Yeah using octane now, but only a couple weeks in. Maybe 100 hours in it so far.
Render speeds with it are odd. Sometimes I can do a render up to 10K iterations in like 5 minutes. Other times 30 minutes. Still it's far faster than IRay, the speed currently is offset by setting up textures and an environment which takes far longer. Most of my time now is devoted to posing, expressions and getting around the octane quirks or changes im not familiar with.
Converting textures will depend on your knowledge of shaders. For me I had a bit of background with it. Daz doesn't count, only a small portion of it is the same. Skin is the big one. I used redspec to get an initial look and went from there. Eyes i probably spent a good hour or so on each model to get right. Wet skin is still a mystery though.
I am currently slower, there is no batch so my workflow changed for that. But with the increased render speeds I am finding I can spit out more renders each night than before depending on the scene. But the initial setup takes hours for a scene. This Saturday for instance I did get 20 renders done though, week previous I managed to get 10 done on a Saturday. That is pretty good. I know I will get faster and faster as well.
Basically everything you know about lighting and textures from daz. Forget it. It is almost all useless on a technical standpoint. Fundamentals dont change but the nit and gritty does.
So it also has a lot of hoops at first. Here is a list. Remember I have just started with it so this is in no way accurate. Many of these could be easily rectified. I just don't know how yet. I will probably repeat myself from above as well a few times.
* Anything close to the camera should be retextured or at least adjusted.
* You need to save your presets for the environment and render settings. I don't save those with the duf. You may be able to, but it has yet to work consistently for me.
* Skin looks AWFUL by default. You need to be very picky on textures as well. Redspec helps with this but still needs to be adjusted.
* There is no more dual globe so I am still trying to figure out wet skin, though in daz i never really got that down.
* You need to learn the quirks between how lights work in preview and final render (that is an option in octane). For normal renders i let it cook in the preview window till done. Final is sketchy.
* Animations are a bit odd on the focus point but i think I have figured that one out.
* You really need to understand shading. Basic Daz doesnt cut it anymore.
* Some daz textures will import very odd and will have opacities set where they shouldn't. I have found this is because it sets a float value that is linked to both roughness and opacity. Typically I find this with items such as glass. There is a system called a node editor where this is easily corrected. It's intimidating but you have to learn it or you may as well not use octane at all because its essential.
* There is no batch currently. So I had to adjust my workflow to ensure animations are queued up when im away sleeping and at work.
* You have to understand the render settings which are huge. Items such as GI Clamp, diffuse and specular depth. I suggest reading through the entire octane manual to get a sense of what each one does because you will be adjusting these from scene to scene.
* There are no spots or point lights. They do not exist. Everything is a mesh light. I setup a 5 point light rig with cameras attached to planes and one circle to manage this as a subset.
* You need to understand an entirely new form of lighting, though this should be relatively quick if u have ever used mesh lights in Daz. I have found using the simple light emitter works best. You can change its temp but if you do you need to adjust its power. Or you can add a color node to it in the node graph editor for different colors. JUST learned that 2 days ago!
* When you setup an animation you need to ensure you use the correct presets from before. As mentioned early i save these out so i import them back in load them for the animation and let it rip.
