Hi,

I'm looking at the website of Octane Render and thinking this might be it. The problem at this moment for Softimage users is that you have to export to a Renderman RIB file format to render character animation with it. You can purchase a license of 3Ddelight and export to RIB, but otherwise their is no way to use it for character animation. In upcoming versions they seem to release it with instancing subsurface scattering. Their are some very good export tools for it to work with Softimage. But for rendering character animation you still need RIB export. I'm not a coder, so.

It has depth of field etc... It has everything we all like in professional 3D renders. Any suggestions, or has someone used in for rendering character animation?

I don't know about Octane, but the free version (limited to 2 cores) of 3Delight does give you the possibility to export RIB "out of the box", so I imagine, there would be no need to buy a full license, if you only use it as a RIB-exporter, as you won't be bothered by the 2 core limitation in that case anyway...

From the 3Delight download page:

As Hirazi said, free version of 3delight for SI is limited only in final rendering. Actually I think the all other processes aren't limited at all - baking, exporting to RIBs, so on. About subsurface on instances, it works too. In case of ICE point cloud instances, you have to apply 3dl attribute to Point Cloud instead of instancing master, that's all.
Even I'm not sure these RIBs will render in other Renderman renderers 'just that', without issues.

Btw I've used both Mental Ray and 3delight and few others, for characters. If you ask me what renderer was best for characters, I'd say 3d studio Max Default Scanline, ten years ago - it was fast and simple, and clients weren't been so picky in these times....

From what I know RIB wont make it into Octane. They are currently making it so your host application talks directly to Octane (Viewport rendering) thus making any export pointless.

For now though, there is a very solid Softimage Soft2Octane exporter, surely being very effective for character animation work. You won't get motionblur, but you get the rest. I've been using Octane for all my animation work this last year, and it works great. The dog in this spot is for example rendered in Octane just for the fun of it: http://vimeo.com/26580519

Exporting ICE stuff isnt tricky either: http://vimeo.com/24566771

And comping it with other passes from XSI works great aswell for dust etc (car rendered in Octane): http://vimeo.com/28063417

Newcomer alert: please use the URL tags - HB

I'm very excited to see how that turns out, it would finally make it very useful for SI. Any rough timeline for when this might be available?

The 3DSMAX version is in Beta stage from what I know, and the others will follow shortly. I guess something will be shown atleast before the year is at end

Awesome! Since SI has no intention of including IRAY I think there's a great opportunity for Octane to jump in and fill that need.

No matter how great a render engine is, it's 100 times better when it's fully integrated. Looking forward to it

I would like to see a direct Octane plugin.

EDIT: Post edited in order not to spread misinformation.

Dang! That would rule me out too. I really don't like having to be connected. I work off the grid quite a bit.

This was the case many months ago, during the beta cycle. Now you only activate online ONCE if you move your license to a new machine.

You don't have to be connected after that.

They use the same online check philosophy as autodesk or Adobe and all other companies, so no need to worry. BUT its even nicer than adobe etc, because they let you change machine every 30 minutes if you like, deactivate and activate it on a new machine. After the change, you dont need internet connection.. So its all good!