OctaneRender™ Standalone 3.00 alpha 5

[abstrax]

Hi all,

This is the 5th alpha release of v3 fixing various bugs and adding some new features as well as showing the current progress of the Standalone UI overhaul.

We split the v3 alpha release notes into two posts: This one, which provides the download links and information specific to this particular release and a features post describing and discussing the new features and changes of 3.00. The features post will be continuously updated until we reach the stable version 3.00.


Alpha and beta version disclaimer

In contrast to v2 we want to do the alpha and beta testing publicly, to get more feedback earlier and to have changes tested more thoroughly. The plan is to let all users with a valid v2 license use the v3 alpha and beta versions until we decide that the beta period has ended and we release the first stable v3. After that you will have to upgrade to v3 or will not be able to use any v3 versions (including alpha and beta versions) anymore. We don't know yet, when that will be, but we will give you a warning a few weeks in advance so you can prepare.

Since there is a higher likelihood of severe bugs in alpha and beta versions you shouldn't use them for production work. It would be nice if you could test some production scenes with the alpha and beta versions, but you should definitely not rely on the stability of those versions to finish your projects.

In the Standalone you should be able to load v3 scenes in v2, losing only features provided in v3 and maybe some converted settings (like the new "mid level" in displacement nodes). With the plugins this isn't necessarily the case, which means that you should not create any plugin projects with v3 alpha/beta if you are not 100% sure that you want to upgrade to v3 or that you don't mind losing these projects when the beta period ends.

Offline authentication is disabled in alpha and beta versions.


Manual

We don't have an updated manual for v3 yet. That's partially due to the fact that we are currently overhauling the documentation web site, which needs to be finished until we can publish an updated manual for v3. We will let you know when the v3 manual is available until then, please refer to the v3 new features thread and its discussion.


CUDA requirements

Due to a CUDA compiler bug we had switch to CUDA 7.5, which means on Windows and Linux you may need to update your NVIDIA graphics driver to a current version which supports at least CUDA 7.5. On Mac OSX you may have to update the CUDA driver for Mac to a current version supporting at least CUDA 7.5.


Changes since 3.00 alpha 4

• Continued to overhaul the Standalone UI as part of the work on the plugin API. Now you can dock/undock panes, save layouts and create multiple instances of some panels. This is still very much work in progress and there are a few known bugs, but initial feedback is very welcome anyway. In the coming days we will add some more details to the (see the new features thread).
• Added new medium node "volume medium" which is similar to the "scatter medium", but allows you to additionally specify gradients via new volume ramp nodes, which map the channel values to a colour that is multiplied with the channel colour (see the new features thread). The gradients are ignored if used in a surface material.
• Replaced the pin "smoothing" of the gradient texture node with an enum pin "interpolation" which provides the options "constant", "linear" and "cubic" ("constant" is new).
• Added new pin "invert absorption" to all medium nodes which inverts the absorption channel and effectively converts the absorption channel to a transparency channel, which seems to be preferred by most users.
• Changed the label "scale" of the volume node to "density", because that's what it defines.
• Added pin "gamma before response" to the camera imager node. Enabling this option brings back the old behaviour of versions < 3.00 alpha 4, where the imager gamma got applied before the camera response curves. With 3.00 alpha 4 we swapped that order, which broke quite a few older scenes (for example the IDEA benchmark scene). The default is off, which means gamma is applied after the camera response curves, which allows for example plugins to change the gamma after rendering. Older scenes are converted automatically.
• Added pin "color" to specify custom colours for object layers, which are rendered in a new info pass/channel "object color". This allows you to create coloured masks.
• updated the Photoshop plugin to support the new info pass "object color".
• Added two pins "minimum" and "size" to the baking camera to specify the offset and size of the UV region to bake.
• The render priority is working again. The performance hit is roughly 20% for medium priority and 40% for low priority. Let me know if that is useful to you.
• Fixed a bug that built the UV acceleration structure even if no baking camera is used.
• Fixed issue causing the baking camera to generate incorrect outputs when baking transparent surfaces (see viewtopic.php?p=262834#p262834).
• Revert baking does not ignore transparent or invisible objects anymore.
• Fixed bug that caused the render target to not initialize the FPS and shutter settings of a just loaded project.
• Fixed kernel crash when a volume is rendered in a scene that has a (mostly) black environment.
• Fixed orientation of the tangent vector when the UV coordinate system is left-handed. This affects normal mapping.
• Fixed rendering of volumes that have only the emission channel enabled.
• Fixed rendering of overlapping volumes with multiple root nodes (which are usually large data sets).
• Fixed loading of volumes, reducing the memory consumption in some cases.
• Fixed unnecessary sampling of portals that are switched off.
• Fixed incorrect rendering of the object layer ID pass/channel.
• Fixed picking of volume media and object layers.
• Fixed bug that caused motion blur not being disabled when a motion vector pass/channel is rendered.
• Fixed a crash when the rendering is saved as 16-bit OpenEXR.
• Fixed massive memory leak in net render slaves (see viewtopic.php?p=263100#p263100).
• Fixed some performance issues with large scenes.
• Fixed update of the list of the most recently used files on OSX.
• Fixed spurious crashes on Linux and OSX, when sending information to OctaneLive or statistics.
• Fixed incorrect handling of file paths where some directory part starts with ".." (see viewtopic.php?f=81&t=51185).
• Added property octane.node.hash and octane.nodegraph.hash that can be used as a unique key in tables.
• Added property octane.scriptgraph._evaluateAllChanges which enables the evaluation of the script graph if any of the input nodes changed, even those that are connected indirectly via some intermediate nodes.
• Added property octane.scriptgraph._name that allows Lua script graphs to specify the default name, when the script graph is created.
• After finishing a Lua script the render target will be updated, to make sure that it doesn't show the render state of nodes that don't exist anymore.
• Added rootGraph to PROPS_NODE_ITEM which allows you to fetch the root node graph the node/node graph belongs to.
• Added command line argument --no-wer which disables the error report dialog on Windows, which is useful if you run Octane via a script / the command line.

Known issues

Region rendering is still broken and we are working to bring it back as soon as possible. Unfortunately it requires a total rewrite due to the film buffer changes.


OctaneRender Standalone downloads

Windows
- 64-bit commercial version (installer)
- 64-bit commercial version (ZIP archive)

Mac OS X
- 64-bit commercial version (DMG image)

Linux
- 64-bit commercial version (ZIP archive)


Photoshop workflow plugin download

You can download and install the updated plugin either via the Adobe Exchange platform (version 1.0.1) or you can download it from the link below and manually install it:

Windows and Mac OS X
- Photoshop extension (ZXP archive)


Happy rendering,
Your OTOY NZ Team

[mib2berlin]

Hi team, thank you for update.
Missed render priority lately for volume render, good it is back.

Cheers, mib
EDIT: It seams the render priority setting does nothing compare to Alpha 4.

[alien]

Octane is really good render But Licensing is the problem so much restrictions, Hope you fix it in v3 .. let us build and run our own render farms with how many GPUs we like or we need.

[smicha]

Thank you OTOY!

[Goldorak]

Octane is really good render But Licensing is the problem so much restrictions, Hope you fix it in v3 .. let us build and run our own render farms with how many GPUs we like or we need.

More options along those are being prepared once V3 is out of beta. We'll have more details to share at GTC.

[smicha]

Marcus,

I cannot run it. If fails right at startup

(event log, Polish (in brackets I put some translations))

Nazwa aplikacji powodującej błąd: octane.exe, wersja: 3.0.0.5, sygnatura czasowa: 0x56cf97f0 (app name)
Nazwa modułu powodującego błąd: octane.exe, wersja: 3.0.0.5, sygnatura czasowa: 0x56cf97f0 (module mane)
Kod wyjątku: 0xc0000005 (exception code)
Przesunięcie błędu: 0x0000000000afff30 (error...)
Identyfikator procesu powodującego błąd: 0x20dc (process ID that causes error)
Godzina uruchomienia aplikacji powodującej błąd: 0x01d1707af8f9f5b7 (hour)
Ścieżka aplikacji powodującej błąd: C:\Program Files\OTOY\OctaneRender 3.00_alpha_5\octane.exe (path)
Ścieżka modułu powodującego błąd: C:\Program Files\OTOY\OctaneRender 3.00_alpha_5\octane.exe (path)
Identyfikator raportu: 3a0c0f1b-dc6e-11e5-8277-f46d0426680b (report ID)

PS. Now - connecting to OctaneLive failed - after some tries - Octane fails again.

[Notiusweb]

The unitless VDB files now are emitting, great!
When I loaded the scene last it was before it was working, so now when I opened it up I had to lower the power because it was so bright.
Nice!

I didn't bother to render it beyond 6,000 samples to clear out the unrendered reflection pixels on the red plane.
What can help again to make those go faster, GI Clamp, Ray Epsilon and Path Term power if it's in a dark area/shadow? Right?
Thx!

[grimm]

I'm really enjoying undocking the panels, it helps a lot with dual monitors! Are you guys thinking of having vertical and horizontal modes for the panels? One very minor quibble is that I didn't realize that the little square icon was a menu. It might be better if there was some indication that it is a menu. Awesome update thanks,

Jason

[abstrax]

Marcus,

I cannot run it. If fails right at startup

(event log, Polish (in brackets I put some translations))

Nazwa aplikacji powodującej błąd: octane.exe, wersja: 3.0.0.5, sygnatura czasowa: 0x56cf97f0 (app name)
Nazwa modułu powodującego błąd: octane.exe, wersja: 3.0.0.5, sygnatura czasowa: 0x56cf97f0 (module mane)
Kod wyjątku: 0xc0000005 (exception code)
Przesunięcie błędu: 0x0000000000afff30 (error...)
Identyfikator procesu powodującego błąd: 0x20dc (process ID that causes error)
Godzina uruchomienia aplikacji powodującej błąd: 0x01d1707af8f9f5b7 (hour)
Ścieżka aplikacji powodującej błąd: C:\Program Files\OTOY\OctaneRender 3.00_alpha_5\octane.exe (path)
Ścieżka modułu powodującego błąd: C:\Program Files\OTOY\OctaneRender 3.00_alpha_5\octane.exe (path)
Identyfikator raportu: 3a0c0f1b-dc6e-11e5-8277-f46d0426680b (report ID)

PS. Now - connecting to OctaneLive failed - after some tries - Octane fails again.

Which driver version did you install? Which operating system are you using? And when exactly does it crash?

[Notiusweb]

Mojave,
A couple users currently have the issue where our PC will freeze when accessing baking cam. So for example, we'll have Scene A rendering fine on Thin Lens, then when we switch to Baking Cam on Scene A, we get freeze.

What may be some bullet point differences between V3 processing a thin lens render vs a baking cam render:
ie does it access more VRAM than a thin lens render, or is it doing something that draws more power from the GPU in some way, when compared to a thin lens render.
What is known about baking cam render as far as it possibly being a more compute hungry process compared to a thin lens render?

(FYI - I am assuming baking cam render by default is more compute hungry than a thin lens counterpart render, please correct me if I am wrong to assume this.)

Thanks for any info you can provide, it could help reveal workarounds preventing a breakdown.

I am assuming everyone is using 3.00 alpha 4 right?

You are correct, there's more VRAM usage for the baking camera, we are going to reduce significantly the amount used in a next version, but will still be using some extra memory, which is used as acceleration structure for the UV geometry.

Also, in terms of computational complexity, the baking camera requires one extra step for calculating the individual camera ray directions before starting the actual pathtracing process so you got it right too.

It would also help if you guys could share any of the scenes that cause the freeze or some extra information, screenshots, etc.

Thank you.

Mojave, thanks. This issue remains in Alpha 5 so I am continuing here.

Can you describe what happens when I raise the resolution that makes the render process more demanding. Is it increased VRAM demand on the GPU leading to increased VRAM traffic?

The reason I ask is because in a high-res scene in V3, I can wave my mouse cursor (the black arrow) around in a Figure-8 to gauge and detect an incoming slow down/freeze. At first I see skipping in the black arrow, followed by a greater choppy jumping, and then a freeze. And this slowdown to freeze is more likely to happen in scenes at high res with (1) baking cam, (2) VDB/volume scattering, and (3) high displacement. What I found is that at lower resolutions in V3 Alpha, this skipping of my Figure-8 either does not occur, or is imperceptible, and is at any rate inconsequential, as there never is a freeze.

But the higher I set the res, the more the choppy my mouse Figure-8 gets, ultimately in instances leading to a freeze when some threshold has been unfortunately met. I went back as far as Octane 2.06 and found at higher res this phenomenon occurs too, however very faintly, to a much lower degree, never ending in a freeze. Yet it is there. So what is that 'something' that is occurring. (I think whatever it is may be a big clue to identifying the freezing in baking cam/high res scenes for people with certain PCIe 1x GPU connections in the V3 Alphas.)

Thanks for your thoughts again, it helps to have some added insight into what occurs. Kind of like the after-credit producer-talk in Game of Thrones.

EDIT- I use a splitter which connects multi-GPU at 1x vs a straight mobo connection if 16x. There is no issue at 16x, so I am aware it is my chosen peripheral that is provoking the issue. But any info can allow us to not only narrow down a possible issue-bypass fix, but implement workarounds in meantime while trouble shooting is occurring. For example, I wave my mouse to test how stable a scene is at lower res, then raise to incremental higher resolutions, and mod down features (ie emission scatter, displacement) if I get skipping at higher res.

Gracias!