Before Octane became a household name in the GPU-rendering sphere, I was a beta tester on the project. And although one of my images briefly appeared on the splash screen of a very early version, I haven’t been very faithful to it since. This could change thanks to the release of Octane for 3ds Max, a quite well integrated version of the render, which removes the need to export geometry to Octane for rendering. We are not talking about the degree of integration of Vray, which supports nearly all functions of Max, but it is definitely as easy to use as Maxwell. And there is even a Vray Material Converter built into the plugin (which I haven’t tried as I like to build my mats from scratch).
Clearly, Octane is not going to replace Vray for me as long as we don’t see a massive increase in the amount of RAM on consumer graphic cards (I have 24GB in my Workstation and routinely max them in Vray). But I can see myself using it a lot more for small scenes or product viz, especially if Vray continues to grow slower and noisier, as has been the case for me with recent versions (though not everyone has noticed this so it may have to do with my setup or idiosyncratic workflow).
The images at the top are my entries for the latest Octane render competition. Those at the bottom are just details done for fun. These clear so fast it’s a joy, even on my very modest GTX 285. Hope you like them.
EDIT: Just found out these images had ended 2nd at the competition. Thanks refractive software!
Dear Bertrand.
I follow you for a while now, and every time i see new renders from you
i’m amazed by the detail and the quality of your work!
Clearly you are, one of the best cg artist around the globe.
I wish we could have a look on your workflow about modeling and rendering.
Are you planning to do some tuts for the noobs like us? (i hope so).
Can’t wait to see your next project.
PS: The top image is the best i’ve seen so far, from you!
Greetings,
Niels.
I saw this image in competition, after Radiance ( the head of Refractive sotftware – responsible for creating this awesome engine, called Octane) changed rules a bit allowing to participate in competitipn other types of renderings, not only themed ‘appocalypse’ =)
BB, i think you will have a bit more than 1gb of vRAM after this competition, as Your render seem to be one of the best in not only in the competition, but in the whole Octane gallery posted so far!
Amazing touch of light, framing, dof..you name it! I’m just curious.
What are the times of closed (interior scenes) like the one You’ve done now? I know it’s fast for studio setups, but how fast for interiors?mm..
wish the best for You & looking for some more stuff from You!
Each time, each soft, each renders you’re skill is impressive !! Bertrand you are born with a 3d render on yours hands !!
)
Love the natural lighting on yours renders, the details are just photo-real , composition is perfect !!
Nothing more to say , just hope to learn more about about a master like you.
Congrats !
Very Nice set of images, and very interesting the integration of octane render for 3d max, I’m very curious to try this engine.
My prefer image is the first one, has a strong composition.
lighting, texturing, modeling, is very very nice,
congratulations again, you got the point,
greetings,
Fernando – Blackhaus
Love Octane! Can you elaborate on the kind of lighting did you use for this Bertrand? Altough the noise is something that annoys me in complex scenes. It doesn’t look a “realistic noise” as with maxwell 1.7. Only use it in simple scenes as product viz also, as you said. The level of light control is it’s big plus.
Congrats Bertrand!
Next step is to sell the octane scene in TS 
Great showcase for this render engine! The top image is the best… it’s true, and the noise is evident in the more darker areas. This, however, does not take down from the image… rather make it much more photographic for me
How fast and how different is the workflow compared to VRay?
Again, and again and again. You are fantastic.
Looks very interesting. But cut to the chase, are we all gonna convert to Octane now?
I own both Maxwell and Fryrender, and despite the fact that I love working with them, I’m all finished using them on projects. I simply haven’t got the stomach to handle deadlines closing in while noise only decreases insignificantly with every render pass.
It is possible to throw the jobs at renderfarms, but that will only make our products more expensive (and renderfarms are anything but a certain solution anyway).
So, this leads to my question: Would you walk into real projects using Octane? Even product viz, with say plenty of transparent plastic, glass, etc. is a burden for Maxwell when you talk large dimension renders.
And Ronen, I agree with you concerning the noise. It does enhance realism with a slight amount of it – but it really needs to be controllable.
Then V-Ray IS getting slower and noisier… I thought I was the one going crazy here…
Anyway, superb quality (as usual), Bertrand.
Cheers!
Hi,
Thanks for this very interesting article.
To complete your overview you should to test also Arion the new rendering software made by RandomControl (fryrender editor)
Trial version at http://www.randomcontrol.com/arion-demo
Keep getting unacceptable noise with VRay 2? I thought you’ve found a solution for this when working in the Loft in Monza series?
Nice work with Octane here by the way. The old “it’s not about the tools, it’s about the artist” adage comes to mind.
Thanks for the nice feedback, guys. It is a bit difficult for me to generalise about Octane as I haven’t accumulated the same amount of experience with it that I have in Vray. I found that these two scenes rendered very fast, though, at quite a high resolution and even though I don’t even have a Fermi card. Especially if you consider that these were not standard studio setups, were most of the light is direct, but closed interiors with a lot of bounces. I can’t compare Octane with other real-time engines like Arion or Iray as I have never worked with them, but I can confidently say that it is a lot faster than Vray RT.
As for the Vray-Octane comparison, I don’t think it is necessarily fair, at least as long as Octane for Max does not support instancing and as long as we have to work with very small amounts of VRam. But of course, as Vray gets slower and noisier (at least as far as I am concerned), the incentive not to use unbiased engines decreases. If Vray gives you an estimate of 256 hours to render a mid-resolution still on two Xeon processors with 24GB or RAM, as happened to me recently, then Octane or even Maxwell may start to sound like more interesting propositions.
Again, however, I would not necessarily take my word for it. Vray is a notoriously versatile and complex renderer to master and it could be that I am doing something wrong with it as many people haven’t noticed any particular noise or render time problems since Version 2.
Hello Bertrand,very fantastic work!is amazing!! please can you explain how you created the material for the pine board flooring? Octane also supports the multitexture of cgsource? please reply,thank youuuuu!
“… it could be that I am doing something wrong with it as many people haven’t noticed any particular noise or render time problems since Version 2.”
Well, many people haven’t reached your particular level of detail and photorealism, so… It’s impossible not to trust your input. I really hope to hear more from you regarding this issue in the near future. Perhaps upcoming service packs will deal with this problem?
Thank you for taking the time to tell us what’s on your mind.
As usual, stunning composition, color, mood and detail! Fantastic! A bit noisy, as commented, but apart from that, overwhelming!
Loved the Blecher phorograph in the frame!
I just LOVE your work..
Hi bertrand.
i want to buy your loft scene.do u sell them? how can i contact you. please email me on haneetkhanna@gmail.com on how to go about it. i love your work. i know you dont offer any training so going through your scenes can help
Thanks
Hi Haneet. You will find the scene here.
Hello Bertrand, please can you help me?
the wall material is created with a bump map or you have created with z-brush?
look so nice!! thanks in advance!
Your The best Bertrand . all of your work is full of detailed and so realistic .
Your the best Bertrand , You are the best
J3dsn: Sorry for the delay in replying: That wall is done with a simple bump map.
Hello good morning and happy Sunday Bertrand, I wanted to ask you to comment on my new image and how I can improve it. Thank you Glauco hello
Link: http://imageshack.us…72/diffuse.jpg/
Glauco, the link seems to be broken…
Hi Bertrand,
You mentioned “but I can confidently say that it is a lot faster than Vray RT.”
Are you talking about V-Ray RT running on CPU (I guess so) ?
Have you tried to use V-Ray RT running on GPU? you can be 30x faster than on GPU and there I believe we can start making a proper comparison.
On the slower and noisier, I have seen quite often that scenes are not properly optimized, and people tends to use and re-use one and the same settings even across different version of the render engine. Of course it only leads to long render time without quality improvement or worse.
Just throwing some ideas…
I meant Vray RT on the GPU of course. Octane is frighteningly fast. Having said that, it is hard for me to compare as VrayRT GPU often fails for me. Basically, it will refuse to work as soon as my Vram is exceeded and just hangs on a black screen. I’m sure it has to do with my setup but it means I’ve only been able to try it on very simple scenes. I use the CPU version a lot, though, and find it invaluable to quickly test lighting setups in particular.
Great stuff!
Hi Bertrand – I’m about to dive into Octane myself, but I am worried about the memory bottle neck. Did you experience it while working on the above scenes? Did you have to downscale textures, remove high polygon items, limit the render size?
When looking at the Octane gallery pages I’m stunned by how beautiful all the product oriented renders look, but also at how poor the more complex external scenes look in comparison. It might hint at a problem…
Great stuff! I would like to ask what were your rendertimes ?
Thanks. The render times were ridiculously low. From memory maybe 15mins on one rather outdated GTX 285.
Martin: Yes, the bottleneck is pretty tight. Of course it depends on the card you have. But in general, the day when I can fit one of my 24GB scenes into Octane has not arrived yet. So what you see it pretty optimised, especially as far as the texture sizes are concerned.
Hi,
Amazing renders. What’s the stool next to the bed? Looking fo something like that next to my bed.
Cheers
Hi Bertrand,
the light and the materials in this scene are amazing! … I’m very impressed! …you have a great talent…you are be able comunicate the soul of a space.
for my work I use 3ds Max and Maxwell Render but I’d to learn V-Ray to become more flexible as possibile…
Is it possible to buy this scene? …I’d study it!
let me know!
luciano.comacchio@gmail.com
regards
Luciano
Hello, gorgeous work, hats off! Last quite so photorealistic!
Congrats with the 2nd place in Octane challange!
Even though i think You deserve first place, but the prize for the second is even better – as 580 will be a bit slower, but will allow you to have full 3gb of vRam, rather than split by two in a 590!
Now we’ve seen what You have done with 1gb & i’m impatient to see how far You’re going to push with 3gb in your disposal..- smth epic is going to appear soon =p i feel that..
Congrats! Can you post a link to it here?
A bit funny – the 590 having that memory issue vs. the 580
gtx 590 really has problems? what bad luck! jokes apart, Bertrand is undoubtedly the best. I am a bit ’shocked.
Hi Bertrand, congrats for this excellent work, I usually visit your page as a learning source and inspiration.
Regarding V-Ray getting slower and nosier, at my office we are dealing with the same not sure why, but it is a big issue for us too, now from time to time we use a “over secure” setting to get clean images over night, but I have noticed that increasing image sampler and reducing noise threshold just because it does not work anymore, I know several artist that push adaptive DMC to 2-100 and play with the color threshold but that produced a lot more noise if you just keep it “within the necessary” let say 2-8 or 20-10 of course this vary depending of the scene but I feel like “the magic values” to get clean renders do not work anymore and they just have to be tested and tailored for each scene, not sure what’s your work flow, maybe you already noticed this, just wanted to share and see if you found the same.
Stay cool and keep your excellent work.
Fco.
[...] Let’s take a look at what Bertrand Benoit recently showed us. His rendition of ”Octane Corners” took a second place in a open competition organiced by creators of Octane Render. While [...]
Reading Peter’s blog and thinking about HDRI-lighting workflows (changing the gamma value to get sharper shadows and all that) I was wondering: couldn’t that be the culprit of VRay2’s noise issues, something about this workflow?
Best regards.
Hello,
Amazing work! I noticed you said you were using a geforce card in your workstation, how does using a geforce card effect the performance versus using a quadro card? Im just wondering because I currently use a quadro but need to upgrade and im trying to decide if going with another quadro will be worth it. Also, what 3D software packages are you using in conjunction with Vray2 and Octane?
Thanks!
Hi Bertrand,
I was wondering what your thoughts on iRay were as compared to Octane, especially because iRay comes with 3DS Max.
Thanks!
Thanks for the feedback, guys, and sorry for the delay in responding. I’ve been pretty snowed under lately.
Gig: I haven’t used Iray beyond some simple tests so I can’t really say. I guess it would be your first choice if you were a Mental Ray user, which I’m not. Coming from Vray, I find using Octane, with its built-in Vray material converter, much more straightforward.
Ryan: Again, I’m not sure I can contribute much, not having used a Quadro for quite a long time. I think that with the move to the Nitrous viewport in Max, the last reason to use a Quadro for me has disappeared. Of course, no consumer card will give you 6GB of Vram, which is a distinct advantage if doing GPU rendering. That would be a good reason to get a pro card (a high-end one) if you can afford it, of course.
Manu: Using high-res maps in a Dome Light tends to generate quite a bit of noise. But I don’t think that has anything to do with the Gamma. At least I haven’t noticed any correlation.
Fco3d: Yes, you’re right. This is a big issue for me and one I haven’t yet managed to solve other than on a case-by-case basis.
Luciano: Up to now I haven’t provided Octane versions of my commercial assets, only Vray and OBJ. I could if there were some interest in it.