Refractive Sofware LTD is pleased to announce the availability of our new plugin product called 'OctaneRender® for Autodesk® 3ds max®'.

OctaneRender® is currently recognized by many industry professionals as the most advanced and fastest GPU based physically based render engine, with an advanced and flexible node-based workflow and user-interface, however many artists lack tight integration options and fast IO, limiting functionality and workflow features required for fast and efficient geometry transfer and animation rendering, due to current exporter scripts communicating with the OctaneRender® application via file export.

Now, with our new plugin products, you can have the most advanced, fastest physically based render engine on the market tightly integrated into your 3d modeling and animation software, for a fast workflow and rendering pipeline suitable for interactive editing and fast final animation rendering output by using max's environment for scene setup, fine-tuning and animating all parameters for objects, materials, lights, media, etc... all from inside 3ds max.

This new plugin product is the first of a new series of fully integrated plugin solutions, embedding the OctaneRender® GPU based rendering engine directly into Autodesk® 3ds max®.
Below are some example video materials and FAQ information regarding compatibility, licensing/pricing, features and launch date.



This new plugin product will be available as of the 1st of December 2011, and will support Autodesk® 3ds max® 2010, 2011 and 2012, with support for earlier max versions soon after, based on customer feedback/demand.

UPDATE

We are rewriting some parts of the security system as we have discovered a vulnerability,
and also have decided to add the V-Ray to OctaneRender automatic material translation system feature for the first release, instead of pushing it to the 2nd release.
Also, due to a decent flu (influenza) going round here in NZ we have been delayed a bit...

We will release it when it's ready
We can't give an exact date but we are aiming for around Monday the 19th December, and definately before christmas

The plugin will be a new product, launched in a half price beta phase, and will remain in beta together with the current OctaneRender® engine, until it goes final.
The beta launch price will be 99 €. By purchasing an open beta license, you will receive a copy of the final version, including updates (v1.0,1.1,1.2) and an upgrade option for v2.0 in the future.
The launch, version and licensing will be identical to our current OctaneRender product, which will be renamed to 'OctaneRender® Standalone Edition'.

To see the new plugin in action, please watch this OctaneRender® for 3ds max® demo presentation video (We recommend watching it in full-screen mode in 720p HD):



Below are screenshots displaying embedding of the interactive viewport and the use of OctaneRender®'s nodes, in the 3ds max 2012 nodegraph editor:






FAQ

Licensing/pricing

• When will the plugin product be released ?
  1 December 2011
• How much will it cost ?
  A license for the plugin product alone will cost 99 € while in the initial open beta phase, and 199 € when the final versions of the plugin and both OctaneRender® are released.
• Does it require an existing OctaneRender® license ?
  Yes, The plugin will require the user to have a valid OctaneRender® version installed and activated.
• I don't have an OctaneRender® license yet, can I buy both the plugin and the engine together as a cheaper bundle ?
  Yes, You will be able to purchase both the plugin and the engine/standalone licenses as one bundle during the beta phase for 174 €, instead of 198 €. (Final v1.x versions: 349 €)
• Will there be a demo version to test the plugin before purchasing a license?
  Yes, a limited feature demo version is being developed, although it may take a several weeks after the commercial plugin product is launched before it will be available for download. In anticipation, we will provide detailed demonstration videos, exhaustive specifications, and the opportunity to ask questions about the plugin through our community forums and via e-mail.

Compatibility & System Requirements

• What version of OctaneRender® does the plugin work with ?
  The plugin will only work with specific, latest versions of OctaneRender, as of v1.0 beta 2.55 and up.
• What versions of 3ds max does the plugin work with ?
  At launch, the plugin will work with 3ds max 2012, 2011 and 2011 on both 32bit and x64 Windows systems. Additional older versions may be added based on customer feedback and demand.
• Are there any differences in performance, GPU support or drivers between the engine when used from 3ds max ?
  All of the plugin's engine features, performance, GPU compatibility and ability to use multiple GPUs are identical.
• Can i still use the existing OctaneRender® standalone user interface with this plugin's new workflow?
  Yes, The plugin has the ability to export your complete scene to an Octane Scene file (OCS) which can be opened and configured/rendered from the standalone version on all supported platforms.
• What about other animation packages ?
  Refractive Software® LTD will be announcing many additional plugin products for other 3D modeling and animation packages during the next months, as a result of it's SDK licensing program. These plugins will resemble the 3ds max version in functionality, features and pricing.

Features

• Full binary library integration of OctaneRender® into 3ds max®, useable both as an internal max render engine and interactive render engine.
• No File or Pipe based IO between 3ds max and the engine is used, as the engine works directly in the max process and memory space, with direct memory access.
• Full integration of all octane nodes as materials, lights (area lights & daylight system), textures (spectra, 2d/3d image & procedural), media (for absorption and sub-surface scattering / volumetric materials) and more.
• Integration of octane nodes into 3ds max 2012+ nodegraph editor system for complex material and texture mixing & setup.
• Automatic scene material translation from existing 3ds max materials, with other popular 3rd party engine material systems added during the first weeks of the beta program, based on customer feedback and demand.
• All OctaneRender nodes, parameters and features are configurable from 3ds max®.
• Identical engine functionality and render performance just like our current OctaneRender®/standalone engine.
• Batch render fully animated scenes using max's render engine workflow, optionally using any 3ds max compatible network render queue software.

Regarding the presentation video:

• Why is there no example of instancing / object motion and the requirement to reload the scene when geometry changes in the demo presentation video ?
  This demo video is done on our 3ds max plugin product, built against our current v1.0 beta 2.55b engine, it does not support instancing and object transform editing in development for our upcoming v1.0 beta 2.6 branch. When our beta 2.6 branch is released during the next weeks, the plugin will support it's rebuilt geometry engine, with no reloading of geometry needed when object transforms or instances are edited, during interactive rendering or animation/batch rendering.
• Why does the demo video not show activation of the engine as an ActiveShade render engine ?
  We have developed our own custom interface for interactive rendering instead of using ActiveShade, with better performance and stability as a result.

Example Animation

This is a demonstration animation rendered in 720p HD in one day, made by Karba (one of the OctaneRender® team developers),
and rendered with our new OctaneRender for 3ds max(R) plugin,
which demonstrates it's ability to fully animate and render large animations, in unbiased quality, very fast, from inside 3ds max® (We recommend watching in full-screen mode in 720p HD):



Here is a download link to download a larger, high quality, 720p H.264 m4v compressed video version (130MB):
http://www.refractivesoftware.com/video ... _cq_17.m4v


Specifications for the animation:

Hardware/Software used:

Core i7 960 Quad-Core 3.2GHz / 12 GB RAM / Win 7 x64
GPU used for rendering with OctaneRender: 1x EVGA/NVIDIA GTX 580

This demonstration video was rendered with an in-house alpha version of Refractive Software's upcoming new plugin product,
OctaneRender(R) for 3ds max(R), which integrated the OctaneRender GPU based physically based render kernel completely into 3ds max,
as an internal renderer and as an activeshade/interactive renderer.
This is pure output of the engine, with no post production or noise removal employed.

One NVIDIA Consumer-class Geforce GTX580 GPU was used to render this animation, with one PC only (no renderfarm), straight from 3ds max.


Configuration Specifications:

* Octane Render Kernel used: Path Tracing (default settings (maxdepth=16) with caustics, fully unbiased)
* Samples per pixel for each frame: 512 s/px
* Octane Render core version used: v1.0 beta 2.55
* Autodesk(R) 3ds max(R) 2012 was used as the host 3d animation package


Scene Specifications:

* 700.000 polygons, 950.000 vertices
* Animation length: 586 frames
* Animation resolution: 1280x720 (720p HD)

Render time:

* Per frame total: 2-3 minutes (depends on frame)
* Total time for 586 frames: 23.8 hours


Enjoy,
The OctaneRender(R) Team

NOTES: Autodesk® and 3ds max® are registered trademarks of Autodesk Inc.

Cool!!

Have you planned such a plugin for Modo?

cool !! is it posible for Maya in the future?

O. Very cool!

I like it ((:

will the beta pricing also count when a c4d version comes??

Very cool! Please get someone to start working on a Modo (or lightwave) port ASAP!

OK... that's it! Now I will start using Octane for sure!!!!
I am a Revit -> Max user so this is really what I need!!!

Cool, I am not a Max Usere but I hope Rhino and Maya will follow very soon. With the experince you made with integrationg Octane into Max you can transfer this knowledge to other 3D apps.
Go on Refractive Software.
Good job.

As soon as you get it for maya... Im on board. Looks amazing!