Hi OSTexo, one of the best ways to get a nice rendered image without spending very much time is to use an HDRI environment map to produce the lighting in the scene rather than trying to set up individual lights manually.

That's pretty much the key thing that made HyperShot generate nice results but stay easy to use.

I'm pretty sure that I've seen in Phil's video that Octane can use an HDRI map for the lighting, but I don't know if it actually has any bundled with it by default?

Phil - doing something like bundling some environment maps and making the method to switch between them prominent in the UI can probably help a lot to make things easy for beginners to get good results with a lower learning curve.

OSTexo, it looks like there are some links in the Octane forum for places to get environment maps from, like here:
http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=146&start=0

- Michael