This is a production release of the OctaneRender™ 2020.1 for Houdini™ plugin compiled with the Octane 2020.1.5 core. This 2020.1.5.0 release is available for the Houdini 16.5/17.0/17.5/18.0 latest production builds on Windows x64, Linux gcc6.3.1 and MacOS 10.12.
Make sure to use a NVIDIA Studio driver with version at least 451 on Windows or 450 on Linux to use this version. No driver updates are required for macOS.
New features
To learn more about the new features and improvements of OctaneRender 2020.1, please check out the 2020.1 release post, but this is a quick list of the main new features that have been added.
- New option to enable the RTX improvements.
- Spectron Area and Sphere light types.
- Particle and Curves Point Attributes.
- New Hosek-Wilkie Spectral Sky Model.
- Improvements to Round Edges artist control.
- SSS Improvements and Random Walk SSS.
- Spectral Hair Material.
- ACES: new workflow and Image Container File Layout
- Volume Step % and Shadow Step %
- Volume Sample Position Displacement
- New Universal Dirt System
- New Universal Camera node
Release 2020.1.5.0 Enterprise subscription license
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... rprise.zip
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... rprise.zip
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... rprise.zip
Release 2020.1.5.0 Studio subscription license
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... studio.zip
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... studio.zip
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... studio.zip
Release 2020.1.4.0 Demo license
https://render.otoy.com/plugindownloads ... 4_demo.zip
https://render.otoy.com/plugindownloads ... x_demo.zip
https://render.otoy.com/plugindownloads ... X_demo.zip
OctaneX PR2
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... rprise.zip
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... studio.zip
https://render.otoy.com/plugindownloads ... X_demo.zip
Release 2020.1.5.0 for Houdini 18.0.597Enterprise and Studio licenses
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... _Win64.zip
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... c6.3.1.zip
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... 97_OSX.zip
Standalone 2020.1.5 version for the network rendering nodes
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=75704
Release Notes
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RELEASE 2020.1.5.0
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* PLUGIN FEATURES AND FIXES:
- Added H18.0.566 plugin build.
- New options to configure the list of objects and materials to be updated while rendering sequences.
- Addressed a problem related to the mesh updating in objects without a constant topology.
* OCTANE 2020.1.5 FEATURES AND BUGS FIXED:
- Fixed increased memory usage after loading multiple projects.
- Fixed artifacts produced by stacking multiple GGX lobes together with low roughness
- Fixed bug causing dirt to not to be evaluated when used with medium nodes.
- Fixed issue with random walk SSS causing invalid pin access errors.
- Fixed crash with some Octane module node graphs.
- Fixed issue causing the furnace test to fail when layer opacity was less than one.
- Fixed composite material not updating while changing some child material's float pins.
- Fix UV mapping of light sources on quad lights.
- Fixed OSL code generation for vector equality tests.
- Fixed self illumination on quads lights.
- Fixed incorrect illumination on surfaces in proximity and parallel to quad lights.
- Fixed volume depth passes when no volumes are used.
- Fixed issue causing render errors when large scenes were compiled under low memory conditions.
- Fixed rendering of animations when using a universal camera.
- Fixed scene exports when using universal cameras.
- Fixed issue causing auto-bump map not properly working with composite materials.
- Fixed export of empty mesh nodes.
- Added support for NVidia Ampere cards.
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RELEASE 2020.1.4.0
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* PLUGIN FEATURES AND FIXES:
- Added H18.0.532 plugin build
- Added support for instancing using the "instancefile" point attribute.
- Added support for nested instancing.
- Fixed a problem with the textures compression formats.
- New "Octane_IPR_disableEventsUpdate" HScript command to disable the IPR events updating, also included in the Octane IPR shelf.
- New option in the plugin options panel to enable the NVLink feature from the plugin.
* OCTANE 2020.1.4 FEATURES AND BUGS FIXED:
- Fixed issue causing Octane to not to start on machines using older CPUs without AVX instruction set support.
- Fixed issue causing OSX slaves to deactivate their license even if there are other instances of standalone or plugins currently running on that machine.
- Fixed triplanar projection in OSL when used as emission texture distribution.
- Fixed issue causing displacement nodes not working with layered material nodes.
- Fixed white balance picking when upsampling was enabled.
- Fixed a crash on Windows 7 when upsampling was enabled.
- Fixed issue causing hair primitives and geometry using texture displacement to temporarily disappear after scene some scene changes.
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RELEASE 2020.1.3.0
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* PLUGIN FEATURES AND FIXES:
- Fixed the Universal camera IPR pick, pan and zoom functions.
- Fixed the Universal camera othographic projection scale.
* OCTANE 2020.1.3 FEATURES AND BUGS FIXED:
- Fixed regression causing VDB files of version 224 to not to load.
- Fixed mix material not rendering the autobumped normal when mult-layer material was used in one of the material slots.
- Fixed issue causing the light pass to not to capture direct light if the cast shadows option was disabled.
- Allow OSL texture and projection shaders to have multiple outputs from which Octane will use the first one.
- Allow OSL shaders to have float output which will produce a greyscale color.
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RELEASE 2020.1.2.0
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* PLUGIN FEATURES AND FIXES:
- Added H18.0.499 plugin build
- Universal camera node
- Render Target HDA updated including the OSL and Universal cameras and the Planetary environment
* OCTANE 2020.1.2 FEATURES AND BUGS FIXED:
- Fixed issue causing incorrect evaluation of materials using anisotropy.
- Fixed layered material node incorrectly update the multi layer flag.
- Fixed material opacity not working for fully metallic materials.
- Fixed opacity of the bottom most layered material not affecting the entire material stack.
- Fixed issue causing portal transparency not working correctly.
- Fixed a few incorrect pin accesses for some materials when they should be using default values.
- Fixed application crash when enabling AI light on an empty render target.
- Fixed issue with denoised pass where the environment would be merged with the geometry.
- Fixed issue causing incorrect evaluation of overlapping mediums.
- Fixed application crash happening while compiling some scenes with very large numbers of intersecting instances.
- Fixed CUDA error happening in some scenarios when using peer-to-peer memory and RTX.
- Fixed CUDA error happening sometimes after AI scene updates when using peer-to-peer memory.
- Fixed CUDA error after some scene updates when using emission and RTX.
- Fixed issue causing wrong normals near geometry edges happening when using fast rounded edges on RTX meshes.
- Fixed issue with scenes containing volumes that would either not start rendering or fail after a few frames.
- Fixed issue causing the render passes export dialog to export just the beauty pass when the upsampler was enabled.
- Fixed issue not allowing to enable RTX unless the master would have RTX support.
- Fixed issue causing the main denoiser pass not to display the texture environment.
- Fixed issue causing the main denoiser pass not to include environment medium absorption data.
- Fixed issue causing the gizmo to not to update light primitive positions when connected to an object layer map.
- Fixed crash while trying to load geometry containing empty vertex data for some motion intervals.
- Fixed performance regression in Pascal devices compared to 2019.1.5.
- Fixed use of _time() in OSL camera shaders.
- Fixed issue causing network slaves to hang with scenes using auto bumpmap.
- Fixed issue causing network slaves to produce different output for some info passes from that on the master.
- Fixed plugin crash during scene export when a mesh node would be used as root.
- Improved accurate rounded edges in regions where both convex and concave curvature exist.
- Reduced geometry memory usage up to 5% when using RTX.
- Texture cache is used now just for baked textures and compressed images.
- Enforce loading VDB files just up to the version currently supported (223).
Happy rendering,
Your OTOY Team
The IPR in Houdini is built around a custom OpenGL window that should be really fast. The drawback is that it is based on an old library no longer fully supported, especially on MacOS, so the goal is to replace it for a modern, Qt5 based, IPR. If you need help with the Houdini plugin, let me know 
someone announces 2020.2 and we all start yelling and screaming