Changes since beta 3.01
File format change
Due to internal changes in Octane we had to update the file format. Because of this, scenes
made in this version of Octane will not be compatible with previous versions of Octane.
It is strongly recommended to keep a copy of your OCS scene file in the old format. Octane
will give a warning before saving an old scene in the new format.
New glossy and specular material BRDF
The roughness scale has a more linear behaviour, making it easier to use images as roughness
maps. When loading an old scene, the old roughness value is converted to a value that gives
approximately the same result.
The albedo of the material doesn't decrease anymore when increasing the roughness. This
should it make easier to create rough glass or metals. A roughness of 0.0 results in perfect
specular reflection, 1.0 results in diffuse reflection.
The fresnel effect on glossy materials is only controlled by the index slider. Setting a value
smaller than 1.0 will disable the fresnel effect, so the glossy color will be the color in the
glossy input pin, regardless of viewing angle. When selecting a value of 1.0 or bigger, the
glossy reflection color will be modulated according to the fresnel law: at grazing angles the
color will be the color set in the glossy input pin, at perpendicular angles it will be darker.
If you have a measured index of refraction, set the glossy color to 1.0.
More accurate color system
We have improved the accuracy of colors rendered in Octane. Especially the saturation of
colors is much better. For more information see http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=23669.
Updated CUDA framework
This version supports the new Kepler generation of NVIDIA GPU's, without performance
loss on Fermi GPU's, and Mac and Linux users don't have to install a CUDA toolkit anymore.
Other features and fixes:
- Mix materials containing a specular material are rendered with correct refraction.
- Clipping of colors that are out of gamut preserves the brightness of the color
- Highlights clipping can be done per channel, or they can be clipped to white.
There is a slider to gradually change the clipping between these behaviors. - When rendering with PMC the initial noisy samples are given a low weight,
making the render clean up more quickly. - Updated scene outliner:
- removed redundant levels (input list, input pin, internal node pin graph).
- Added a context menu like in the node inspector.
- Nodes can be shown in the outliner from the context menus.
- The progress of loading individual files is shown in the status bar, eliminating
any popups occurring during animation rendering. - When saving a macro with embedded textures, the original file contents are
stored, reducing file size. - The rendered image is centered when enabling the resolution lock.
- The mesh node component has a button to change mesh import settings.
- The save dialog is not shown if there are no changes in the current scene.
- fixed crash after selecting an embedded node in the outliner and pressing Delete.
- Copying nodes embedded in a node pin works correctly for old scenes.
- Fix default Y value for alphaimage and floatimage texture scale.
Windows:
ZIP archives:
- 64-bit — 32-bit
MacOS X:
- 32-bit and 64-bit
Linux:
- 64-bit
Driver Requirements
For Mac OS you need the latest CUDA driver, version 5.0.36 (http://www.nvidia.com/object/mac-driver-archive.html).
The display driver should be automatically updated.
On Linux and Windows you need the latest NVIDIA driver, version 304.51 on Linux and 306.23 on Windows. (http://www.nvidia.com/page/drivers.html)
When using earlier versions textures may not be properly aligned.
Most recent documentation: 2.58e user manual
Yours,
The OctaneRender™ Team.
