Octane.

Mike Amos

OK, lots of talk with not too much in the way of information from the octane team. Demo, non-demo and stuff like exporting should be basic issues for interest but the interested party has to jump through hoops to get such basic knowledge.

For my ten pence worth (allow for inflatio here) they are not taking users of other software seriously, what is the problem? Does it work with sketchup free? Does the exporter work with free? Is the exporter only available when you purchase a license and if so why? Is there any intention of adding funcionality for sketchup free? If this is not the case why do they constantly refer to sketchup and not include the pro part of that title? The point of addressing the graphics card for rendering is interesting but to eliminate so many users from the potential client list would appear to be a bad mistake.

Right now, with my short experience of trying this software, it is not worth the price I have not paid for it and it shows the same disreguard developers of software have had for clients and potential clients the world over. It is past time this was addressed and dealt with. We have money to spend and the developers want that money and WE should be a lot more circumspect over who with and when we spend our money to get the right quality for our dosh.

solo

Yeah, I got an email alert regarding the release of version 1.0, I noticed the lack of SU support so never bothered trying it out.

Rich O Brien

Moved topic to Sketchup Discussions as the Gallery seemed inappropriate

Mike Amos

I suppoes a thread talking about a render program can be moved wherever you want Richard. Are there any octane users here who can explain what the chuff is going on and if the export scripts work, possibly with some idea of the strengths and weaknesses please?
As far as I can tell it does not work with free but their forum is about as informative as a ten week dead frog, spatchcocked of course.

TIG

@mike amos said:

I suppoes a thread talking about a render program can be moved wherever you want Richard. Are there any octane users here who can explain what the chuff is going on and if the export scripts work, possibly with some idea of the strengths and weaknesses please?
As far as I can tell it does not work with free but their forum is about as informative as a ten week dead frog, spatchcocked of course.
To disabuse you...
Octane has a Sketchup Exporter, it works with Pro AND Free, as it has a built-in OBJ-exporter - I know because I wrote it for Refractive Software [the current owner is Otoy]. This exports the SKP as OBJ/MTL/Images and automatically makes/opens the OCS file, and then starts rendering it using the settings you have entered... Alternatively you can make the OBJ by other means [e.g. Pro] but then you don't get the chance to set the camera, resolution, sun/shadows etc to match the SKP, and have to do that within the OCS itself. You can change material settings in the OCS after the initial export - e.g. adding glass transparency, reflectivity etc... There is also an 'animation' option - where you can export a series of scene-tabs [you need to use a tool to add the sequential tabs in the SKP] - as rendered images; this will take a long time for dozens of hi-res renders !I believe that you only get access to the special interest sub-forums on their site when you are licensed... You download the latest versions from there.
It works on PC and MAC.
The more GPU RAM you have the faster it renders [must be a recent NVIDIA Cuda compliant one]...
It was updated this October to allow export/rendering of a selection [useful in instancing] and a few other tweaks...
There are also a number of other Octane+Sketchup tools available for download from there too - e.g. for fixing reversed-faces, exporting scenes' camera and sun-settings etc into a format usable by an OCS file, and a new 'instancing' scripts to allow 'swapping' of components with pasted data sets etc.
There are many renderers around.
Octane was one of the first to use the power of the GPU to render, there are now a few others appearing. It is relatively inexpensive as it was in beta for ages, it's gone to its first 'real' release in recent weeks...

Chris Fullmer

They might consider putting that on their website somewhere. As it is, it does not look like Octane supports anything other than 3dsmax.

jolran

Just wanted to say. I use Octaine with TIG's exporter. Works fine!
Got an gtx 580 as graphiccard.
Strength - You see quite rapidly where you're going in the render. I often use an ambient occlusion "sneeky render" that's very fast and gives good enough results, at least for me. There are different rendermethods to choose between.
And an online database of materials where you can drag and drop from the menu.
So easy setup if you're not a perfectionist.
Also node-based interface, but one doesent have to bother about that if one doesent want to..

Another thing, if you are a paying costumer you will get full access to the whole site with bigger forum where you can get beta and test versions. There's quite some activity going on there. Can't tell how mature the software is yet, compared to for ex Thea.
Octaine requires a good graphiccard.