Oh yea. Octane for Carrara
1MoreThreadDeleted
Posts: 56
Here is the announcement of the preveiw.
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=36332
Cheers.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Octane rocks.
It's great for carrara's futur that integrated plug-ins are being developed.
Looks already great.
I hope it will support Carrara hair...
Edit:
But the price :gulp:
BTW: there is already a beta for Studio: http://render.otoy.com/shop/DAZ_Studio_plugin.php
This looks great, no doubt about it, and I like the way it's going to be configured to work with Carrara sunlight/skylight and replicators naturally.
I don't have a computer that can run Octane yet though. Better start saving... :)
Works with NVIDIA GPUs. That's OK for an iMac; wonder how much an improvement it will make over just the CPU as it is now?
However, I was considering moving up to a MacPro with 6 or even 8 cores, but they come with AMD FirePro GPUs. Are there any redner apps that will work on those?
This is great news! Good progress already being made. You can see the speed of render in the video, orders of magnitude faster than Luxrender! I doubt that Carrara hair will supported, at least not initially.
This is amazing news! I'm very happy and will surely buy it.
I find myself with Carrara in competition with high end renders of other packages. With Octane pluign it I'll be able to cope, while keeping the process easy.
very impressive stuff
Did you see that guys gear? Holly cow a Titan and a 580 in the machine. Drool. I can only wish.
Explains why my renders with Octane Render demo are not as fast! Still fast though...
► How to Build Your Own Carrara Workstation is a short article that I wrote to help you on your way to building your own Carrara powerhouse without loosing the bank. It was written, however, under the compromise that Carrara doesn't really require a top-notch graphics card. I built my whole 8 core (8 physical cores) rig for less than the price of these robust, killer graphics cards. I was planning on building another and using my current one as a Render node. But perhaps I'll spend that coin on Octane instead. Then, when I can, upgrade my graphics card to some real Octane horsepower!
On that note, aside from the cost savings, I really enjoy building my own rigs. Since I've started doing that I've noticed that, shy of going to a company that specializes in building custom workstations, it's really hard-to-impossible to find a tower that contains all of the hardware I really want. When it comes to custom workstations, it seems that we can get great value from these places. Furthermore, if you don't like a bit of troubleshooting and the research that goes into building ones own, not enough good things can be said about a company that offers support for what they sell. Work Station Specialists is one place that I have found that offers flexible and super-powerful builds, many based upon having two multi-core cpu of the higher grade 'server-class' which automatically jumps the price up - even if you build your own. I started looking into server class components before I built this one. The thing is that I wouldn't be able to afford it, even if I was still saving up for it. Additionally, as I started to compile a list of needed components, the quote that I got from Work Station Specialists was looking better and better as I completed my theoretical build.
All in all I ended up building a PC (as opposed to a server-class work station) for less than a grand that included a decent, but much lower cost graphics solution that should still pound out some Octane goodness, 16 GB fairly high end RAM with heat sinks, Eight core processor at 3.1GHz installed on a Military Spec motherboard (Better, higher end capacitors, much higher quality control, etc.,) built into a tower that I splurged a little extra on for supreme cooling without scaring myself half-to-death with liquid cooling. There were many more yummy things included, but these were the primary concern at the time - and it is a very nice Carrara machine! Very nice!
I can hardly wait to see how my out-dated Fermi-class graphics card holds up to it. The thing that I've always done with graphics, being always on a tighter-than-tight budget, is to get higher end stuff from yesterday. The current stuff has always been so freaking high priced and I remember how awesome the reports were on these older models when they were the new shiny goods! I've always wondered what makes those pro-grade, work station-class cards so much more expensive than the rest, and wanted to test them next to others to see if the cost difference is truly worthwhile. From some of the experiences I've read... they truly are.
Nonetheless,
This is great news! The fact that Carrara is part of their development cycle should speak fairly highly of Carrara all in itself.
Now to go read up on Octane a bit ;)
If you've never used Octane, it is worth getting the free demo version and also maybe the Poser demo version, just to see how it plays with your machine. I managed to make my laptop switch itself off, probably through overheating, while playing with it earlier today!
Good plan.
I bet I'll be alright with my Carrara machine. But a test never hurts. Well... okay. Sometimes they can :(
It would hurt less than shelling out $200+ and then finding that it didn't work!
Wise words Phil. Yes thing about GPU renderers is that --- well it uses the GPU to render. It uses all its power for however long the render last. So over cooking your GPU is a real issue . Make sure your case is clean, your fans are clean especially on the graphics. As far as Octane being able to be used for Carrara that is good news. Very good news indeed.
rich
Also, make sure your video card's driver's are up to date. The auto update checker I've found for Nvidia drivers doesn't ;;ways let you know if an updated version is out. Plus, when I've had Octane in the past after updating to a latter build not work till the drivers were updated.
Same for CPU. It cranks up to 100% and fairly soon the fans start whirring and it is a real concert until done. Bacon!
Is there some way to lower the tax on the machine other than sending multiple jobs for a limited frame range (I work with animation more than individual heavy images)? How about the render engine pauses every few steps?
Same for CPU. It cranks up to 100% and fairly soon the fans start whirring and it is a real concert until done. Bacon!
Is there some way to lower the tax on the machine other than sending multiple jobs for a limited frame range (I work with animation more than individual heavy images)? How about the render engine pauses every few steps?
Hey guys, modern hardware should be able to handle 100% utilization just fine. All you need to do is make sure you offload the heat. Start with a good case with big, slow-moving fans. Personally, I like using water to cool my CPU because it's quiet. I also buy GPUs with big heatsinks, lots of heatpipes, and two or three sizable fans. Be sure to use your GPU, CPU, or motherboard's monitoring and fan-control software so that you don't cook your components.
There is nothing to fear if you use common sense, overbuild your cooling system, and monitor and adjust as you go.
MMMmmmm.... I like that its going to support a good majority of carrara features right out of the box, and natively works with Carrara's shader system, at least from what it looks like, without having to specially re-designate shaders like one has to for the Lux render plugin for some or certain materials.
I would also hope this means it might support Carrara's procedural shaders since thats one of my most favorite parts of Carrara. I really don't like being constrained and limited to only solid colors or texture maps. I too hope it would support Carrara dynamic hair, as well as the other tools like fire, smoke, fog, clouds, etc.
I was looking at building a new workstation sometime in the new year, possibly dual xeons, for some serious cpu rendering power to replace my still faithful Q6600 2.4ghz Quad core from 2007. Its going to take some serious cash for what is a favorite hobby of mine but then again, people spend easily more money in the range of $6,000 - $12,000 on atv's (quads) and snowmobiles and the like for recreational entertainment so its really a matter of perspective on what "recreational entertainment" is worth to you.
But now seeing this thread with regards to Octane a native plugin renderer for Carrara, using pure GPU performance, hmmm... Its going to make me re-think my build plan, There is the nvidia Titan, as well as the Tessla GPU Cuda cards, and lets not forget the Intel Phi cards...
I think it would be worthwhile to do a bit more researching on what type of rendering performance Octane would get from said types of GPU hardware.
Btw, Dartanbeck , thats a really awesome site you mentioned - Workstation Specialists. If you look at their various Workstation builds, you can goto their configuration screen and see what there is for component choices, there is also a required software selection field to tell them what is your main purposes for the workstation build. To my surprise, not only is Octane in their software list, but also the usual render & modeling suites such as Vue, 3ds Max, Lightwave, and even Carrara by Daz3d!!!
Looking at Octane's site, yeah even the plugin price for Poser or Daz Studio is a bit pricey, still, the majority of Octane renders i've seen on DeviantArt , Octane is jaw-dropping phenominal in the photorealistic quality department.
At any rate, my interest is certainly piqued!
About Work Station Specialists, they sent me a fairly reasonable quote, considering the machine I spec'ed out... What's really cool is that you can get all of the components you're looking for with them - and that they're already using them in their specs - which you can change. They're great and will do anything you want them to.
Aside from being really nice looking renders, isn't Octane the one that is notably super fast, too?
Oh yes --I was not trying to scare folks off ---cpu's and gpu's and made to run and run continuosly (with proper fan cooling) ---I have had some renders I did with Vue trying to do some cloud animation going for more than 2 weeks continuously. But -- thats from a custom build where I have 3 large case fans.
I was just trying to bring to folks attention --if you have not poked around in the case for a while ---give it a check---remove all the dust if any and make sure all the fans work and are clean-----if so yes you should be good to render. But I have seen some off the shelf cases from big names that are under ventilated and somewhat cramped for air--so if you built your own you know what to do and what you need.....just saying for folks buying from brick and mortar stores some of those computers may not be so ready for a taxing render.
rich
Very nice to see Simon making the plugin after reading for so long that it would be done later or even couldn't be done for Carrara!
For Carrara hair, it may be a long time coming in Octane as so far, of all the new hair systems, only the ones that export an OBJ work. But the traditional hair used in Poser and DAZ Studio does work and if the textures and transmaps are done right, looks pretty good. Someone has suggested a combination of those with OBJ fly away strands to make more convincing hair in Octane and it can be easier on the graphics card.
Yup Dartanbeck , your right, Octane is super fast too :)
As for video cards I do the exact same thing, pickup last year's flagship card. When I built this Q6600 rig in 2007, I didn't add the nvidia 8800GT until a year or two later, and still using it today.
I'll probably build my own workstation tho, I've got a CoolerMaster CM Stacker 810 case, its pretty much a grand tower case in the full towercase category with 12x 5 1/4" drive bays in the front , supports eatx form factor, accommodating 3 or 4 120mm fans in the front, 2x 12mm fans in the rear, 1x 12mm on the side panel and with a bit of creative work it could fit a 160mm case fan...
Doing all the component research and leg work and finally having the components arrive and putting it all together by hand is half the fun. I still like that Workstation Specialist site, its a good reference checklist of what sort of hardware to look at.
One thing that would be nice is the near instant preview Octane offers. I'm used to waiting for carrara chew 10+minutes on the prep calculations and thats with using a pre-saved irradiance map from earlier, then a good 6-24hrs plus to finish a render on best quality.
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, Octane is definitely worth a serious look. You would probably be happier with the more recent Kepler based cards than the older Fermi cards simply because they can handle more texture maps (144 color maps compared to 64). I have a Geforce 670M with 3Gb RAM in my laptop (think 560 in a desktop - Fermi based), 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 at Rendo) took 70 hours to render in Lux - plus my system didn't get as hot as it does when rendering with Lux or Carrara.
The Carrara plugin looks really good so far. Of course the other real issue besides a good graphics card, is the cost (about $450 for the Octane/Poser plugin - less for the Osctane/DS plugin bundle though).
If your interested in Octane, I definitely echo Phil' recommendation for testing the demo version of Octane and the demo of the Poser plugin. The results were so impressive for me that I'm seriously considering taking the plunge. It's really not to hard to see the value of getting lightning fast renders into your workflow (well maybe not lightning fast, but amazingly fast for sure).
If your simply looking for better renders, then I don't think Octane really fits the bill, you would be better off learning how to get the most out of Carrara's native renderer, which is still quite good. If you tend to make "Epic" scenes, then Octane probably isn't for you either due to the GPU resource constraints. But if your looking for vastly improved speed with reflections, glass, water, trans-mapped hair, etc., and small to moderate scene size/complexity, then Octane could be a great fit. I'm certainly more enthused about it than I was a couple of days ago.
Another advantage is that a scene preview is generated in seconds, so you can adjust textures and lighting to perfection rather than having a cycle of adjust / render / adjust / render. I'm sure we have all done renders where there were one or two elements which we thought weren't quite right, but couldn't face hours of re-rendering to correct it. Having such immediate feedback makes fine tuning a joy!
Yes ---the Octane plunge as it were is not without some investment. Better Graphic card(s) maybe better power supply etc. but what you are saving is time. I do not know about you guys but one very limiting thing I have is time --so saving it is very alluring indeed. Especially doing animations although I was not so sure how easy doing animations is in Octane. Anyone to comment on experiences?
And another thing we are seeing is that slowly GPU's because of certain game developments ( not so much GPU renderers )are pushing up GPU onboard ram specifications. So in time we should see cheaper cards with more VRAM which will really help GPU renderers like Octane.
So I think that the hardware will slowly become cheaper to use for Octane and that will make using it all the better. In any case ---its just great to see they have decided to work on a Carrara plugin. It gives folks choices .
Maybe as we get some more users of Octane a few folks could post some helpful quick hints to make it easier to try out. The more people who try the more will buy and use --and that would speak well to the developer of continued and increased support.
1st I must confess that it was NOT me that made this discovery! All credit for bringing this to light goes to Stealthworks (over at the Otoy forum) and of course, Carrara Cafe :D
I just wanted to help spread the word so everyone jumps on this & gives Simon the support and encouragement he may need ;)
Heres more info:
http://carraracafe.com/preview-of-octane-render-for-carrara/#comment-327
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=4008&p=158253#p158253
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAEL34eYv2k
DARN...
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/31201/
Seems its old news to most of you LOL, posted out of pure excitment :)
Would appear that Rich Gelles & Muphasa are owed credit for bringing this to our attention also, Thanks :)
Just goes to show that a mouse has a SCROLL WHEEL for a reason!
DOH! (Slaps self in the face with a wet fish & sends himself to his room)..
Oh well... I may feel a fool, But, at least I am a happy one :D
Merging threads
Thanks chohole ;)
Seems it was ME who was late to the party!
LOl :P
While I am NO pro (a simple hobbyiest is all I am)..
I have been using Octane Render for quite some time now, I love it :D
I am & have been involved in some of the plugin Beta/Alpha tests (open & closed) and have learnt a lot from interacting over at the Otoy forums :D
I have various Octane Render plugins (see my sig info for details) and find them ALL to be great plugins/scripts that benefit my 'play time' :)
I dont claim to know a great deal (in fact there is still a lot for me to learn!) but from feedback given my input has been well recieved.
On the animation side of things, I have mainly used OcDS (DS plugin) and the Blender script by yoyoz (found here: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=21412) But, now there is an intergrated version (found here: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=36334) for PC & Linux.
Gerad (t_3) has done an amazing job on OcDs, (Here:http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=44) my primary rendering choice for animation with Ds. He works very hard on his plugin indeed :D
Lionels script (yoyoz) might not be in development any more, have not checked for a while. But seeing as there is now an intergrated version (By JimStar in Otoy forum) this is not too much of a problem if you can buy the intergrated version. Lionels script was/ is excellent BUT due to having to load each frame in to the stand alone version of Octane Render and then back to blender it was very time consuming/slow to work on animations with regards to rendering speed. You lost a lot of time 'going in & out' having to use the stand alone verison. jimstars clearly avoids this problem :D
Paul (Face_off) also released a plugin for Octane Render (http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=33672) for Poser 9 & 2012/14. While I have used it quite a bit, I have not used it as much as the others. BUT, this is NOT a judgment on Pauls work! He also has done a fantastic job with his plugin. For me (if i am honest) I hardly use poser compaired to the other programs, thats the ONLY reason, Paul has done a fantastic job too.
I wish Simon all the best with his plugin for Carrara as this is the cherry on the cake for me :D
Having Octane Render in Carrara is a big game changer in my eyes (with regards to my own work flow) but this does not mean I will use any of my other programs/plugins more or less, it just means I have a greater tool set to work with. I feel that Carrara is feature rich and the addition of OR in Carrara would really unleash the creative beast inside me :P
With all the plugins/scripts mentioned, I have found that if you set up your scene and get the lighting right, you dont need trillions of samples to achieve a result that you can be happy with.
Just a little input from little old me.. hope you dont mind me throwing my cards on the table!
:D