OctaneRender® for Maya® v1.0 RC3 - 1.0 beta [OBSOLETE]

[JimStar]

Refractive Software®/Otoy® is proud to announce the availability of a new version of OctaneRender™ for Maya®
The world's fastest and most feature-rich unbiased render engine that integrates completely into Autodesk® Maya®.

Maya® Version Requirements

This release will work with Maya® Versions 2011, 2012 and 2013 / 32-bit & 64-bit on MS Windows operating systems.

Notes regarding features/functionality

OctaneRender™ for Maya® implements almost full functionality of OctaneRender™ standalone inside Maya®. Materials from the Live DB are currently not available.

COMPATIBILITY AND OCTANERENDER STANDALONE REQUIREMENT

To run OctaneRender™ for Maya®, you need to also have an activated OctaneRender™ Standalone copy activated on the machine you wish to install the plugin onto.
You cannot purchase and use only the Maya plugin and use it without also owning an activated copy of OctaneRender™ Standalone on your machine.


HOW TO PURCHASE LICENSES

Go to our online shop here: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/shop/

If you do not own an OctaneRender™ Standalone Edition License yet:
You can purchase both the OctaneRender™ Standalone Edition and the OctaneRender™ for Maya® Edition as a reduced price bundle, purchase the bundle priced at 179€

If you already own one or more OctaneRender™ Standalone Edition licenses you want to pair the plugin with:
Purchase an "OctaneRender™ for Maya® Beta License" priced at 99€

You can also purchase a 3, 5 or 10 pack of OctaneRender™ for Maya® licenses,
just like OctaneRender™ Standalone Edition packs.


OCTANELIVE

Just like OctaneRender™ Standalone, the Maya® plugin product also needs an additional OctaneLive license and be activated on a machine.
This has to be done in the plugin interface panel in Maya, and is covered in the included PDF manual.
It can only be done after an OctaneRender™ Standalone license is already activated on the machine in question.


BUG FIXES SINCE LAST RELEASE:

• Fixed the UVs bug (jmfowler reported).
• Fixed the GPU checkboxes bug.
• Little bug fixes and improvements...

NEW FEATURES SINCE LAST RELEASE:

• Starting from this version the plugin uses the new "v1.0 RC3" engine. The versioning of the plugin is changed to more formal and universal: starting from this release the first part of the version string (before hyphen) will be the engine version, and the second part - is the version of plugin itself.
• The support of Maya 2013.5 added (thanks to phaskins).
• "Movable proxies" animation mode added. "Fast animation" checkbox in Octane settings is now "Animation mode" selector.
• New "White saturation" attribute in Octane Imager.
• New "Caustic blur" attribute in Octane "PMC" and "Path tracing" kernels.
• Daylight system attributes added to Octane SunSky node.
• Added "Max. textures count" to textures statistics.
• Added "Free memory" to memory statistics.
• In this version the new engine's API feature has used: the plugin can now detect some rendering failures.

DOWNLOAD

Next version HERE.


Yours,
The OctaneRender™ Team.

[TBFX]

Fixed the GPU checkboxes bug.

Great, thanks JimStar!

"Movable proxies" animation mode added. "Fast animation" checkbox in Octane settings is now "Animation mode" selector.

This is great too, haven't tested it yet though.
There is one more situation I'd like covered by the animation modes. This may not be possible without changes to the engine but where we have a bunch of instances (they could be trees or cobble stones etc.) that do not have any animation but their base objects need to be set as movable proxies so that we can take advantage of the instances, these pieces of geo don't need to be reloaded each frame but if we have other animated geometry in the scene and use the new movable proxies animation mode I believe we will be forced to reload the instances on every frame as well. Perhaps we could have two types of movable proxy, animated and static. I know "static movable proxy" is a contradiction but that's just because movable proxy was kind of a bad name in the first place (not your doing JimStar I know) and what we should really have is proxy (which would be the base object for static instances) and movable proxy for any geo that can be updated either in IPR or in an animation.

Does that make sense?

T.

[JimStar]

Fixed the GPU checkboxes bug.

Great, thanks JimStar!

"Movable proxies" animation mode added. "Fast animation" checkbox in Octane settings is now "Animation mode" selector.

This is great too, haven't tested it yet though.
There is one more situation I'd like covered by the animation modes. This may not be possible without changes to the engine but where we have a bunch of instances (they could be trees or cobble stones etc.) that do not have any animation but their base objects need to be set as movable proxies so that we can take advantage of the instances, these pieces of geo don't need to be reloaded each frame but if we have other animated geometry in the scene and use the new movable proxies animation mode I believe we will be forced to reload the instances on every frame as well. Perhaps we could have two types of movable proxy, animated and static. I know "static movable proxy" is a contradiction but that's just because movable proxy was kind of a bad name in the first place (not your doing JimStar I know) and what we should really have is proxy (which would be the base object for static instances) and movable proxy for any geo that can be updated either in IPR or in an animation.

Does that make sense?

T.

I will think about adding the "Movable proxy" attribute to the instancer... It may solve this logical problem, at the first glance...

[TBFX]

I will think about adding the "Movable proxy" attribute to the instancer... It may solve this logical problem, at the first glance...

If I understand you correctly that may not work as there will be times when particle instances will be animated and there may also be static instances that have been placed manually, by script or some method other than particles.

T.

[JimStar]

If I understand you correctly that may not work as there will be times when particle instances will be animated and there may also be static instances that have been placed manually, by script or some method other than particles.

I mean that I can try to do such a way, that the plugin will not refresh the "Movable proxy" meshes instanced by non-"Movable proxy" instancer, but will refresh these if they are just visible in scene (and their instances too)... And vice-versa - if you have non-"Movable proxy" meshes, instanced by "Movable proxy" instancer, they will refresh too...
Will it work? Or you see some cases when it will not work for you?..

[ypolyz]

Many thanks, JimStar!

[TBFX]

I mean that I can try to do such a way, that the plugin will not refresh the "Movable proxy" meshes instanced by non-"Movable proxy" instancer, but will refresh these if they are just visible in scene (and their instances too)... And vice-versa - if you have non-"Movable proxy" meshes, instanced by "Movable proxy" instancer, they will refresh too...
Will it work? Or you see some cases when it will not work for you?..

When you say instancer do you mean the instancer node you get with particle instances? If so that would work for particle instances but we can also simply duplicate geometry as an instance without an instancer node and in that case this wouldn't work. It would be better than nothing though and to be honest most of the time that this would be an issue would probably be with particle instances.

T.

[JimStar]

When you say instancer do you mean the instancer node you get with particle instances? If so that would work for particle instances but we can also simply duplicate geometry as an instance without an instancer node and in that case this wouldn't work.

I think you has not right understood what I tried to explain.
Yes, I mean the instancer node. And in this case, I think that I will be able to do it such a way, that if you will "simply duplicate geometry as an instance without an instancer node", it will work...
Imagine it as the "Movable proxy" attribute of instancer node has higher rank than the same attribute of meshes. So, if the mesh is included in instancer and instancer is being compiled, all meses included in it will be considered "movable" or not according to "Movable proxy" attribute of instancer. BUT. As soon as the same meshes will be compiled (in the same frame) separately from instancer - the "Movable proxy" attribute of mesh itself will be considered...
Something like this...

[arh-osa]

Thank you, JimStar!
But the bundle price is now 279€

[magicU]

thanks for your help and hard work JimStar!