Hi CountryGolden,
Yes, there a lot of free materials for Octane, but it works a little differently to get them. There is a live material database that you can view through the Rhino Plugin. when you see a material you want, you can download it directly through the plugin in Rhino.
As far as Rhino specific tutorials, there aren’t that many. I don’t know where on earth you reside, but if you are in the US or are able to dial a US number Toll Free, i’d be happy to set up a Join Me meeting with you and share my screen – that way I can create a file from scratch in front of you and answer any questions you have. It’s a good way to get new users up and running fast. Just let me know if you want to do this.
Also, the point D-W brought up is an important one regarding instancing. Just for the record, the Octane Rhino Plugin in has this feature as well. You can check out some of the images in the architectural section on my website and see the instancing capabilities as well. www.bendboxdesign.com My website is really out of date, I haven’t uploaded anything in a year or so, but everything on there is Octane and Rhino.
Honestly, I don’t think you can go wrong with either of these engines for still images. If you do animation, i’d lean towards Octane. Also, it never hurts to have more than one render engine on board since they all have strength and weaknesses.
Regarding your question on Vray, I haven’t used V3 but reading through forums I do get the feeling there are some bugs.
Also, not to throw too much at you at once, however the upcoming Rhino V6 is going to have the Cycles render engine embedded in it – it will be part of Rhino, aka raytraced viewport. Cycles is the same render engine that power Blender if you aren’t familiar with it, and the blender website has a good gallery. I think since Cycles for Rhino is so new, it will take a while before it’s as feature rich as these other render engines we’ve been discussing, however the quality of the rendered output is definitely there, so eventually it will be quite a nice addition to Rhino.
Ryan