ORAC - Praise to Sighman

Philemo_Carrara

Since Wendy convinced me to buy Octane render plugin for Carrara, I've been playing quite a lot with it.

I would like here to express my admiration for the work of Sighman, the author of this plugin.

This plugin is just outstanding. I've never seen a so complete integration of an external product into Carrara.

It doesn't crash that much  and everything fell in place very naturally. I was a bit dubious about a $200 plugin (without Octane licence, just the plugin), but it's worth every cent. The programming effort and the testing (knowing a bit about Carrara SDK) must have been enormous. And it shows. Add to that the quality of Octane render itself and you just have something marvelous.

Integration is incredible. For instance (and it's just an example), when you pick a material in the Octane view, the plugin open the shader room and display the shader. Translation of Carrara shader is really great what render nicely in Carrara native renderer renders also nicely in Octane (and crap stays crap, no miracle there ).

So, Sighman, I tell you, you are a great programmer and I thank you for what you did.

 

 

Dartanbeck

Wow. That's quite the thing, you've just said. You may very well have just sold me the plugin and engine as well - once I garner the funds, that is! 

I've read people praise it before, but somehow what you've just said (combined with some words recently spoken by jonstark) makes a person feel a lot more comfortable about the whole thing.

DustRider

Agreed!! It's one of those things that you need to experience to fully appreciate. I had several crashes with Carrara working on the Challenge entries, but they were Carrara issues, not caused by the plugin (seems that using undo for some poses with Genesis figures causes Carrara to freak out). The integration into the Carrara UI is amazing for such a complex bit of software, and IMHO extends the capabilities of Carrara quite a bit. For anyone who uses Carrara as their primary tool, IMHO OR4C is a must have.

Sigman did an outstanding job with the plugin, and the integration to the host software is better than either the DS or Poser plugings (and the Poser plugin is extremely good too, but not as good - the DS plugin is OK, but a bit unstable at times). It has completely changed my experience, and the quality of my work with Carrara. It's sad that DAZ has apparently moth balled Carrara, but the Octane Render plugin breathes new life into Carrara. You hear a lot of praise for Iray elsewhere on these forums, and it's well deserved because Iray is a great renderer. But Octane is much better than Iray. You also hear a lot of complaining about not having enough video memory to render scenes with Iray. This isn't an issue with Octane, since it can use all of the RAM on your computer to render your scene, not just the video card RAM. This means you can use less expensive cards for Octane to render huge scenes, so if you need more speed just use more inexpensive cards. That's not the only place where Octane outshines Iray, there are many other features that Iray simply doesn't have (and why I have the DS plugin as well). As Philemo noted, if you have shaders that render well in Carrara, they will render well in Octane without conversion (except for skin shaders that use the emission trick to simulate SSS). Another plus is you can have both Carrara internal renderer shaders and Octane shaders in the same material. This means that you can set up your scene, and have both render engines with specific optimized shaders available.

IMHO, If your serious about Carrara, then you really need to seriously consider the Octane plugin (unless you primarily do NPR renders). It's quite an investment, but well worth it (give the demo a serious try first, I think you would be amazed at what it can do). There are still times that I prefer or need to use Carrara's render engine, but that is seldom the case.

Jonstark

It was probably the most expensive purchase I ever made for this particular hobby, but at the same time I have had zero buyer's remorse ever and consider it well worth the price of admission.  Integration is superb.  The genius of having the Carrara shader nested inside an Octane shader, so that we can create and save one master shader that will be read differently by both render engines is just inspired, means once I've created a shader for a character that is optimized for both engines, I can load it anytime and render in both Octane and Carrara native.  And because the camera for Octane is the same as in Carrara native, I can easily render the same exact scene in both engines to combine in post, so if I want the quality of an Octane render but also want to preserve the nifty lighting effects of the Carrara render, simply do 2 renders (at the same time if I want) and with maybe a multipass got lots of options for bringing out the best of both approaches to the final result.  I don't often see Sighman appear here in the forums, but his ongoing work on the plugin is terrific.  I especially like that the Octane plugin can see and render Carrara hair, for example.

Just recently I've been hobbying a bit more with the Carrara native engine, just learning more and refining different approaches, but that doesn't diminish my love for Octane one bit.  I do wish it was less expensive, not because I regret the money I paid for it (worth every penny) but simply so that even more of my fellow Carrarists could easily add this awesome plugin to their toolset.  :)

Headwax

thanks for all that = now where is my wallet :) ?

 

de3an

Macintosh version?

Headwax

err I found my wallet but am I reading this right? That it will be $579? (760 Aus$)

 from their site

 

============================================================

 

OctaneRender™ for Carrara®

 

Important! OctaneRender™ for Carrara® requires an OctaneRender™ Standalone Edition license to function. If you do not already own a Standalone Edition license then make sure to choose “OctaneRender™ for Carrara® + Standalone Combo License” below.

OctaneRender™ for Carrara® is available for:

• Carrara® 8.1 Pro or later
• Microsoft® Windows® 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 (64bit)

For more information please see the plugin manual.

OctaneRender™ for Carrara® + Standalone Combo License

($579)

OctaneRender™ for Carrara® License

($199)

OctaneRender™ for Carrara® License 3-pack

($559)

OctaneRender™ for Carrara® License 5-pack

($919)

OctaneRender™ for Carrara® License 10-pack

($1,799)

WendyLuvsCatz

yes pricey but I never regretted it

saved on all those Carrara upgrades we never had 

Headwax

thanks Wendy, yes that's a way of thinking about it

can you do NPR with it - any advantage in that direction?

WendyLuvsCatz

head wax said:

thanks Wendy, yes that's a way of thinking about it

can you do NPR with it - any advantage in that direction?

well if info channels counts you can get pretty cool effects using the Ambient Occlusion pass etc

but otherwise no, it's an unbiased renderer

Headwax

thanks Wendy, I did my maths, I'd only have to go without beer for two nights... don't know if I can manage....:)

PhilW

Just to add to the praise for Sighman - he did an outstanding job, and continues to support it and release new versions, without charging once for any upgrades (so far!). Whenever you have an issue or just a suggestion, he is very responsive to look at it and incorporate into the latest version. As people like Dustrider will remember, when we were both on the beta test team, a great deal of thought and effort went into the integration with Carrara and the automatic conversion from Carrara to Octane materials. It all makes it work very smoothly and it is very fast to work with to set up lighting etc.

bytescapes

Does anyone have examples of Octane renders of Carrara scenes made with the plugin?

Not, of course, that I am about to buy this plugin because -- in addition to the costs of the plugin, and the Octane license, I'd need to spend about $2000 on a Windows computer to run it on, which takes it just a little out of 'impulse purchase' territory -- but I'm curious to see what it can do.

Dartanbeck

bytescapes said:

Does anyone have examples of Octane renders of Carrara scenes made with the plugin?

Not, of course, that I am about to buy this plugin because -- in addition to the costs of the plugin, and the Octane license, I'd need to spend about $2000 on a Windows computer to run it on, which takes it just a little out of 'impulse purchase' territory -- but I'm curious to see what it can do.

Here's one from Dustrider from this thread, which has a bunch of Octane info:  Oh yea. Octane for Carrara  He also has a couple in this month's challenge, PhilW (and others) also have quite a few Octane renders around. Sometimes they don't mention Octane, though... so it gets hard to tell sometimes.

DUDU

Dartanbeck said:

Sometimes they don't mention Octane, though... so it gets hard to tell sometimes.

 

Personally, I don't see any difference with the Carrara render, except for some of them wich are excessively blue tinted...

PhilW

bytescapes said:

Does anyone have examples of Octane renders of Carrara scenes made with the plugin?

Not, of course, that I am about to buy this plugin because -- in addition to the costs of the plugin, and the Octane license, I'd need to spend about $2000 on a Windows computer to run it on, which takes it just a little out of 'impulse purchase' territory -- but I'm curious to see what it can do.

As long as you have an Nvidia graphics card it will run. The bigger and faster the card the better, but as has been mentioned (I think), it can use a combination of graphics card RAM and main RAM, so you can get away with a 2GB card (but I'd recommend at least 4GB). I use it on a laptop which cost less than 1000 UK pounds.

WendyLuvsCatz

I have piles of World Gardens Japanese teagarden video renders on my youtube channel 

had to bake shaders with inagoni baker and reduce smoothing on every tree and shrub and kill all the extra translucency maps among other things

but I did manage to squeeze it on my 980ti and once on could literally explore it in real time

WendyLuvsCatz

a 360 one

Dartanbeck

namtar3d

Philemo said:

Since Wendy convinced me to buy Octane render plugin for Carrara, I've been playing quite a lot with it.

I would like here to express my admiration for the work of Sighman, the author of this plugin.

This plugin is just outstanding. I've never seen a so complete integration of an external product into Carrara.

It doesn't crash that much  and everything fell in place very naturally. I was a bit dubious about a $200 plugin (without Octane licence, just the plugin), but it's worth every cent. The programming effort and the testing (knowing a bit about Carrara SDK) must have been enormous. And it shows. Add to that the quality of Octane render itself and you just have something marvelous.

Integration is incredible. For instance (and it's just an example), when you pick a material in the Octane view, the plugin open the shader room and display the shader. Translation of Carrara shader is really great what render nicely in Carrara native renderer renders also nicely in Octane (and crap stays crap, no miracle there ).

So, Sighman, I tell you, you are a great programmer and I thank you for what you did.

 

 

I agree!!, The native render engine for Carrara looks a little old at this point, but Octane gives a whole new universe of possibilities!