OctaneRender® 2024.1 Alpha 4 [current 2024.1] Tweet

[haze]

Hi all,

Today we bring you Alpha 4 of 2024.1, which is hopefully the last Alpha. Thanks to everyone who has reported issues and given us your feedback.

For details on the features added in 2024.1, please see the 2024.1 Alpha 1 release post.

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.

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 still being made daily.

Changes since 2024.1 Alpha 3

• New Reference graph that allows keeping references to .orbx and .ocs files in the scene, without necessarily loading them.
  
  If an .orbx or .ocs has input or output linkers, the same linkers will be available in the Reference graph. Additionally, geometry, connected to each render target, will be available through extra output linkers. It's possible to load/unload the Reference graph contents with the checkbox in the node editor. If an orbx file was saved with bounding box data, the bounding boxes can be displayed by the Reference graph (e.g. show bounding boxes when the reference is unloaded).
  To save orbx with bounding box data, use File -> Save as reference package...
  
  New Lua functions were added:
  New function octane.nodegraph.loadAllReferences
  New function octane.nodegraph.unloadAllReferences
  New function octane.nodegraph.referenceGraphCount
  New function octane.project.saveAsReferencePackage
  New property table octane.project.PROPS_REFERENCE_PACKAGE_EXPORT_INFO
  
• Fixed incorrect shadow cast by clipping material onto toon materials.
  
• New output AOV layer node type: Apply imager and post processing. This allows using an Imager node and a Post processing node as a layer in an output AOV.
  
• You can use area() and calculatenormal() in OSL shaders now.
  
• Added Priority input to the toon material node, which is used to control whether a clipping material clips the toon material or not.
  
• New output AOV layer node type: "Dither for 8-bit display (SDR only)".
  
• Added a new "Time" node producing the current time, in seconds, with an optional offset and multiplier applied.
  
• Show an opacity slider when an "Adjust opacity" output AOV layer node is collapsed in the node inspector.
  
• Fixed issue causing render hangs on macOS and other undefined behaviour.
  
• Fixed issue potentially causing render hangs or errors.
  
• Fixed incorrect hair shading that was not symmetric along the visual hair axis.
  
• Fixed regression on macOS which could cause render errors during quick scene updates.
  
• Fixed regression that would cause an application crash during the scene compilation.
  
• Added new point light radius for analytic lights.
  
• A directional light's translation and scaling components (from its transform) will be used to move/expand/shrink for more flexible light beam coverage.
  
• Fixed the non-matching light beam coverage when the source light is not squared.
  
• Fixed the square shape issue on light beams.
  
• Fixed the gap between the light source surface and the light beam's head.
  
• Improved appearance of some components on high resolution displays.
  
• Fixed OSL cameras using spectrum operators like _gaussian() on macOS.
  
• Fixed possible invalid code generation on macOS when using structs containing arrays.
  
• File name inputs on OSL nodes and scripted graphs are shown with a load button and separate file name label if collapsed.
  
• Improve display of clipped file names. Specifically, avoid clipping the name of the file itself.
  
• Fixed issues where the image device set in preferences could be disabled for rendering, particularly in Prime builds.
  
• Fixed OSL getmessage() in cases where the message was not previously set, but where it might be set somewhere else in the texture evaluation tree.
  
• Extended OSL support for color2, color4, vector2, vector4, and matrix33 data types to be used in the shader.
  
• Code inlining for delayed texture inputs on OSL shaders can now be controlled with a metadatum: [[int inline_delayed = 0]]. By default the code will be inlined, which is the same behavior as in version 2023.1. No-inlining was introduced in 2024.1 Alpha 1. This is optional.
  
• New output AOV layer node type "Boost highlights".
  
• Fixed using getattribute("camera:fov", xy) to get the field of view in the X and Y direction (with a float[2] or vector output) in OSL.
  
• Fixed shadow artefacts on small-scaled geometries when an analytic light is sampled for lighting.
  
• Fixed light leak on bumped normals' surfaces when an analytic light is sampled.
  
• Added "colorize" pins to the bloom/glare output AOV layers
  
• Fixed incorrect rendering of medium opacity in the info channel kernel if the camera is inside an object with a scattering medium.
  
• Made clipping material normals in the info channel kernel consistent with all other kernels. I.e. now they always keep the normals of the clipping geometry in all kernels, instead of flipping them (only) in the info channel kernel.
  
• Fixed rendering on macOS for scenes with multiple Vectron nodes
  
• Experimental support for Dx() and Dy() functions in OSL shaders.
  
• Solved the noisy appearance in postfx media pass/result when the camera has depth of field effects.
  
• Fixed changes in appearance when adding a clipping material or changing material settings like nested dielectric priority, due to Octane enabling the nested dielectric tracking. You can now use clipping materials while having nested dielectrics disabled in the kernel settings.
  
  Before this change, the renderer will switch to nested dielectrics enabled mode if a scene contains clipping materials. If you have a scene containing clipping materials that looks different due to this change, enable nested dielectrics in the kernel settings.
  
• Fixed incorrect clipping of a back-facing transparent material inside a clipping material with a lower priority.
  
• Removed Activation Status dialog on macOS.
  
• Fixed image filtering in the viewport on macOS resulting in blurry or jagged edges depending on zoom level.
  
• Changing the checkpoint name on Save/Load/Discard output AOV layer nodes now takes effect immediately on each typing keystroke.
  
• Added priority input to the hair material node.

Downloads

Downloads for Studio+ subscription users:

OctaneRender Studio+ 2024.1 Alpha 4 Standalone for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2024.1 Alpha 4 Standalone for Windows (ZIP archive)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2024.1 Alpha 4 Standalone for Linux

OctaneRender 2024.1 Alpha 4 Standalone for macOS

OctaneRender Studio+ 2024.1 Alpha 4 Node for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2024.1 Alpha 4 Node for Windows (ZIP archive)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2024.1 Alpha 4 Node for Linux

Happy rendering
Your OTOY team

[Zay]

Thanks! GTX 1080 Ti works now when enabling denoising

[lavrenovlad]

All 2024 builds have issues with denoisers. 2023 worked fine for me, I have 2x 4090s, now on 2024 I get frequent crashes when denoisers are turned on. Specifically AI denoiser is the worst it crashes all the time.

[abstrax]

All 2024 builds have issues with denoisers. 2023 worked fine for me, I have 2x 4090s, now on 2024 I get frequent crashes when denoisers are turned on. Specifically AI denoiser is the worst it crashes all the time.

What do you mean by crashes? Does the application (Standalone) crash or does rendering fail? Also is this issue reproducible? If yes, can you please send us the steps we have to do to reproduce it? Thank you.

[lavrenovlad]

All 2024 builds have issues with denoisers. 2023 worked fine for me, I have 2x 4090s, now on 2024 I get frequent crashes when denoisers are turned on. Specifically AI denoiser is the worst it crashes all the time.

What do you mean by crashes? Does the application (Standalone) crash or does rendering fail? Also is this issue reproducible? If yes, can you please send us the steps we have to do to reproduce it? Thank you.

I use Octane in Houdini. All recent 2024 builds been very unstable with denoisers, when I switch to 2023 everything works as good as it should, no crashes.
On 2024 builds denoisers crash every 5-10 minutes in any scene pretty much, AI denoiser is unreal to use. I don't have to do anything special for it to crash.

[ricky_otoy]

All 2024 builds have issues with denoisers. 2023 worked fine for me, I have 2x 4090s, now on 2024 I get frequent crashes when denoisers are turned on. Specifically AI denoiser is the worst it crashes all the time.

What do you mean by crashes? Does the application (Standalone) crash or does rendering fail? Also is this issue reproducible? If yes, can you please send us the steps we have to do to reproduce it? Thank you.

I use Octane in Houdini. All recent 2024 builds been very unstable with denoisers, when I switch to 2023 everything works as good as it should, no crashes.
On 2024 builds denoisers crash every 5-10 minutes in any scene pretty much, AI denoiser is unreal to use. I don't have to do anything special for it to crash.

Hey lavrenovlad, as mentioned on the Houdini threads, unfortunately we still can't reproduce the crashes in Houdini with the denoiser in 2024.1 Alpha 2, 3 or 4.
You could try switch which GPU does the Image/tonemap and see if that helps. (I think I may have suggested it before but can't be sure)

It would be good if you could send us the scene or export and try Standalone for a bit longer to see if it crashes there too.

[lavrenovlad]

I tried switching tonemapping, didn't seem to do anything. Sharing a scene won't help much since it's not project related crash.

[ricky_otoy]

I tried switching tonemapping, didn't seem to do anything. Sharing a scene won't help much since it's not project related crash.

I have been discussing this further, it is also possible you are hitting a PSU power peak issue? Also especially since you had been getting Windows BSOD at times.
You could try MSI Afterburner and try decrease your power consumption (power limit), it shouldn't impact performance much at all as far as I know. Another thing is to look if you have a BIOS update for your Motherboard.
If those don't work, try roll back drivers or try the Studio drivers.

[lavrenovlad]

I tried switching tonemapping, didn't seem to do anything. Sharing a scene won't help much since it's not project related crash.

I have been discussing this further, it is also possible you are hitting a PSU power peak issue? Also especially since you had been getting Windows BSOD at times.
You could try MSI Afterburner and try decrease your power consumption (power limit), it shouldn't impact performance much at all as far as I know. Another thing is to look if you have a BIOS update for your Motherboard.
If those don't work, try roll back drivers or try the Studio drivers.

I have 1600W PSU, it's more than enough for the PC. I mean if 2023 works great, what's the point to try all of that? It's clearly something wrong with 2024, I could try 2024 on my second machine with 3090ti and will let you know how it goes!