This is the first stable release of OctaneRender version 4. The last couple of months we have been working hard to shake out all the bugs that got reported. But first things first:
License upgrade
Unless you have a subscription license, you will have to upgrade your version 3 licenses to version 4. This upgrade is free and can be done via these 4 steps:
- Go to https://home.otoy.com/render/octane-render/purchase/
- Select "Upgrade" in the top menu.
- Click on "UPGRADE NOW" next to "Upgrade existing licenses to OctaneRender 4".
- Select the licenses you want to upgrade and confirm.
New GPU requirements
To use this version, you need a GPU of compute model 3.0 or higher. Support for Fermi GPUs (like GTX 4xx and 5xx) has been dropped. Also make sure you use a driver of version 387 or higher and if you are working on Mac OS that have a CUDA driver installed that supports at least CUDA 9.1.
New features
For an overview of the main new features and improvements of version 4, please check out our blog post, but in a nutshell these are the main new features that have been added with version 4:
- Overhauled geometry engine that dramatically reduces compilation times.
- Support for out-of-core geometry.
- AI Light: Improved sampling of emitters, which is a lot more effective than the old method if you have many small emitters that have only a fairly local effect.
- AI Denoiser: Cleans up your render, which can dramatically cut render times.
- Global light inclusion/exclusion.
- Light linking: Allows the inclusion/exclusion of light IDs in the object layer nodes, which can be used to control the direct influence of emitters on objects.
- Universal material: Merges the properties of the diffuse, glossy, specular and metal materials into one material.
- Planetary environment based on the Nishita sky model, simulating the scattering of sun light in the atmosphere to render the sky.
- UDIM support via the new image tile texture node.
- Image texture compression.
- Layer selection in the OpenEXR image export.
- Dirt support in the info channel passes / kernel.
- Overall performance improvements in the render engine and in loading HDR and OBJ files.
- Support to capture direct and indirect light separately in the light render passes.
- Support for material / object layer map nodes in conjunction with FBX / Alembic geometry archives.
- Support for emission on sphere primitives.
cuDNN library download
If you haven't followed the development builds, Octane uses now the cuDNN library for NVIDIA, which is a fairly big library (e.g. 286MB on Windows). To avoid having to download this big DLL everytime you update your Octane version, the library is downloaded during startup instead of being provided by the distribution.
-> When you run OctaneRender 4 the first time, you will see this dialog pop up:
You can then either just confirm the download via the button Download or follow the instructions given. The downloaded library will be cached in the user folder and doesn't have to be downloaded again.
Changes since version 4 RC 7:
(For those who have been following along the development releases.)
- Added net render support to the OctaneRender Studio subscription version and changed the maximum number of allowed GPUs to 20.
- The regular (i.e. non-subscription) version now allows up to 40 GPUs.
- Added support for dirt in the info channel kernel / passes (see viewtopic.php?p=349787#p349787).
- Refactored the way how we manage image textures on the GPU and in out-of-core memory. This should reduce the stress on the CUDA driver and solve update issues when out-of-core memory is being used for textures.
- Trying to make out-of-core memory amanagement more robust in conjunction with the denoiser: Octane makes now sure that enough memory is reserved for the denoiser if out-of-core memory is enabled. We also re-allocate out-of-core memory if an update fails due to a lack of GPU memory.
- Simplified CUDA texture handling to reduce stress on CUDA driver.
- Cleaned up the device selection table in the CUDA device preference GUI.
- Renamed node "OSL UV" to "OSL delayed UV" to make it more obvious what this node is for.
- Disabled shadow catcher when being used in the inactive layer geometry, i.e. it records side effects similar to a regular diffuse material.
- Switched to a newer version of the cuDNN library on Windows and Linux to avoid that the Modo renderer fails.
- When importing Alembic files, Octane now keeps the per-mesh settings for subdivision surfaces.
- Fixed missing effect of turbidity when the Nishita daylight model is being used (see viewtopic.php?p=348900#p348900).
- Fixed loading of a saved render state that doesn't contain info passes (see viewtopic.php?p=349270#p349270).
- Fixed out-of-core usage in the simple mesh case, i.e. if the scene contains only 1 mesh without a transformation.
- Fixed failure to compile geometry with super long and thin triangles.
- Fixed spurious CUDA error 700 caused by an inconsistent render data state (see viewtopic.php?p=350209#p350209).
- Fixed error message if the signature of an OSL shader doesn't match the node type.
- Fixed missing update of error messages in the OSL editor.
- Improved synchronization of the state of script/OSL nodes items between the node item, script editor and node inspector (see viewtopic.php?p=349487#p349487).
- Fixed missing render data update if the motion vector channel is selected / deselected in the info channel kernel node.
Downloads for users with a regular license
OctaneRender for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender for Windows (zip)
OctaneRender for Mac OS
OctaneRender for Linux
Downloads for users with a Studio subscription license
OctaneRender Studio for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender Studio for Windows (zip)
OctaneRender Studio for Mac OS
OctaneRender Studio for Linux
Demo version downloads
OctaneRender Demo version for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender Demo version for Windows (ZIP archive)
OctaneRender Demo version for Mac OS X (DMG image)
OctaneRender Demo version for Linux (ZIP archive)
Happy rendering,
Your OTOY Team