Hey guys, just wondering what do people use as a render engine for indie work? without an indie license model for renders it feels it really limits our ability to part time indie work.

For example Red shift and Renderman would cost double the cost of Houdini indie itself to purchase. $400 - $500 USD / year.

Mantra feels too slow for non renderfarm work also will be outdated soon so not really into learning how to optimize with it.

Karma is in Beta and who knows what kind of licence will be on that later.

Octane is fantastic. Beautiful results, super easy to use, great support, very affordable.

Moin,

I cannot follow your cost-estimation. But let's start with Mantra:

> Mantra feels too slow for non renderfarm work also will be outdated soon so not really into learning how to optimize with it.

Depending on WHAT you want to render, I cannot see Mantra as being “too slow” in general. I own a Redshift-license but find myself using Mantra just as often - for a simple reason: I often have to render medium sized geometry (50-100 million points) and Redshift is just TOO SLOW to get that data sorted. Once RS has the data, it's amazing, no doubt, but the time it takes to start a render kills any joy. Mantra just takes a deep breath and gives me something to look at.
Then: Why is Mantra “outdated”? I sometimes use DKB trace … that's from the mid-1980s and still works. I cannot call it “outdated” if it does EXACTLY what I need it to do: Render an image.

Redshift only costs a one-time fee, you do NOT have to stay on maintenance. Maintenance is HALF the price of a new license, if you WANT to get updates. Besides: Redshift every once in a while does a sale with 20% off.

As for more alternatives: It would be hard to find “the best, the fastest AND the cheapest” renderer just so. They all have pros and cons and if you want “good and fast”, you may have to spend a bit of money. After all, developers need to eat food, too. And the 3d-market isn't exactly a market where you make “shit-loads of money”.

To answer your question: I use Mantra, Redshift, have dabbled in Arnold (couldn't get warm with it), DKB Trace (about once a year), my own render-engine (where necessary), Marmorset (with a client) and every blue moon something else. Haven't found THE renderer for me yet, every task seems to be just that bit different (I am an R&D guy, I don't do pretty pictures :-) )


Marc

3dspline
Hey guys, just wondering what do people use as a render engine for indie work? without an indie license model for renders it feels it really limits our ability to part time indie work.

As mentioned above, Octane at $30/month is pretty indie-friendly. I believe Autodesk recently introduced some indie-pricing for Maya and possibly Arnold. Redshift is pricey depending on your monetary resources, but you shouldn't necessarily compare the cost of Houdini Indie to other developers' pricing. Houdini Indie is a very unique offering in the pro-CG ecosystem…unless you count Blender!

If you are patient, I would guess that in about 6 months or so, Houdini 18.5 will offer a substantially more robust implementation of Karma, and perhaps even a Karma GPU/Houdini 19 preview in time for Siggraph.

I will say this in regards to render engines – subscription is starting to make a lot more sense to me than permanent licenses. Technology is moving far too rapidly in this particular sector. There is no telling what we will all be using next year, much less 5 years from now. For instance, all it takes is a Blender EEVEE or Unreal Engine plugin for other DCC's to completely turn the whole industry upside down. I believe real time is coming fast, and there might be some yet unknown player who is about to make a move into this field. So IMHO, the benefits of a permanent license aren't quite as clear in 2020 as they were even 5 years ago.

Cycles in H18 with its custom OIDN implementation would be a nice option.

It used to take several years to mature a GPU engine, but with Optix, that's not the case anymore, you got an API that's hardware accelerated out the box. I dont see SideFX adopting Optix for Karma, they are probably gonna roll-their-own, which equals, years of R&D.

Redshift has a very mature Hydra Delegate, Juanjo is adding Hydra features weekly.

Honestly, my favorite Hydra Delegate is Storm, it supports the full USD Preview Surface spec and its USD GPU accelerated (the /stage is resolved on the GPU). Very fast viewport and instant rendering.

..and that brings me to my conclusion, I think the 2nd engine (beyond Storm) to support GPU USD acceleration will jump out into the lead in Houdini.

AMDs RadeonPro renderer is another free option for Houdini 18, that supports a large feature set already. With GPU support, i hope they continue the development at the same pace.

RPR is very limited right now, as far as the Hydra Delegate spec., I think the only thing they support beyond the USD Preview Surface is a node to configure per Object subdivision.

for a typical price of RS + GPU combo you could get a threadripper setup and significantly improve render speeds by simply having 2 machines for rendering

Midphase
I will say this in regards to render engines – subscription is starting to make a lot more sense to me than permanent licenses. Technology is moving far too rapidly in this particular sector. There is no telling what we will all be using next year, much less 5 years from now. For instance, all it takes is a Blender EEVEE or Unreal Engine plugin for other DCC's to completely turn the whole industry upside down. I believe real time is coming fast, and there might be some yet unknown player who is about to make a move into this field. So IMHO, the benefits of a permanent license aren't quite as clear in 2020 as they were even 5 years ago.

Excellent point.