OctaneRender 2021.1 for Houdini Beta build 2021.1.0.0 XB3

[juanjgon]

Hi,

This is a beta release of the OctaneRender™ 2021.1 for Houdini™ plugin compiled with the Octane 2021.1 XB3 core. This 2021.1.0.0 release is available for the latest Houdini production builds on Windows x64 and Linux gcc6.3.1.

Houdini production builds supported by this release: 17.5.460, 18.0.597, 18.5.563, 18.5.596 and 18.5.633

As with all beta builds, we advise to not to 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.

Please make sure to use a NVIDIA Studio driver with version at least 456.38 on Windows or 455.23 on Linux.

New features
To learn more about the new features and improvements of OctaneRender 2021.1, please check out the 2021.1 XB1 release post and the 2021.1 XB2 release post


Release 2021.1.0.0 Enterprise subscription license
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... rprise.zip
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... rprise.zip

Release 2021.1.0.0 Studio subscription license
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... studio.zip
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... studio.zip

Standalone 2021.1 XB3 version for the network rendering nodes
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=78040


Release Notes
=============================================
RELEASE 2021.1.0.0
=============================================

* PLUGIN FEATURES AND FIXES:
- LiveDB/LocalDB materials imported to the /mat context.
- Whole new /mat context RenderTarget HDA node.

* OCTANE 2021.1 FEATURES:
- Improved support for RTX hardware ray tracing including accelerated instance motion blur on Ampere GPUs
- UV surface tangents are now interpolated if the material has anisotropy set to a value != 0, to avoid visible facets in stretched highlights
- Improved Scatter on surface to provide more control for placing scattered objects
- Improved rendering of overlapping volumes and increased the number of volumes allowed to overlap in one location to 16
- Added support for light-linking of volumes
- Improved rendering of transparent surfaces inside volumes
- Added support for user instance IDs to volume rendering
- Added support for volumes in Cryptomatte AOVs
- Clipping material
- Added a new energy preserving GGX BRDF model
- Added STD BRDF
- Added option Smooth shadow terminator to all materials
- Improved Hair material
- Improved AI Light rendering
- New texture nodes
- New projection nodes
- Added various new texture nodes, adapted from the "OTOY - Pattern" category of the Live DB
- Added the ability to specify a color space for textures
- Added wide-gamut support for textures
- Added the ability to specify the white point for spectral colors
- More accurate color processing across the board
- Switched to OCIO v2
- Refactored render AOVs
- Added custom AOVs
- Added ability to write object layer masks and material masks to custom AOVs
- Added capture texture to write textures into custom AOVs
- Added global texture AOVs
- A node to mix light passes
- New output AOV nodes providing additional operations
- Reduced banding when extreme values are passed through an OCIO LUT.
- Allow rendering of small dense volumes inside large volumes which usually have very different step lengths.
- Added support for the Random texture to volumes.
- Updated to OpenVDB 7.0.
- Various improvements and fixes to saving ORBX packages


Happy rendering,
Your OTOY Team

[Terryvfx]

Yes! thank you for this release.

[DamjanMX_1]

Great stuff juanjgon, thanks!

[Sportler]

Amazing work, thanks a lot!

[terencemace]

Thank you Juanjgon,

Great release.

Would it be possible to have the LiveDB window remain open after a material is downloaded? It would be nice not to have to reopen it every time after importing a material.

Much appreciated.

Terence

[Sportler]

Hey, I've noticed some minor quirks that I'd let you know about in case you are not aware:

- The OCIO View / Look has no entries on the new RenderTarget, I have to open the node and place one down manually to get any options.
- The sliders for upscaling don't grey out like they used to when upscaling is disabled. Upsacling / denoising also seem to be enabled by default, which may or may not be intended

I can't get options on this unless I replace the one in the rendertarget

missingoptions.PNG (3.76 KiB) Viewed 3369 times

These are the ones that I must replace to get an OCIO View working

But I am very excited to have these options on the node as before they were missing and I had to add the node every time anyway!

Thanks for your work, I will keep testing

[juanjgon]

- The OCIO View / Look has no entries on the new RenderTarget, I have to open the node and place one down manually to get any options.

Hmm, weird! Here it seems to work fine. I have a standard OCIO = "E:\OpenColorIO-Configs-master\aces_1.0.3\config.ocio" config in the env file and as soon as I add the render target, the OCIO display name is there, and once I select it, the OCIO views for this display is available. You need to select a OCIO display to populate the views menu ... perhaps this is the problem.

Are you working in Windows?

Thanks,
-Juanjo

[juanjgon]

Thank you Juanjgon,

Great release.

Would it be possible to have the LiveDB window remain open after a material is downloaded? It would be nice not to have to reopen it every time after importing a material.

Much appreciated.

Terence

I'll check it out, but I think that this is not possible currently because the panel must be closed to process the imported material.

Thanks,
-Juanjo

[Sportler]

Ah, you're correct! It does actually work, but you have to check the ocioUseViewLook checkbox to get any entries in the dropdown menu:

capture.PNG (9.12 KiB) Viewed 3337 times

I think that the drop down should be disabled if you have not checked the button to make it less confusing

[juanjgon]

Ah, you're correct! It does actually work, but you have to check the ocioUseViewLook checkbox to get any entries in the dropdown menu:
I think that the drop down should be disabled if you have not checked the button to make it less confusing

Selecting the OCIO display name should be enough for populate the ocio views. I know that it is weird to select the OCIO display when you want to have it with its default value, already selected, but it is the only way that I've found to dynamically populate the views menu in the HDA.

Thanks,
-Juanjo