OctaneRender™ 3.0 for Houdini™ beta build 3.00.12.0 Tweet

[juanjgon]

Hi,

This is a new beta release of the OctaneRender™ 3.0 for Houdini™ plugin. This 3.00.12.0 build is available for the Houdini 13.0/14.0/15.0/15.5(beta) last production builds for Windows x64, Linux gcc4.8 and OSX 10.10

Alpha and beta version disclaimer
In contrast to v2 we want to do the alpha and beta testing publicly, to get more feedback earlier and to have changes tested more thoroughly. The plan is to let all users with a valid v2 license use the v3 alpha and beta versions until we decide that the beta period has ended and we release the first stable v3. After that you will have to upgrade to v3 or will not be able to use any v3 versions (including alpha and beta versions) anymore. We don't know yet, when that will be, but we will give you a warning a few weeks in advance so you can prepare.

This is a beta release, so please consider this more a test or development release which may not be stable enough for a production environment.


Beta release 3.00.12.0
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... _Win64.zip
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... _Linux.zip
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... ni_OSX.zip

Standalone version for the network rendering nodes
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... _1_win.exe
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... _macos.dmg
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... _linux.zip

New features of OctaneRender™ 3.00
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=51679

Documentation (not updated with the new Octane 3 features yet)
http://render.otoy.com/manuals/Houdini/


=============================================
RELEASE 3.00.12.0
=============================================

* NEW PLUGIN FEATURES:
- Support of Houdini 15.5 and Houdini 15.5 Indie (Indie restrictions: Sequence render resolution limited to 1080p. Orbx scene export and cloud features disabled)
- Support of the 'vm_renderable' parameter
- New button "Disable Upd." in the IPR window. This feature disable all the IPR events, so you can work in the scene without update the IPR, while it continues rendering.
- New option in the ROP node to update some of the OBJ spare parameters while rendering in update mode. Full reload the scene is no longer needed to animate the visibility options, or the emission features.

* NEW OCTANE FEATURES:
- Switched to a totally new authentication system based on the OTOY accounts and not the old Octane customer accounts. Due to that there is no explicit ORC login required anymore and the plugin license doesn't need to be specified either by the plugin.
- Support of region rendering for all the kernels.
- Added support for motion blur to volume rendering.
- Added a new "visible environment" pin to the render target node.
- Moved the volume step length from the kernel node to the volume medium node. This allows you to tweak the value for each volume and depending how close and how big they are.
- Reduced the geometry compilation times on OSX and Linux.
- Increased the maximum number of triangles to 76 million. This equates to ~8.5GB of memory. Higher numbers will result in a range overflow.
- Added an option preferences devices tab to toggle tone-mapping for specific devices (enabled by default). This option can be used to prohibit tone-mapping on external GPUs, which might help with performance and crash issues reported for external devices.
- Added option to the imager node which allows you to disable partial alpha, i.e. it's always fully transparent or opaque.
- Added support for adaptive subdivision surfaces.
- The stereo eye distance can now be set to a negative value, which allows you to render cross-eye stereo images.

* PLUGIN BUGS FIXED:
- Some fixes in the licensing code.
- More robust objects visibility/candidate/force/exclude lists and bundles management.
- Rendering multiple ROP nodes doesn't respect frame ranges specified. Fixed.
- The issues with the MPlay lock file are now fixed.

* OCTANE BUGS FIXED:
- Fixed various volume tracing bugs.
- Fixed loading of OpenVDB files with non-standard grid names.
- Fixed dramatic shifts in some animated volumes.
- Fixed random large allocations in VRAM causing random crashes.
- Fixed a crash when you try to render a scene with camera animation.
- Fixed incorrect rendering of shadow catchers if its normal is pointing away from the shadow casting light source.
- Fixed incorrect rendering if thin film interference.
- Fixed incorrect camera motion blur.
- Fixed crash during the compilation of some geometries.
- Fixed facets in texture baking of smoothed surfaces.
- Fixed render block when changes are applied to the scene while region rendering is active.
- Fixed broken normal maps.
- Disabled post-processing when the post-processing pass is enabled.
- Fixed loading of VDBs with special characters in the file path.
- Fixed bug where secondary intersections in alpha shadow rays used bogus motion blur vectors.
- Fixed some volumes being ignored for shadow rays when alpha shadows are disabled.
- Fixed motion blur for secondary volumes when calculating black shadows.
- Fixed wrong absorption channel being used for occlusion rays.
- Fixed baking camera when no UV geometry is available
- Fixed black triangles if a mesh contains very small UV coordinates.
- Fixed incorrect initialization of render threads.
- Fixed various issues with tracking the number of current authentications of the same license.
- Fixed crash when trying to load a VDB using velocity components that reference to the same grid.
- Fixed render artifacts on some meshes with nearly constant UV coordinates.
- Fixed render artifacts at the rims when normal or bump maps are used.
- Made the texture evaluation more robust, allowing deeper texture node trees.


Thanks,
-Juanjo

[WhyGee]

Thank you!

how/where is render region used?

[Techie]

Very nice, thanks!

[ptunstall]

AGHHHH SO EXCITEDDD!!!!

[labmeta]

Trying things out here today - I'm still getting issues with the Live DB here on OSX. it just locks up houdini and beachballs indefinitely. Not much happening in the console only this:

"INFOR: [license] ----------- Octane Licenses are ready
INFOR: [LiveDB] ------------ LocalDB folder: /Users/me/localdb"

Have to force quite and restart every time

Many Thanks,

Paul

[juanjgon]

Trying things out here today - I'm still getting issues with the Live DB here on OSX. it just locks up houdini and beachballs indefinitely. Not much happening in the console only this:

"INFOR: [license] ----------- Octane Licenses are ready
INFOR: [LiveDB] ------------ LocalDB folder: /Users/me/localdb"

Have to force quite and restart every time

Many Thanks,

Paul

Yes, sorry, this problem on OSX is not fixed yet, in fact I have the same issue with the LightWave plugin .... I am investigating the problem.

-Juanjo