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

Hehe Michael that's my topic you linked

Octane ship with 12 bundled HDRI, and they are light studio
Its easy to switch between them and you get faster results than using Hypershot !

I'm currently making another video to showcase some of the newer features. Working with HDRI files in Octane is very easy. You can also rotate your environment and see the results in real time so that you can get the lighting just right.

Hello,

Thanks for the info. I actually have HyperShot that I got on special with SpaceClaim Engineer but have yet to use it. It seems there is some fighting over that whole situation anyway, and I prefer to use and support quality product from small business when I can. It seems OR is more in line with reality when it comes to these sort of products, as I think twice about dropping $1K on competing render products is a bit much. I think $140 is reasonable for v.1 product, especially if they get rid of the fireflies.

Fireflies will be gone soon when MLT is implemented. You can get rid of them post pro in a single step with a little utility called HotPixels until then.

I've created a video that shows the current Octane Render workflow. I also go over using an HDRI environment. I modeled the scene using Blender and MOI3D.

http://www.vimeo.com/10155587