressive!!
I can confirm now that the AI functions are designed to work with Kepler and later cards, so no Volta needed. I've been testing it with a 970M (laptop), and not had and problems yet (other than remembering how to use the stand alone).
..even sweeter.
I only hope, that they will find the time to realize all of their promises.
Octane for Unity does not work in the new releases (2017.3.1).
I have only managed to tests Octane in Unity 2017.0 long time ago,
but I was not impressed with its speed on Nvidia GTX 1080.
Iray in Daz Studio is much faster on that graphic card.
Edit: Octane requires an NVidia card to work.
Maybe the bit where no one in this thread is trying to convince you to use Octane?
lol
Well yes, you may have missed something, like the part where future versions (IIRC Octane 2018 & the RNDR sdk) will have the ability to use just about any GPU (including AMD and integrated GPU chips on the CPU like the Intel integrated HD Graphics processors) and CPU's. So, even though it's not available now, probably some time this year, or possibly next year, Octane will be able to render on just about any hardware you have (they show it running on a phone and a tablet in the video).
This is more about options, rather than trying to convince you, or anyone else to use Octane. In fact, I would recommend that the load/pose/render "I've never touched a shader and never plan too" crowd not use Octane, as currently you need to do a fair amount of shader adjustment to make things look their best. It's not really that hard to do, but it seems like for many people this is something they don't want to do ... ever. But for others, this may be a viable option, especially if it is free (though the DS and Carrara plugins may not be free, since they are done by independent programmers, not Otoy).
Personally, I want something that doesn't tie me to one specific manufacturer for GPU; although, Octane's implementation makes it a little more palatable.
...I'm already sold.
Actually MDL support is still rumored and spoken about, and from the last time I've seen it mentioned Goldorak posted in the forum in December '17 ;) https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=327955#p327955
It sounds like they're going to take the time to do it right instead of building it in a way that might limit their ability to work with non-NVIDIA GPUs in the future.
Wow! Thanks for the info and link, I had completely missed that one. That's great news, hopefully it's not too long before it gets done. It would make working with Octane sooo much easier, and Octane is so much easier and faster on my laptop, I prefer using it when I'm not being lazy.
On the down side, I haven't seen it mentioned in 3.08 or Octane 4 version listings yet, but there's hope for what V4 will eventually bring, I think they just gave us a quick look at what they'll have for sure, V4 is supposedly the reason we are sitting on 3.07 for so long..
By now though I just want to see 3.08 hit the OcDS plugin already and get us moving from 3.07, I so need those celshaders already! haha
Thanks Dustrider! I haven't got it yet, but it's good to know I can, maybe later today I'll put together some time to give it a whirl. Too bad the AI Denoiser isn't available yet, that's the bit in the video that had my jaw on the floor, but if AI Lighting is giving 40+% speed increase that's pretty huge too. :)
Have fun! The AI denoiser is available for the pathtracing kernel, just not the pmc. I'm testing it with the pathtracer now, and it looks like it will give the same quality image in about 1/3 to half the time for the dragon image.