OctaneRender® 2024.1 Alpha 2 Tweet

[haze]

Hi all,

We are happy to bring you the second alpha of 2024.1. Thanks to all for your feedback and testing.

We covered a lot of issues, but also worked hard to include the macOS build for this release. It includes support for MetalRT. Please note that only scenes with triangles are supported right now. We are working to include other primitives, but if you use them (eg texture displacement, hair, etc), then Octane will switch to software tracing, for now.

For an overview of all changes in 2024.1 compared to 2023.1.x please check the 2024.1 Alpha 1 release post.

This macOS build is also able to do network rendering using Windows or Linux CUDA nodes.

Some important notes about these builds:

The minimum NVIDIA driver version that is required by this version is 522. You can launch Octane with an older driver version, but it will fail to render and it will produce an error message in the log.

The minimum supported macOS version is 14. If you depend on using an older version, please let us know.

Open Image Denoise is supported on CUDA compute model 7 and later, we fallback to the CPU version on machine with older models. On macOS, only the CPU version is supported.

As with all experimental builds, we advise to not use this release for production purposes. We are trying to, but we can't guarantee that scenes saved with this version will be compatible in future releases. Changes are being made daily.

Changes since 2023.1 Alpha 1

Improvements

• Added new Light mixer output AOV layer node. This has the same functionality as the old Light mixer output AOV node, which is now hidden.
• Made the Legacy output AOV layer node visible to allow output AOVs of older scenes to be used as layers in the new output AOV node.
• Added "Subtract" and "Divide" blend modes to the Legacy output AOV layer node.
• Added pin "Affect occlusion only", which controls whether only the alpha channel is modified, or whether the (premultiplied) RGB channels are also modified, to the following output AOV layer nodes:
  
  • Adjust opacity
    
  • Mask with layer group
    
  • Mask with Cryptomatte
    
• Added the following new output AOV layer nodes, which can be used to store an image during compositing and recall it in a higher layer and make it easier to build reusable effects, and can improve performance by preventing repeated work:
  
  • Save checkpoint
    
  • Load checkpoint
    
  • Discard checkpoint
    
• Added new Sharpen output AOV layer node.
• The "Camera imager" node type is now called "Imager", because it's not related to cameras.
• The Imager node's "Saturate to white" pin is now called "Clip to white".
• Added option to switch between shading and smooth normals in the falloff texture node. This also fixes the problem that the mode "Normal vs. eye ray" did not take bump mapping into account.
• Refactored how we allocate memory for the denoiser buffers: Buffers required by the denoiser will be allocated before we upload the scene data to make sure that we have the required memory available to run the denoiser when needed. This should solve cases where the denoiser failed due to an insufficient amount of available memory.
• OSL: Added ray type "direct" to the OSL function raytype() to match direct light rays.

Fixes

• Fixed various problems with the macOS version to allow us finally releasing it. Apologies for the delay.
• The combined slider step size of value nodes that have multiple destination pins is now the smallest step size of the destination pins instead of picking the stp size of the last destination pin.
• Fixed render failure if using an analytic sphere light with photon mapping.
• Fixed a net render node failure due to missing RTX data for meshes after an incremental render data update.
• Fixed network rendering on macOS when using certain OSL textures, and when using these built-in nodes:
  
  • Channel inverter
    
  • Image adjustment
    
  • Tile patterns
    
  • Chainmail
    
  • Angular field
    
• The bump map offset on macOS is now exactly the same as on Windows/Linux.
• Fixed mismatch in the Denoise albedo AOV between Windows/Linux and macOS versions.
• Renamed Imager node pin "Prefilter auxiliary images" to "Prefilter auxiliary AOVs".
• Renamed Imager node pin "Prefilter auxiliary images" to "Prefilter auxiliary inputs".
• OSL: The new OSL features message passing and non-inlined code now work with Windows/Linux net render nodes.

Downloads

Downloads for Studio+ Subscription Users

OctaneRender Studio+ 2024.1 Alpha 2 Standalone for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2024.1 Alpha 2 Standalone for Windows (ZIP archive)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2024.1 Alpha 2 Standalone for Linux
OctaneRender 2024.1 Alpha 2 Standalone for MacOS

OctaneRender Studio+ 2024.1 Alpha 2 Node for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2024.1 Alpha 2 Node for Windows (ZIP archive)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2024.1 Alpha 2 Node for Linux

Demo Downloads
OctaneRender Demo 2024.1 Alpha 2 Standalone for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender Demo 2024.1 Alpha 2 Standalone for Windows (ZIP archive)
OctaneRender Demo 2024.1 Alpha 2 Standalone for Linux (ZIP archive)

Happy rendering
Your OTOY team

[northalex78]

Excellent news just before Xmas. Hope this leaves alpha and goes full production soon.

[SSmolak]

Please add Linear and Gamma 2.2 modes to "Apply camera response curve (SDR only)" AOV node. Also we don't have exposure control in AOV's.

Mask with layer group stopped to work.

[john_otoy]

Mask with layer group stopped to work.

It appears to be working in this test file. If you are still having problems, please send me a scene.

[karl]

Please add Linear and Gamma 2.2 modes to "Apply camera response curve (SDR only)" AOV node. Also we don't have exposure control in AOV's.

Mask with layer group stopped to work.

Linear is a no-op, so you can just use no layer at all.

To apply a gamma curve, use the "Apply gamma curve" layer instead.

To adjust exposure, use the "Adjust brightness" layer.

"Mask with layer group" should still work as it used to; can you give some more details about what you're trying to do?

[SSmolak]

Linear is a no-op, so you can just use no layer at all.

Thank you for info. I forgot that in Cinema 4D there is need to switch to Linear in pop-up menu :

linear.jpg (14.38 KiB) Viewed 2104 times

[SSmolak]

Mask with layer group stopped to work.

It appears to be working in this test file. If you are still having problems, please send me a scene.

Thank you. It was little issue in C4D version - will be resolved.

[SSmolak]

Can you check how Mesh to SDF with Field Shape texture works on this alpha ? I don't know how to setup nodes in Standalone but in C4D version it works extremely slow compared to previous versions and it is very unstable - it often freeze during rendering. It doesn't show anything on start until something is not changed in field texture.

Simple setup like this :

[jobigoud]

Can you check how Mesh to SDF with Field Shape texture works on this alpha ? I don't know how to setup nodes in Standalone but in C4D version it works extremely slow compared to previous versions and it is very unstable - it often freeze during rendering. It doesn't show anything on start until something is not changed in field texture.

Please share the options you use for the Mesh to SDF (voxel size and border padding). How many voxels are generated? Does lowering the number of generated voxels changes anything?

[SSmolak]

Please share the options you use for the Mesh to SDF (voxel size and border padding). How many voxels are generated? Does lowering the number of generated voxels changes anything?

I see only these options here. Changing do nothing except more or less accurate SDF shape.