OctaneRender® 2025.1 Beta 2

[mojave]

Hi everyone,

We are excited to make available the second release candidate of Octane 2025.1. Thanks again to all those who reported issues, and sent us feedback.

This version adds support for the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series (Blackwell) for the first time. This is why we decided to release another beta before launching 2025.1 stable.



Important notes:

• The minimum NVIDIA driver version required has been raised to R528 (R572 for GeForce RTX50 series).
• The GPU version of Open Image Denoise is supported on CUDA compute model 7 (Volta) and later. The CPU version is used on machines with older models, and on macOS.
• The minimum version of macOS required is 14.5.
• Various optimizations are still required so performance won't be 100% indicative of the final version.

As with all experimental builds, we advise to not 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. Changes are still being made daily.

2025.1 Feature Highlights

• Rest Attributes: Support for rest attributes on meshes with animated vertices
• New Vectron Texture Displacement: Support for texture displacement in Vectron and Volume SDF nodes
• New Spectral LensFX: Matches the physically accurate measured effects of real world cameras lenses
• New Chaos Texture System: Overhauled the Chaos texture node with a number of new features and attributes
• Native Decal Support: New system in core to support easy and efficient placement of surface decals on geometry
• Render Network Integration in core: The Render Network web service and UX is now available in core as a native window panel
• Metal-RT: Major speed and memory improvements to hardware acceleration on Apple M3 and M4 devices with scenes using non-triangle geometry
• Speed/Quality Volume Rendering Slider: Increasing this value means the performance will be boosted and the rendering quality will get degraded as a result, but the balance can now be tuned by the user
• 11 New blend modes for output AOV layers

For more details on new features please refer to the original 2025.1 Beta 1 release post.

Changes since 2025.1 Beta 1

Resolved issues

• Fixed Windows uninstaller not removing some of the files.
• Fixed potential render hang on macOS.
• Fixed application crash when closing a work pane.
• Fixed various issues with the internal RNDR browser component.
• Fixed magnitude of OSL differentials generated for UV projection when used in an environment map.
• Fixed differentials on fish-eye, cubic and orthographic cameras.
• Fixed denoised render AOVs and volume mask render AOV containing an unintended alpha premultiplication when kernel alpha channel is enabled.
• Fixed padding size of baking camera not being updated correctly when using a camera switch node.
• Fixed render failure when using a Mix material or Standard Surface material as the base of a Layered material with some post processing effects.
• Fixed an issue where denoised AOVs could have bright fringes when alpha channel is enabled and environment medium is used.
• Fixed potential application hang when stacking identical OSL nodes with delayed inputs.
• Fixed application crash when adjusting a baked texture that is used for texture displacement.
• Fixed undo of the "keep upright" input of the universal camera node.
• Fixed POSIX file handles of loaded ORBX packages not being released. This bug affected Linux and macOS.
• Fixed application crash when deleting a localDB category in the save dialog.
• Fixed memory over-allocation on macOS affecting scenes with large number of instances.
• Fixed output AOVs not working after using a switch node to change to a disconnected input.
• Fixed potential application crash when using the "Open user script" button in the Lua scripting component.
• Fixed post fog artifacts when using photon mapping kernel.

Improvements

• Added --window-size command line option which allows opening the window with specific dimensions.
• Added ability to load EXR layers that only contain a Z channel
• The Texture output AOV layer node now has a "Premultiplied alpha" pin, for RGB + alpha textures that are premultiplied.
• Added ability to render material and texture previews at full screen resolution on retina displays.
• Added texture input to specify a custom aperture texture when using the realistic lens camera.
• USD Importer:
  
  • Clamp border mode is now the default mode for USD textures.
  • Renamed USD input linker for backwards compatibility.
  • Specular IOR maps was giving incorrect result when specular color was set to black so the default specular color value is set to white if a USD preview surface has a IOR texture.
  • The color space for IOR and roughness during USD material loading has been changed to non-color data.
  • USD preview surface loading now sets the color space of all non-color data textures pins to non-color.
• Render pass node types have descriptions, which are shown in the API browser.
• Improved log feedback when the installed driver does not support the required version of CUDA.
• Mitigate bump map artefacts on curved meshes.
• Dx(), Dy() and other functions that use differentials can now be used in OSL shaders in texture output AOVs.
• Added support for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series (Blackwell).

Lua API

• Added currentApplicationFile field in octane.file.getSpecialDirectories(), which tells the .app directory path in Octane standalone for macOS. For other situations this field is identical to currentExecutableFile.
• Node infos and node graph infos have a description field.

Other changes

• Denoise albedo render AOV will now include emission texture color, random walk medium color.
• Increased minimum driver requirement to R528 (R572 for GeForce RTX50 series).
• Updated lens names in the realistic camera node.

Downloads

Downloads for Studio+ Subscription Users

OctaneRender Studio+ 2025.1 Beta 2 Standalone for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2025.1 Beta 2 Standalone for Windows (ZIP archive)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2025.1 Beta 2 Standalone for Linux

OctaneRender 2025.1 Beta 2 Standalone for macOS

OctaneRender Studio+ 2025.1 Beta 2 Node for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2025.1 Beta 2 Node for Windows (ZIP archive)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2025.1 Beta 2 Node for Linux

Happy rendering
Your OTOY team

[nuno1980]

Thank you.

I tested OctaneRender 2025.1 beta 2 with "new" benchmark.orbx modded (but do not use very old OctaneBench for new GeForce RTX 50 series not work) at Path Tracing kernel only on my RTX 4090@all stock speeds with non-OC version (Studio 572.16 driver) running Win11 24H2 - 4k-spp (spp = S/px) benched:

ATV - 174 MS/s during 12 seconds
Box - 137 MS/s during 15 seconds
Idea - 183 MS/s during 11 seconds
Interior - 106 MS/s during 19 seconds

-> Total - average 150 MS/s during 57 seconds


Download new benchmark ORBX modded by me:

benchmark 4k-spp but still no OctaneBench.rar

(59.55 MiB) Downloaded 63 times

NOTE: This needs WinRAR or WinZIP for extract this downloaded file!

Best regards.

[HHbomb]

it is good or not ?

[john_otoy]

OctaneRender 2025.1 has been released: viewtopic.php?t=84667

[KeeWe]

I really hope we can go back to the stability of the latest 2024 release with 2025. I know it’s a beta but since it’s the only version supporting blackwell we have to use it in production… and it’s a pain in render queue. 2024 just chew through it like a charm… 2025 often crashes when loading a new scene.

Are you guys aware of this / is it a thing that gets natural better with the stable release?

[mojave]

I really hope we can go back to the stability of the latest 2024 release with 2025. I know it’s a beta but since it’s the only version supporting blackwell we have to use it in production… and it’s a pain in render queue. 2024 just chew through it like a charm… 2025 often crashes when loading a new scene.

Are you guys aware of this / is it a thing that gets natural better with the stable release?

Hi,

2025.1 has already been released.

Please try again and if this issue persists please provide more details about your setup, including a simple scene if possible, so we can investigate further.

Thank you

[KeeWe]

I really hope we can go back to the stability of the latest 2024 release with 2025. I know it’s a beta but since it’s the only version supporting blackwell we have to use it in production… and it’s a pain in render queue. 2024 just chew through it like a charm… 2025 often crashes when loading a new scene.

Are you guys aware of this / is it a thing that gets natural better with the stable release?

Hi,

2025.1 has already been released.

Please try again and if this issue persists please provide more details about your setup, including a simple scene if possible, so we can investigate further.

Thank you

Thanks for the quick reply.
Actually this post was supposed to go in the c4d plugin thread...
Anyway, unfortunately I can't chare some scene because of NDA but I don't think it would be helpfull anyway. It's completely random with different scenes. I don't get an error... the render queue tries to load the scene, the render time counter runs but the scene isn't trendering. No load on GPU ofc.

Our prior project rendered 72 hours with the same setup straight, multiple scenes, even heavier with oft OOC using.

I was just wondering if we users can expect stabilitiy increases overall with new releases, even if we don't report a specific bug/scenario. Of if the stable foundation of 2024 is scrapped all together.

[mojave]

I really hope we can go back to the stability of the latest 2024 release with 2025. I know it’s a beta but since it’s the only version supporting blackwell we have to use it in production… and it’s a pain in render queue. 2024 just chew through it like a charm… 2025 often crashes when loading a new scene.

Are you guys aware of this / is it a thing that gets natural better with the stable release?

Hi,

2025.1 has already been released.

Please try again and if this issue persists please provide more details about your setup, including a simple scene if possible, so we can investigate further.

Thank you

Thanks for the quick reply.
Actually this post was supposed to go in the c4d plugin thread...
Anyway, unfortunately I can't chare some scene because of NDA but I don't think it would be helpfull anyway. It's completely random with different scenes. I don't get an error... the render queue tries to load the scene, the render time counter runs but the scene isn't trendering. No load on GPU ofc.

Our prior project rendered 72 hours with the same setup straight, multiple scenes, even heavier with oft OOC using.

I was just wondering if we users can expect stabilitiy increases overall with new releases, even if we don't report a specific bug/scenario. Of if the stable foundation of 2024 is scrapped all together.

You should definitely not expect any worsening in stability, so we would definitely be interested in getting a repro of this if you can isolate it to something that can be shared with us, or at the very least some more details about your setup so we can try to replicate your issue on our end and fix it or even give you a temporary solution.

[KeeWe]

Unfortunately I can't share the scenes we are working on nor can I reproduce it or even pin point to a certain factor. Only variable that changed was octane version.
When we are at it: Is it possible that octane slows down/freezes cinema for up to 50 seconds? I experience it for the first time since working on our latest project in octane 2025. After saving, it takes up to a minute till c4d responds, same as when adding the scene to the queue. I do have to thest it with 2024 but as I said... I only expereince it since 2025. Is it even a possible that octane influences the main app in that way?

Edit: i know that's probably the worst bug report ever.

[mojave]

Unfortunately I can't share the scenes we are working on nor can I reproduce it or even pin point to a certain factor. Only variable that changed was octane version.
When we are at it: Is it possible that octane slows down/freezes cinema for up to 50 seconds? I experience it for the first time since working on our latest project in octane 2025. After saving, it takes up to a minute till c4d responds, same as when adding the scene to the queue. I do have to thest it with 2024 but as I said... I only expereince it since 2025. Is it even a possible that octane influences the main app in that way?

Edit: i know that's probably the worst bug report ever.

No problem, please let us know if this also happens with the 2025.1 release (no beta) since we will need to keep an eye on this kind of behaviour and hopefully have a solution for it soon.