NOTE: The software in this forum thread is not 100% reliable, this is a development build and is meant for testing by experienced octane users. If you are a new octane user, we recommend to use the current stable release.
!!! THIS IS THE BETA VERSION OF OctaneRender PLUGIN, IT IS RELEASED FOR INITIAL BUG HUNTING ONLY !!!
!!! PLEASE DON'T USE IT FOR PRODUCTION & DON'T SAVE THE SCENES FROM THIS BETA VERSION FOR FUTURE USE AS THERE ARE HIGH CHANCES TO LOSE THEM !!!
!!! SCENES SAVED IN THIS BETA VERSION ARE NOT GUARANTEED TO WORK IN SUBSEQUENT VERSIONS !!!
!!! THE RENDER ENGINE IS YET TO BE STABLE, SOME CRASHES & BUGS ARE EXPECTED FOR THIS TEST VERSION OF THE PLUGIN !!!
Otoy® is proud to announce the availability of a new test version of OctaneRender™ for Maya®: OctaneRender™ 2020.1
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 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 64-bit on Windows, Linux and OSX operating systems.
To use this version, you need a GPU of compute model 3.0 or higher. Support for Fermi GPUs (like GTX 4xx and 5xx) has been dropped. Also make sure you use a driver of version 387 or higher and if you are working on Mac OS that have a CUDA driver installed that supports at least CUDA 9.1.
Changelog and the installers for Octane Standalone 2020.1 are here:
OctaneRender Standalone 2020.1 XB3
Changes since versions 17.5:
- Integrated the 2020.1 XB3 rendering engine.
- Implemented the support of PhoenixFD 4.0.
- Minor UI improvements...
Notes about PhoenixFD support:
- There is no OSX version of PhoenixFD available at Chaos Group.
- There is no PhoenixFD 4.X version for Maya 2020 released so far by Chaos Group. Thus it is not supported by Octane for Maya 2020. Even after Phoenix for Maya 2020 gets released, it will not automatically work in Octane for Maya 2020. I need to explicitly implement the support of it in Maya 2020 after it gets released.
- At this stage the only way to get PhoenixFD liquid shape rendered in Octane - is to switch-on the "Maya mesh" type in the "Rendering" rollout of Phoenix simulator. Which will trigger Phoenix to generate a standard Maya-mesh object of liquid shape, to which the standard Octane shaders can be assigned as usual.
I've discussed this with the Phoenix development team at Chaos Group, and they started working on the Phonix SDK improvements that would allow the Phoenix SDK consumers to render Phoenix liquid shape without forcing the user to switch-on the "Maya mesh" in Phoenix settings. After this gets improved - this will be done by Octane transparently for a user, with no need to have "Maya mesh" switched on. But these Phoenix SDK improvements are still not ready, Phoenix guys are still working on them (not sure if they will be able to implement it at all). So, after they release a new improved version of Phoenix - Octane for Maya will implement its support and will start using these improvements, and you will not be required to have the "Maya mesh" switched-on anymore for liquids rendering. - PhoenixFD has a bug: when generating the mesh-shape of its liquid it does not generate the velocity-vectors' colorset for that mesh. So you will not get the motion blur of liquid shape rendered in Octane before Phoenix gets this bug fixed. I've already let the Phoenix team know about that, they are working on all the fixes...
- Be prepared, that after switching-on the "Maya mesh" in Phoenix simulator for liquid rendering, the animation rendering in Octane becomes PAINFULLY SLOW. This is nothing to do with Octane - this is Phoenix re-evaluating its generated Maya-mesh for liquid shape for every frame without caching it, and Phoenix does it EXTREMELY SLOW in blocking mode. So when Octane is gathering the animation data from different frames, Phoenix slows down this whole process, delaying the frame-data switching by its internal calculations of its generated liquid-mesh.
I've discussed this with the Phoenix guys too, and they promised me that they are looking into this right now while doing other discussed Phoenix improvements. So there is a hope that it could become faster in newer versions of Phoenix after they improve it. - Be prepared to one Octane rendering-engine's nasty bug related to this, which I've already shown to the engine-team. For some big liquids (or other Phoenix simulations), if you enable motion blur or "frames to pre-cache", after starting the rendering all your CPU memory will be completely eaten by octane-engine, and your whole computer may become completely frozen, and you will be forced to restart it. This happens in Standalone too after exporting e.g. a motion-blurred Phoenix-liquid-foam scene to ORBX and trying to render it there.
So, be careful with using motion blur and/or the "frames to pre-cache" when rendering Phoenix objects in Octane, before it gets fixed by the engine-team. - Octane engine has no native means implemented to render the liquid-foam naturally. You can play with Phoenix' foam stickiness settings and assign a specular material to foam particles (in "Octane" rollout of a simulator) with a "thin wall" enabled, and play with material settings to make it at least look somehow close to a "foam", but to make its shape/bubbles look more natural - the rendering-engine must implement the support of this kind of rendering. I've discussed with the engine-team the improvements required to be made in the Octane rendering-engine to improve the look of the liquid-foam, so maybe it gets implemented later...
KNOWN ISSUES:
- "CUDA error 700" and other CUDA errors are expected to happen from time to time: these are the Octane engine's bugs. Should be fixed with later SDK/Standalone versions...
- Due to some inconsistency on the rendering engine level the builtin-scriptgraph nodes are not going to be present in the plugin. At least at this stage.
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Subscription Enterprise Downloads
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OctaneRender for Maya Enterprise [Windows]
OctaneRender for Maya Enterprise [Linux]
OctaneRender for Maya Enterprise [MacOS]
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Subscription Studio Downloads
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OctaneRender for Maya Studio [Windows]
OctaneRender for Maya Studio [Linux]
OctaneRender for Maya Studio [MacOS]
