Artlantis vs Octane Render

[Anonymous]

Does anyone have any hands on experience with Artlantis and Octane Render? I would be interested in how the two compare.

My current iMac has an ATI video card, so I can't really demo Octane, but my older Mac Pro's video card can be easily updated to a compatible Nvidia.

Any thoughts?

thanks,

Don

[Anonymous]

Don wrote:
Does anyone have any hands on experience with Artlantis and Octane Render? I would be interested in how the two compare.

Any thoughts?

thanks,
Don

From what I've experienced, they are both great programs with pros and cons. There are many things to compare but here's my two cents. Interface-wise, I like Octane's 'way' of managing materials. Not to say one is better than the other. I just understand material management better in Octane. However, navigating the camera views is somewhat easier in Artlantis. Unless Octane Render made any recent changes to how you navigate/move your camera view, I'd say Artlantis offers better 3d/camera navigation. The fact that I embrace the material management part with Octane better, makes me favor Octane over Artlantis, even if I struggle setting up my views. It all depends on what aspects of a rendering program is most important to you.

I recommend running demos of both first hand if you were choosing between the two.

My tip for choosing a suitable GPU for Octane, the more cuda cores - the faster your renders will process, and the more GPU memory (vram) you have - the larger the scenes and complexity of scenes you can render. Also consider having a dedicated GPU for display only so that you can do other task. Octane Render has something built in to remedy this if you're just using one card but I haven't tested it yet.

[Anonymous]

junior wrote:

Don wrote:
Does anyone have any hands on experience with Artlantis and Octane Render? I would be interested in how the two compare.

Any thoughts?

thanks,
Don

From what I've experienced, they are both great programs with pros and cons. There are many things to compare but here's my two cents. Interface-wise, I like Octane's 'way' of managing materials. Not to say one is better than the other. I just understand material management better in Octane. However, navigating the camera views is somewhat easier in Artlantis. Unless Octane Render made any recent changes to how you navigate/move your camera view, I'd say Artlantis offers better 3d/camera navigation. The fact that I embrace the material management part with Octane better, makes me favor Octane over Artlantis, even if I struggle setting up my views. It all depends on what aspects of a rendering program is most important to you.

I recommend running demos of both first hand if you were choosing between the two.

My tip for choosing a suitable GPU for Octane, the more cuda cores - the faster your renders will process, and the more GPU memory (vram) you have - the larger the scenes and complexity of scenes you can render. Also consider having a dedicated GPU for display only so that you can do other task. Octane Render has something built in to remedy this if you're just using one card but I haven't tested it yet.

Thank you for your thoughtful response. I must admit the renderings I do within AC are pretty primitive and I use them primarily to for the client design approval process.

I find I don't have the time (or skill) to do much better within AC and I often find that if I add more detail clients often want design refinements that are beyond the stage that the project is at.

But, I find Lightworks to be pretty cumbersome (at least the way I do it) and slow and it requires a lot of tinkering to get things to look the way I want-especially interiors. I want to give Artlantis and Octane a try (need another graphic card for Octane tho').

My projects are mostly custom residential, and I would not be looking (for the moment) for really high levels of rendering. That being said, which program do you think would be "easier" and faster.

thanks again

[Anonymous]

Don wrote:
That being said, which program do you think would be "easier" and faster.

thanks again

If I were to guess/bet, I'd say you have a smoother take-off with Artlantis. Plus Dwight Atkinson has a great Artlantis (tips & tricks) book tailored for ArchiCAD users. This is just my opinion though. Your definition of "easier" may or may not differ from mine, that is why I recommend testing out both before deciding.

Unfortunately, finding a cheap cuda card for the mac is not as easy as finding one for the pc for testing purposes and might prove to be more costly than anticipated. Artlantis sounds good all of the sudden

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately, finding a cheap cuda card for the mac is not as easy as finding one for the pc

Actually, I looked and you can find ones from Octanes list of compatible cards for about $80.

Thanks for the info!

Don

[Anonymous]

Don wrote:
Actually, I looked and you can find ones from Octanes list of compatible cards for about $80.

Thanks for the info!
Don

Sweet! Could you post a link to the list? I've also been looking for mac compatible cards that are affordable. I found such a list before but it's dated.

[Anonymous]

Sweet! Could you post a link to the list? I've also been looking for mac compatible cards that are affordable. I found such a list before but it's dated.

https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus

This is from the Octane FAQs under hardware requirements.
Interestingly, some of the cards that rate fairly well cost less than some that rate lower. Of course the best cards are indeed
pretty expensive.

[Anonymous]

For example the GeForce GT 640 rates well and is $99 on
Amazon

[Anonymous]

I guess the limiting factor would be the cards that specifically say 'for Mac' on that list, which I only see 3 cards that say that. Good for those wanting something that will work straight out of the box.

I'm sure the other cards would work such as the GeForce GT 640 you mentioned (good deal by the way), but it may require some manual intervention, 'flashing' the video cards yourself to get it to work on the Mac Pro. There are some tutorials on the web but I haven't personally gone out and done this (yet).