NEW: Octane X - is finally here! [MEGA FAQ THREAD] Tweet

[james_conkle]

Yeah.. there is a slight learning curve.. I'm still figuring out if I need to have monitors attached and or ghost headless dongle or not..
I think most pro programs like DaVinci and RS/Octane seem to just work and find the devices. But would be good to know if that's needed or not.

You won't need monitors or dummy cables attached and you can see the active GPUs quickly in the Octane Render View.

[cjadams]

i think the only time you need those is to accelerate the internal display of say a laptop using the eGPU
is that still true? also should we be setting octane standalone to prefer egpu? Or for apps that don't do their own GPU management? Then you need to do the command-i and check prefer egpu? Do we have to do this with our dcc and with octane standalone?

[modify]

Smooth and fast on iMac Pro /10Core /Vega 64, but unfortunately, approximately 2 times per day freezes whole MAC, which made hardreset. Without option to send you crash report
The Houdini plugin works, but only on Mplay window - no Octane IPR with it's advantages is allowed.

[cjadams]

Houdini one i think is on the way..

[nath202]

Apologies if this is covered somewhere in this thread already but is there a way to trial the Cinema4D plugin with the new Metal version of Octane?

[DERJUNG]

Octane X Standalone works. However, Octane X plugin within Modo gives me this error in the log:
Started logging on 21.07.20 12:31:29
Octane X Enterprise PR1 (10000024)
Compute error 2097152:113:
Compute error 2097152:113:
compute device 1: Linking 6d197dfc90d19e72 shader failed
compute device 0: Linking 6d197dfc90d19e72 shader failed
device 1: failed to initialize render thread 0x7f811368b210
device 0: failed to initialize render thread 0x7f8113687890

I have OSX Catalina 10.15.6 running on Mac Pro 2019 with AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB. I've tried Modo 13.0v1, 13.v2, 14.0v1 & 14.0v2 so far.

Thanks for the report. We’ll investigate this with Paul.

Modo does not work. Paul said in his plugin thread that it would not be the plugin. ???
Which Modo Version do you use at Otoy for testing?

[fform]

Modo does not work. Paul said in his plugin thread that it would not be the plugin. ???
Which Modo Version do you use at Otoy for testing?

I can second Modo not working with the same errors about the shader on a MBP 2.9 i9 with a RX5700XT; however, standalone works fine. I can also create a scene in Modo, export the .orbx and load that into standalone and it works!

(Sorry of this derails this thread, I can't seem to reply in the Modo forum)

[ronniek2]

Hello!

I have a 2010 Mac Pro running Catalina 10.15.6 with a Metal supported RX580. I can't get Octane X Enterprise to load at all. It bounces in the dock for a few seconds and then doesn't do anything. The C4D plugins also just prevent C4D from loading at all...It does meet the basic specs to run, even though the video card might not be completely supported. Is this a video card issue? Shouldn't it at least load even if it's an unsupported video card? Let me know if anyone can help. thanks!

-R

[CarlsBad]

Regarding eGPUs, my experience is anything beyond two puts you in the realm of a lot of extra cost for not a lot of extra performance, for reasons alluded to earlier (controller limitations). If using a 15 or 16" MBP (say 2017 or later), plug one eGPU into each side of the Mac after you've booted it, and make sure the other two TB3 ports are unused. For other Macs, the TB3 controller mix is here:

mini: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209224
iMac Pro: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208366
Mac Pro: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210228

From there probably the simplest setup is to connect one of the eGPUs to your main external display, make sure in the Display prefs that that display is the main one and then launch away / start experimenting. You should be able to select both GPUs in Octane as in other apps, even though only one is driving a screen. Example: you can do this with DaVinci Resolve. Still a noob with Octane but if it supports multiple GPUs as folks are saying, shouldn't be an issue.

PS - to answer the earlier questions the Radeon VII, it is about the best you can do right now on a Mac (barring the top-end cards in 2019 Mac Pro). If you can't find one of those and don't want to spend a lot on their blue workstation cards (most of which are either old or new and lower-tier), the 5700 XT is currently a solid all-around card with performance that is close to the Radeon VII in most categories. When the Radeon PRO VII ships it will probably kick the pants off everything for a short time (and kick your wallet in the pants). Until the RDNA 2 (aka "Big Navi") cards ship, which will bring significant improvements including hardware ray-tracing (AMD's answer to RTX) as I understand it. Those cards are to be announced "any day now" but with Covid everything is uncertain (more than usual). Another thing to keep in mind: any new card is pretty much useless to you until Apple ships a driver for it, which always come with future OS versions.

So if you can get a 5700 XT (or x2) now you might be able to get some good mileage out of that since RDNA2 cards: a) likely won't ship for 2-3 months, and b) Apple might not have a driver until 2-3 months after that with all the other stuff they're working on.

[DERJUNG]

Hello!

I have a 2010 Mac Pro running Catalina 10.15.6 with a Metal supported RX580. I can't get Octane X Enterprise to load at all. It bounces in the dock for a few seconds and then doesn't do anything. The C4D plugins also just prevent C4D from loading at all...It does meet the basic specs to run, even though the video card might not be completely supported. Is this a video card issue? Shouldn't it at least load even if it's an unsupported video card? Let me know if anyone can help. thanks!

-R

as far as I have read the 580 is not yet supported. You need something newer because of the drivers.

Re: Octane X for Mac with AMD!!!
Unread postby Goldorak » Tue Jul 21, 2020 3:54 am
Any Radeon 5xx is too old, sorry. Vega or Navi is minimum.

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