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Haven't looked yet; my first foray into Octane.
...so from what I read, to confrim:
The 20$ subscription includes access to the Standalone engine as well, correct?
The free subscription is the full standalone engine and the only difference from the paid subscription is the 2 GPU maximum, correct?
These are questions I was wondering about.
I kinda experimented with Path tracing notto so much PMC--it does give a glow to the skin but it takes bit longer depending on the size scale of render. Humph--I bought REDSPEC shaders may try using the SSS shaders I have in Octane then as I have a few...been playing with the film response and like the results...
The default is the direct lighting (DL) kernel. But Octane will use the same kernel even when using the final render option in the Octane Render viewport. I'm guessing that maybe your "test" renders are actually using the DS viewport set to Iray?? Otherwise, there is something really going wrong when you use the final render setting (maybe the behavior has changed and the kernel Path Tracing kernel is used in place of DL now, I can't start Octane right now to check because I'm in the middle of a really long Iray render). But, if setting it to final render is the problem, the good news is the final render setting really isn't needed (i.e. it really doesn't improve things). The main advantage of using it is the you can't accidentally do something that will restart the render (basically, it locks the viewport).
A few side notes. First, to compare results between Iray and Octane, you need to use similar materials/shaders, and use the Path Tracing or PMC kernels in Octane. The direct translation of materials/shaders from Iray/3Delight are really just a starting point, it typically won't be perfect, or the best set up . You can get great results with the DL kernel, but it doesn't do any SSS, which is needed for good a good comparison (DL in Iray is similar to Preview mode in Iray). For any materials/shaders that are primarily SSS (specular shader in Octane), or make heavy use of SSS, the PMC Kernel is the best one to use. With the PMC Kernel your samples pes second speed will drop quite a bit, but for materials heavy with SSS, they will resolve much faster (with fewer samples, and less time) than with the Path Tracing kernel.
Hope this helps a bit.
The $20 subscription does include the standalone, I don't know what the free sub will have.
...thank you.
Please let me know if you do get a chance to play with it--it is great engine all things told...
Redspec are really good shaders (don't have them, but I followed their thread on the Octane forums for a long time, it was definitely the best skin shader thread for Octane). Based on what I saw in their thread, I would say that PMC would be the best option when using their shaders, samples per second speed will drop when using PMC, but the image should resolve (converge) faster (i.e. get to an equal image quality in a faster time with fewer samples per pixel). Octane doesn't have anything like Iray in DS that estimates when an image is "done", this subjective estimate is left up to the user (much less "hand holding" with Octane than with DS/Iray). So while PMC will take longer to reach the same number of samples compared to direct lighting, usually the render is at final quality in much fewer samples. Just keep in mind that Octane is designed for use by professionals who need ultimate control, the DS implementation of Iray is designed to make it easy for anyone to use with minimal time/training investment. As a result, just like Rashad already mentioned, to take full advantage of what Octane offers, the user will need to invest quite a bit more time/effort learning Octane than with DS/Iray.
Here are a few Octane Renders, done with the Octane for Carrara plugin. The dragon in the first render, IMHO, has the best shaders I've ever done for the dragon, be sure to zoom to full resolution (there is another dragon image in my gallery done with Iray, but I never quite got the shaders to look as good, though with a bit more work I'm sure I could). Virtually every shader for everything in the scene had to be customized to look good in Octane (in this case, it's because the translation of Poser/DS shaders to Carrara is rather poor - great Carrara shaders transfer quite well to Octane).
The second image is an example of SSS materials in Octane renders using the PMC kernel. The red blocks are pure Octane specular shaders (SSS), IMHO Octane handles these types of materials much better than Iray (faster and better quality/realistic results, especially with light refraction).
The last image is an excellent example of how well Octane does with low light conditions, the only light in the scene is coming from outside the room through the windows (I think this one was done with the DL kernel, so the DL kernel can do skin fairly well, just no SSS). There are more octane (and Iray) images in my gallery if you are interested in seeing more Octane renders, or comparing the results I get with both render engines. In the for what it's worth category, to me for similar things, Octane usually seems much faster, especially for low light and images is a lot of SSS and refraction. But depending on what you are doing, the speed may be offset by the time invested in optimizing your shaders. IMHO Octane also has much better capabilities and options for renders passes, has a much richer tool set, has support for hair (not much help with DS, but useful for Carrara or other software with dynamic hair), and has motion blur (Iray has it, but not via DS).
Both are great renderers, it really comes down to what you need/want.
Oh wow, those are amazing! Have you thought about doing tutorials? Esp on the low lighting spec... I will try out PMC, but is it a might slower than Path tracing? IS there a way to speed it up...?
Wow, thanks for your compliments! I don't think I'm quite good enough to do tutorials, there are a lot of people much better than I am with Octane (Aeon Soul come to mind). I just kind of hack and mess with Octane, and don't use it as much as I used to (but still a great addition to my "toolbox").
If there are SSS/Specular materials in the scene, PMC will always be "slower" in samples per second (or that has been my experience), but speed in samples per second seldom equates to a longer render times (compared to path tracing) because the image will clear up faster. I still can't look at Octane on my computer because of the long render that DS is working on (some less than optimal shaders it the scene - I should have fixed them, but I didn't think the render would take THIS long), but two things that will dramatically improve render speed in Octane (i.e. not samples per second, but the number of samples needed to get a clean image) would be to use the AI De-Noiser and the AI Lights, these will provide a clean image much faster (but image detail clarity will be a bit lower). In my testing using these two new features in Octane 4 would produce a clean image 2/3 to 1/4 the time needed without using them. I would definitely use these if I was rendering an animation, where the fine details aren't needed like they are in still images.
Ah cool, thank you for the info...will most def check that out...
DustrRider great images... the dragon skin is really cool.
SSS is available in Direct Light kernel but you have to reduce the medium scale right down to get any result.
Octane is usually my engine of choice. My preferred option for speed vs quality is Path Tracing. I have no patience so I like a 2 minute render when possible. There are several PT settings you can play with but I find the following improve speed without much loss in quality: Caustic Blur = 1, GI Clamp = 10, Coherent Ratio = 0.5, Path Termination = 1. If using Octane V4, increase AI Sampling Noise Threshold up to 0.1 but this depends on the amount of light in the scene. Here are a couple of skin tests using these settings:
Whoa, that looks amazing. So could you theoretically use the same settings for the PMC for speed, or do they work mostly with Path?
Thank you very much.
Caustic Blur, GI Clamp and Coherent Ratio are available in PMC. They will obviously have some effect but I don't use it much so can't say how much they change things.
Ah okay, thank you...working up a scene and will play around with these settings. Much appreciated.
How long are your render times in Octane?
I have rendered this in Octane 4 on my GTX 1080 and the render is still noisy after 45 minutes and 10000 s/px.
I have a 1070 card-- renders that aren't material heavy render at roughly 30 seconds--some max at 15 minutes...
Ok, thanks. Need to check render settings, then.
A couple of different types of noise I'm observing.
Noisy Materials
This first noise I'm observing appears as if could be a property of the floor/wall material itself, not a render settings issue necessarily. All said I think this will end up needing a few hours to get to full quality for various reasons I'll explain. But firstly I'd suggest taking a look at the material presets for the floor and the vertical walls and see if there is any noise-like element introduced for the Normal, Bump, or Specular nodes. If so try reducing that Power setting to something a little lower. Replace that lost Power with an increase in the Roughness parameter to maintain a similar matte apperance to the floor but while staying below the noise radar. It wont be fully equal, insofar as increased roughness will remove some of the tightness of the specular reflections of the floor when viewed at the proper angles, such as where the floor meets the back wall, the floor gets fairly mirror-like along that stretch. I'm not sure maybe you can find a way to make it work and retain the exact feel while still somehow not going overly reflective nor overly matte.
Reflections can be evil.
Aside from the floor there is still a general graininess to the overall render. Surprisingly I'm not sure how much of that is actually still being driven by the noisiness of the floor itself, and maybe the ceiling if it too wears a similar surfacing. As they say "a single problem can have many symptoms." With scenes heavy in reflective surfaces all visual information including noise is reflected and distributed about the scene literally polluting other surfaces, magnifying the problem. Floors and ceilings occupy huge amounts of real estate in most interiors and contribute a lot to the final lighting solution of enclosed spaces. A noisier than expected floor material and vertical walls and ceiling materials could surely be enough to skew many other otherwise healthy pixels toward noisy end results.
Its also worth noting that you have a lot of light sources in this scene, tiny ones, arranged beautifully, and all around the space. Its quite amazing what you have done. But small tiny light sources are known to increase the statistical likelihood of noise in the final output. Seeing how well you've crafted this illumination you already have to know that something that good is going to cost you. Tracing the rays from each of those tiny little bright lights is certain to melt any render engine, including Octane in terms of noise. The denoiser could be very useful here, Have you initiated that yet?
This is where HDRI can really be helpful. If you were able to capture the render from a 360 degree panorama, with everything in place aside from the target character, you could create an HDRI of the environment and simply use a shadowe catcher to replace your target character into the scene. The main benefit here, is that the likelihood of noise is reduced, even though there are still technically the same number of tiny light sources as in the fully 3d version. The difference is that rays will not encounter any obstructions from geometry other than the single target object, increasing the likelyhood that all pixels will have acces to all light sources within just the first few bounces. I stray.
Anyhow beautiful scene, really amazing in my view!!!
+1
If you didn't enable AI lights, that might also help combined with Rashad's excellent suggestions.
This why the CG community rocks--great advice. And it is a killer image.
Thanks a lot for the excellent tips, Rashad and DustRider.
Noteworthy suggestion as well. :-)
Hey, once you play around a bit, hit us back and let us see/know the results...
I did not enabled AI lights and has tried Path Tracing kernel,
but the time to render is still too long for me (45 minutes or more).
I think, I will practice on the less complicated scene, first,
to get the overall feeling about, how different kernels and settings affect rendering time and quality
of the renders (noise or the other artefacts).
This scene was rendered in 7 minutes.
https://www.daz3d.com/spaceship-antares
https://www.daz3d.com/dominator
i have not been using Octane actively for a while, but i think only extremely heavy scenes require that many samples normally. I would certainly try the AI lights, and also adaptive sampling if you are not already.
The difference between the two scenes you posted, one has far more lighting and plenty of specular reflections. From memory specular reflections could always be tricky in octane, especially when there are light sources in the scene having to travel through glass-like materials like windows. If any of your lights fit that description, try removing the glass to see the difference. I would also change the material of that floor, make it more diffuse with less/no specular/reflection to see if that cleans up faster. Then troubleshoot from there
Very nice...
Indeed, I find specular is the beast we all have to wrestle with in render engignes. I have tried all manner of things to correct this, indlcuiing brightening scenes and/or lowering specular on some items or adding low spec shaders--some times helps but not by much. Can only hope one day they figure outa quick fix for the spec/noise issue....
It is more evident in unbiased renderers than biased ones, or more difficult to manage at the very least. One of the reasons i prefer Redshift over Octane