OctaneRender™ 4 RC 4 Tweet

[haze]

Hi all,

In this release we fixed several issues that have been reported. Starting from this release, we no longer include cuDNN in the Octane download due to its size. Octane will now download it once automatically when started.

Please note that this build will expire in 120 days, this is now shown on the bottom right of the Standalone release.

If this is the first time you use V4, you can find some introductory material on V4 here: first release post of V4.

Whilst we have reached the feature lock milestone, we consider this a non-stable release, as we expect to stabilise in preparation for the first stable. Until then, please do not use this for production purposes.

Please make sure you have NVIDIA driver 387 or newer on Windows and Linux, and any CUDA driver for Mac that supports CUDA 9.1. Please also note that architecture improvements mean we can no longer support Fermi GPUs.

EDIT: There have been various reports that the Linux and OSX builds crash during startup after the cuDNN library got downloaded and installed. We hope to have found and fixed the issue and updated the OSX and Linux release builds accordingly.


Changes since OctaneRender 4 RC3:

When starting Octane for the first time, you'll see the following window:

EDIT:
Occasionally when we upgrade cuDNN, you may see this again at a later date. You can simply click Download and Octane will download the file needed. If you have any trouble with this process please let us know. If you need to, you can manually download the file and copy it into "C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\OctaneRender\thirdparty\cudnn_7_0_5" folder so all octane builds (standalone and plugins) can load it or in a particular build folder(eg: standalone installation folder), but only that particular build can load it.

If you need to download the files directly yourself, we include links here for convenience:
cudnn64_7.dll for Windows
libcudnn.7.dylib for Mac OSX
libcudnn.so.7.0.5 for Linux

• Image tiles texture node will now work for displacement.
• Texture compression will no longer block the user interface, but when starting render, any compression jobs will complete before rendering begins.
• Fixed incorrect behaviour when more than 64 render passes are enabled, which also caused a lot of error messages.
• Fixed texture preview.
• Fixed a crash when loading very small images.
• Fixed light linking passes 7 and 8.
• Fixed volume rendering when there are multiple volumes in the scene.
• Fixed some specular material differences from 3.08.
• Fixed universal material special case when BRDF is not Octane BRDF, IOR is 1.0, transmission is 1.0, with black diffuse.
• Fixed denoise results when affect alpha option is enabled .
• Fixed AI Light with animated triangles in the scene.
• Fixed random colour texture.
• Fixed a performance issue when using direct light kernel with a medium or volume where absorption is very low.
• Improve OSL compiler performance.
• Lua API: fix print() for node graphs.
• Fixed an issue when exporting scatter nodes to FBX.
• Fixed denoiser output when using affect alpha without an alpha channel.
• Fixed a case where network render GPU count was incorrect.

Downloads for users with a regular license
OctaneRender for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender for Windows (zip)
OctaneRender for Mac OS (updated on 19/9/2018)
OctaneRender for Linux (updated on 19/9/2018)

Downloads for users with a Studio subscription license
OctaneRender for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender for Windows (zip)
OctaneRender for Mac OS (updated on 19/9/2018)
OctaneRender for Linux (updated on 19/9/2018)


Happy rendering,
Your OTOY Team

[funk]

I have a question about cudnn.

Cudnn downloaded successfully, and was placed in AppData\Local\OctaneRender\thirdparty\cudnn_xxxx

It looks like you can store different versions of the dll this way.

Will plugins be able to use this location too, and not have to redownload the dll? eg. if the correct version of the dll exists, can plugins use it?

EDIT: The answer is YES. Very nice

[grimm]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the new version, but it's not running on my Linux Mint 19 system. I downloaded it and ran, the window popped up for downloading the cudnn library. It downloaded ok, at least no errors, but then it just sat there with the splash window and didn't open the main Octane window. I checked my system monitor and saw that one CPU core is pegged at 100%. I let it run for a few minutes with no change, and then I killed it.

I restarted Octane and it didn't open the cudnn download window, but it's still stuck at the splash window and the main interface never opens. During this time one of the CPU cores is again pegged at 100% usage. I ran it from the terminal but no error messages are displayed. I had to kill it again after several minutes of running.

Jason

[nuno1980]

!!!!!VERY VERY ATTENTION!!!!!

---> viewtopic.php?f=9&t=55390 - you may fix PMC kernel issue in v3/early v4.
-->>> But you MUST add Old PMC (v2) for new v4 release , if you can't fix modern PMC.

[Notiusweb]

If Octane has this NVidia cuDNN stuff inside it, would this then mean that possibly at some point Octane could directly handle Nvidia's .mdl materials, and Iray Uber Shaders?

Also, any direct PBR SBSAR material import and Octane.

Also, any news with gLTF? Is development still ongoing with Octane?
Are they, like, still going out together, or did they break up, because I saw gLTF in a club and was like, OMG, it is not in Octane yet.
And then I saw Octane doing more with FBX files and ABC files.
And Octane still has a gLTF node, but, like the node can't be connected to anything...
So, like, I'm hearing all these different things, and I'm just like, totally....gL-WTF....you know?

[Notiusweb]

Not sure if this is a bug. If it is, it has been going on since all versions I have tried (3.02 and >).
But just looking for some thoughts as I am seeing this in RC4...

Imported ABC character, my images will show 2 materials connecting on a figure, for (1) arm and (2) body.
In these images the 2 materials are set to a default Glossy.

ISSUE - When I subdivide the mesh in the ABC geometry file settings, there appears to be UV warping between the 2 material sections of the ABC.
Occurs whether Diffuse, Glossy, etc.

With SubDivision OFF

With SubDivision On

This doesn't happen with all characters I import, but I'm wondering if a particular ABC might expose an issue that is in fact there.
Any reasons why the SubD would cause, what looks like, a UV warping, but with said warping not being there when there is no SubD applied?


EDIT -
I unchecked Load Vertex normals, and then it appeared when there was no SubD applied.

What might this mean, in context with the above.




EDIT 2-
I exported the original ABC to 3DS Max and used the Octane Plugin to then export the scene to standalone, and the issue was there too.
This is the export from Max plugin, with one singular mat, I made it specular.

So this makes me think, it's a Geo problem somehow? Because how could 1 material be warped, right?
BUT...
what I'm thinking is that Octane has a way to overcome this, as the checkbox for "Load Vertex Normals" corrects for that.
And maybe the issue is that it only works without Subdivision, but is not working with Subdivision?

THX.

[enricocerica]

There is a non expected behavior with Blender plugin, when a mesh is used to scatter particles and emitter is disabled, only particles should be rendered and not the mesh.

[wallace]

If Octane has this NVidia cuDNN stuff inside it, would this then mean that possibly at some point Octane could directly handle Nvidia's .mdl materials, and Iray Uber Shaders?

Also, any direct PBR SBSAR material import and Octane.

cudnn is only a library which we use for denoiser, our material system has absolutely no dependency on it currently.

Sbsar and MDL are definitely on the to do list, but there are quite a few things that will happen before them. Namely layered material node and spectron features that were shown in SIGGRAPH 2018.

[Zay]

Not sure if this is a bug. If it is, it has been going on since all versions I have tried (3.02 and >).
But just looking for some thoughts as I am seeing this in RC4...

Try the "Welding" setting when importing the abc file.

[funk]

I'm just messing around with a scene where the denoiser is running every 20 seconds or so.

I noticed the result looks quite clean, but has random dots in several areas. It's a bit too big to attach to the forums.
(EDIT: I PMed a dropbox link to haze. Let me know if I should send it somewhere else)

Here is what it looks like (ctrl+zoomed in to make it easier to see). It looks the same even after rendering for 20 minutes