OctaneRender™ Standalone 3.03.3 Tweet

[abstrax]

Hi all,

This is a fairly large maintenance release of 3.03, fixing various issues, increasing robustness and providing an overhaul of the visible environment and various other improvements.


License tracking change since 3.02

To implement the floating licensing system we need to keep track of all Octane processes that use a specific license on the computer. This way we only release/deactivate a license when no Octane process is using that license anymore. Originally we used a third-party library for that. Unfortunately there were various issues with that and caused crashes during startup in various circumstances. To fix the problem we changed it to an internal (file based) system in version 3.02. Unfortunately this separates the license usage tracking of version 3.02 and higher from the usage tracking of 3.00, 3.01 and 3.01.1.

-> Please make sure that you only run either version 3.00, 3.01 and 3.01.1 at the same time or only version 3.02 or higher.


Experimental Pascal GPU support

We could narrow down the issue using the CUDA 8 RC toolkit and were able to work around it by doing a mixed CUDA 7.5/8 build for Pascal GPUs. For previous architectures we still use CUDA 7.5 only. This is all experimental and we haven't done any specific Pascal tweaks/optimizations yet and the performance isn't where we would expect it to be, but at least you can use your Pascal GPUs now.


Changes since version 3.03.2

• Changed the behaviour of the visible environment (see discussion in viewtopic.php?f=24&t=54417): Now you can enable the visible environment for various path types using the "backplate", "reflections" and "refractions" pins. You can find a more detailed description of the behaviour in the new features post.
• The device statistics are now updated during every viewport refresh, to make sure that the available memory stays up-to-date.
• The list of active daemons is stored when the application is stopped or network rendering is disabled. Network rendering tries to restore the previously activated daemons when gets enabled again.
• The net render master shows "authenticating" in the net render preferences while a slave is authenticating (which may wait for a free license for example).
• The net render master will re-distribute unfinished work assignments of slaves where all render devices have failed. This should solve the problem that rendering never finishes if all render devices of a slave failed, but the slave itself is still running fine.
• Moved the authentication management into its own dialog (similar to DLL builds) which can be opened via File -> Account....
• Removed the "Go online..." main menu item and Outliner button. This functionality is now covered by the authentication management dialog.
• Removed the remote preferences, since they were broken for a few years. You can still enter the full name, credits and copyright in the Live DB upload dialog and those will be stored in the local application preferences.
• Totally overhauled the way we handle the scenario when the Octane detects that its license has been deactivated: In the past the Standalone just got closed and in plugins nothing happened until they tried to start a new render thread. Now Octane switches into a deactivated state, but continues to run.
  Only when a new render thread is started, an error dialog is opened in the Standalone and in DLL builds an error message is logged (and plugins can now detect this case via the API, too). Slave builds shut down in that case, which is detected by the daemon and past on to the master. These slaves will have status "deactivated" in the net render settings dialog.
  In the Standalone you can re-activate your license by opening the authentication management dialog via File -> Account.... This dialog was originally embedded in the application preferences.
• Tried to implement of a recovery system if a render device fails. The idea is to reset a render device when it has failed and to try using it again. If it fails immediately after recovery, the device will be switched into an error state (as before). You can see in the log when the recovery kicks in. We hope that this will reduce the number of cases where a device fails and rendering can't continue, but it may be that in the real world it causes more harm than good. Please report any issues you experience with this system.
• Added 16bit EXR to the viewport save options.
• Improved behaviour of numeric fields when using the mouse wheel or arrows. This also fixes missing updates when the arrows are used with very large numbers.
• File names of scatter nodes can now be animated.
• Double-clicking a file in the OSX Finder will actually open that file in Octane, instead of just launching Octane with the default scene.
• Converted the 3 animation scripts to use the grid layout and have resizable windows.
• Fixed gaussian spectrum texture nodes in scattering media.
• Fixed the diffuse and glossy render passes - for glossy materials they only should include the diffuse and specular part of the indirect light on that material.
• Disabled motion blur for the wireframe pass, when the motion vector pass is enabled (see viewtopic.php?p=284548#p284548).
• By default, distributed ray tracing is enabled on the render passes node (see viewtopic.php?p=284546#p284546).
• A volume grid can now have different scale factors depending on the channel (absorption/scattering/emission) it is used for.
• Fixed incorrect rendering of the environment medium using the DL AO kernel (see viewtopic.php?f=9&t=55380).
• Fixed preview of materials with an alpha channel (see viewtopic.php?p=284410#p284410).
• Fixed crash when creating a render target node inside a pin Octane.
• Fixed bug causing instances using the offline licensing mode to not be able to re-authenticate when the SSO session has expired.
• Fixed SSO authentication failure when 2 Octane instances are started at the same time.
• Fixed crash when a mesh is subdivided that contains some vertices with no normals or UVs.
• Fixed crash when a mesh with smooth groups is subdivided.
• Fixed crash when loading a completely empty .vdb file.
• Fixed crash when loading unrecognised VDB grids.
• Fixed crash in VDB export by updating a thirdparty library used by OpenVDB.
• Fixed crash when the preferences dialog gets closed.
• Fixed deadlock on net render masters, which seem to happen only on OSX (see viewtopic.php?f=86&t=55365 for example).
• Lua: Added octane.gridlayout which helps with arranging GUI components.
• Lua: Made Lua windows resizable.
• Lua: Added octane.file.copyDirectory.
• Lua: Added lunit framework (see module octane.lunit).
• Lua: Added command line parameter --modules-directory to specify the modules directory when the Standalone is started.
• Modules: Added ApiModuleData::loadApplicationData() and ApiModuleData::storeApplicationData().

OctaneRender Standalone downloads

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

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

Linux
- 64-bit commercial version (ZIP archive)
- 64-bit demo version (ZIP archive)


Photoshop workflow plugin download

You can download and install the plugin either via the Adobe Exchange platform or you can download it from the link below and manually install it.

Windows and Mac OS X
- Photoshop extension (v1.0.3) (ZXP archive)


Happy rendering,
Your OTOY NZ Team

[calus]

Thank for the effort with visible environment,
but this is not enough, we can still only use 2 environments at the same time.

Extreme use-case really needs to have 4 different environments,:
the main environment, a second environment to override reflection, a third environment to override refraction, and the fourth environment for backplate.

If the rational behind this implementation was to not add two more pins to the renderTarget node, why not add them to the environment node then?
I mean instead of a visible environment section in the environment node with the 3 Boolean attributes,
why not replace this section with a override section with 3 environments input (where we can plug other environment nodes) :
override background(backplate), override reflexion and override refraction.
with this solution we would not need anymore the visible environment pin in renderTarget node...

[Refracty]

Wow, the explicit environment reflection control is really, really useful.
Good work marcus & team.
Thanks a lot

[coilbook]

nice thank you.

P.S. I hope you still can do Alpha Shadows per object



old post

" is it possible to have alpha shadow per object and not just as a global off and on. When having alpha shadows on calculations go up by up to 40% and for animations every second counts.

Example: we have light that shines through the glass (old police siren light ) Unfortunately with alpha shadows off light cannot shine through that glass but turning alpha shadows on increases render time from 2 min to 2 min and 30 seconds.
If we had alpha shadows per object I doubt we would see increase in render time since we would just apply alpha shadow only to that one object instead of to the whole scene. Thank you"

[abstrax]

nice thank you.

P.S. I hope you still can do Alpha Shadows per object



old post

" is it possible to have alpha shadow per object and not just as a global off and on. When having alpha shadows on calculations go up by up to 40% and for animations every second counts.

Example: we have light that shines through the glass (old police siren light ) Unfortunately with alpha shadows off light cannot shine through that glass but turning alpha shadows on increases render time from 2 min to 2 min and 30 seconds.
If we had alpha shadows per object I doubt we would see increase in render time since we would just apply alpha shadow only to that one object instead of to the whole scene. Thank you"

Sorry I meant to reply to you earlier, but got distracted. Unfortunately, the reason why rendering gets slower when "alpha shadows" is enabled is because we can do some shortcuts during direct light ray-tracing which wouldn't be possible if some of the objects allow light rays to pass through. It's basically all or nothing.

[Rikk The Gaijin]

Does this version fixes the problem when importing more than one alembic with different length in the timeline, causing the shorter one to not be placed correctly in time?
Vladimir fixed it for ORC, but I'm not sure if you guys know about this.

If needed, I can provide detailed info on how to reproduce the issue in the Standalone, but it might be easier for you to just ask Vlad.

[coilbook]

I noticed you did some changes for the environment. About 4 months ago we requested separate sky color from shadow/environment color since ao environment looks very blue and we have to make sky color almost white to get fake diffuse look for animations.

I hope otoy can create to color swatches one for sky color and one for shadow color. Please !

Thank you.

[v-cube]

Changes since version 3.03.2

Changed the behaviour of the visible environment (see discussion in viewtopic.php?f=24&t=54417 ): Now you can enable the visible environment for various path types using the "backplate", "reflections" and "refractions" pins. You can find a more detailed description of the behaviour in the new features post.

finally!!! I just gave it a try with a current project... -> huge progress ! almost perfect, the only thing a little sub optimal is that you cannot define different environments for e.g. reflection and backplane ...

But thanks very much anyway, this is really a big help and solves a lot of issues I was fighting with on a daily basis.

best

Andreas

[calus]

Thank for the effort with visible environment,
but this is not enough, we can still only use 2 environments at the same time.

Extreme use-case really needs to have 4 different environments,:
the main environment, a second environment to override reflection, a third environment to override refraction, and the fourth environment for backplate.

If the rational behind this implementation was to not add two more pins to the renderTarget node, why not add them to the environment node then?
I mean instead of a visible environment section in the environment node with the 3 Boolean attributes,
why not replace this section with a override section with 3 environments input (where we can plug other environment nodes) :
override background(backplate), override reflexion and override refraction.
with this solution we would not need anymore the visible environment pin in renderTarget node...

@Abstrax,
I had no answer to my post, is it confusing ?
I give a better explanation with pictures here :
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=54417&p=285788#p285788

@andreas

the only thing a little sub optimal is that you cannot define different environments for e.g. reflection and backplane ...

yes, exactly my point.

[coilbook]

I posted bug on max forum jsut in case it is octane related. Phoenix VDB is not updating during rendering and it is stationary. viewtopic.php?f=81&t=55782

when Phoenix 2.25 will be finally supported ?


UPDATE: Looks like it happens when you use PhoenixFD 2.20 liquid box for simulations inside Phoenix 2.25. When will 2.25 will be supported. It has FLIP solver for liquids which is way better than 2.20. Chaos told us in forum that they are working with Otoy to get Phoenix 2.25 working.