OctaneRender® 2026.2 [current 2026]

Sun Feb 08, 2026 11:05 pm

Hi all,

We are excited to bring you OctaneRender 2026.2. Thanks again to all those who sent us feedback and continuously help us improve Octane.

This version includes a number of improvements and fixes especially targeting, but not limited to the latest features.

Important notes:

The minimum NVIDIA driver version required is R535 (R572 for GeForce RTX50 series).
The minimum version of macOS required is 14.5.

Changes since 2026.1

Improvements

Directional lights can now be excluded with the light IDs setting in the kernel node
Texture nodes with a "Linear sRGB + legacy gamma" color space option now have a "Linear sRGB" color space option too, to make the regular linear sRGB case simpler. This ignores legacy gamma so you don't have to ensure it is set to 1.0.
Added release flag optixDisableParallelBuild which forces serialized OptiX pipeline builds (slower but more robust with some NVIDIA drivers -including some early R591 versions-). Use this if experiencing random application crashes during scene compilations if you cannot upgrade to a more recent (or older) driver.
Enabled network rendering in scenes with meshlets.
Enabled network rendering in scenes using high quality texture displacement.
Improved performance of scatter on surface and volume distribution generation.
MaterialX nodes now all have descriptions visible in the Lua API browser. We intend to gradually introduce descriptions to all node types.
Neural Radiance Cache data usage is now displayed in Preferences window under Device memory usage.
Added Neural Radiance Cache capability to the photon tracing kernel.
Significantly improved performance of high-quality texture displacement.
Show the progress reported via octane.gui.updateStatus() when a script is being run using the scripting component.
Added metalness AOV for layered materials that have a metalness input.

Resolved issues

Gaussian splats:
- Fixed wireframe pass hang when Gaussian splats present in the scene.
- Fixed Gaussian splat info AOV not rendering correctly in scenes with depth of field effect.
- Fixed issue causing Gaussian splats not being rendered properly with PMC kernel in some cases.
- Fixed issue causing some Gaussian splats to be invisible unless covariance bias was manually increased.
- Fixed issue that would cause light leaking through gaussian splats. This introduces a compatibility mode for scenes created with version 2026.1.
High-quality texture displacement:
- Fixed artifacts when using bump maps or normal maps with high-quality texture displacement.
- Fixed artifacts when using high-quality texture displacement in high subdivision meshes.
- Fixed high-quality texture displacement not interpreting correctly UV coordinates in some cases.
- Fixed artifacts when using high-quality texture displacement when UVs cover a large area.
- Fixed artifacts showing up close to the horizon when using high-quality texture displacement.
- Fixed issue with high-quality displacement causing normals on back-facing polygons to be wrong.
OpenPBR:
- OpenPBR Coat Darkening now works as expected, darkening coated materials by default (compatibility mode added for existing scenes made in 2026.1 to preserve their look).
- OpenPBR Coat now properly accounts for view-dependent absorption, increasing saturation and darkening around grazing angles
- Fixed emission on Standard Surface and OpenPBR materials if these are wrapped in a node graph and the emission is connected to an input linker with a disconnected input pin.
- OpenPBR Specular and Coat Anisotropy are now properly limited to a 0-1 range as per the OpenPBR Surface specification.
LOD data:
- Fixed compilation and rendering of meshlet meshes with 1 extra UV attribute. If you ran into problems with such meshes, you will have to clear the meshlet mesh cache to force the recreation of the meshlet cache files.
- Fixed missing update of LOD data when an interactive render region is changed or removed and the film outside of the render region is not up-to-date.
- Fixed render hang when rendering is restarted with an active render region and the scene containing meshlets and/or virtual textures.
- Fixed virtual textures updates when one of the source files has changed.
- Fixed reload on image nodes with virtual texturing enabled.
Fixed excessive VRAM usage with some setups.
Fixed issue causing errors in the log when rendering was restarted by quickly toggling denoise, priority or realtime mode on MacOS.
Syntax errors in the script editor when running a script no longer causes the cursor to jump to the start of the script.
Fixed issue preventing from loading some deep EXR files.
Fixed issue that could cause the application to exit without any feedback just after the splash screen.
Fixed Linux demo build launch failure in some systems.
Fixed a CUDA device memory leak that could occur in specific circumstances.
Fixed issue with rounded edges potentially not respecting broken edges when using meshes with very large vertex and/or vertex normal values.
Fixed Geometry exporter node Texture quality toolitp indentation.
Fixed file load error popping when switching the node type in a texture pin to MaterialX Image and then select a file.
Fixed issue causing losing the input material node when switching between built-in geometry primitive types.
Fixed issue causing source data to be removed when switching image node type or image tiles.
Fix slight misalignment of high frequency patterns generated by OSL shader derivatives.
When using the batch rendering script to save in the sRGB color space, any OCIO view selected in the imager will be used, just like it already is when saving directly without the batch rendering script.
Fixed hang during batch rendering if an OCIO error occurs when using multiple GPUs.
Fixed brightness of objects with dispersion if viewed with a camera with chromatic aberration.
Fixed discrepancy in scatter on surface and volume between different operating sytems. This introduces a change for which unfortunately we cannot provide a compatibility mode so might affect the order and location of instances in older scenes.
Fixed caustics from HDRI environment maps
Fixed render error after failing to initialize a CUDA device due to running out of VRAM.
Fixed missing OCIO error messages when an OCIO error occurs when no scene file has been loaded yet.
Fixed MaterialX RgbToHsv, HsvToRgb and HsvAdjust nodes forwarding of alpha channel when set to color4 value type.
Fixed Roughness and IOR AOVs for OpenPBR and Standard Surface to always be taken from the Specular layer even when Transmission is 0.
OSL function linearstep(e1, e2, x) is guaranteed to return exactly 1.0 for e1 < e2 < x.
Fixed incorrect distortion when using universal camera distortion texture with non-square aspect ratio and/or lens shift (introduces compatibility modes for current and old behaviours).
Fixed inconsistent behavior if connecting an input linker node to a pin and connecting nothing to that linker. This should produce the same result as having nothing connected to that pin. This change results in the following:
- The diffuse channel on a metal material node is black by default if nothing is connected.
- Thin film interference is always disabled if nothing is connected to the Film IOR pin.

Other changes

Changed rotation of anisotropy in Standard Surface to match with OpenPBR and other renderers (existing scenes are not affected).
The tile set node was renamed to tile grid image. (This type represents a single large image divided up into multiple files in a tile grid, which is often done for gigapixel images.)
When running a script the stop button does not have keyboard focus by default.
MaterialX importer now imports UsdPreviewSurface as Standard Surface instead of Universal material to align with the USD importer.
Changed the default values of some OpenPBR inputs to align them with the specification.
The HDR viewport on macOS will no longer use the OCIO view set in the imager node (if there is one). To preview sRGB output, disable HDR viewport in color management settings.

Lua API

node:getPinValue() now returns appropriate values for typed texture pins depending on the pins current value-type.
octane.outputColorSpaceType.KNOWN_COLOR_SPACE (with colorSpace set to sRGB) now uses the imager node's OCIO view (if there is one), matching the behavior of octane.outputColorSpaceType.USE_IMAGER_SETTINGS (with colorSpace set to sRGB).
octane.outputColorSpaceType.USE_IMAGER_SETTINGS (with colorSpace set to linear sRGB) now always produces linear sRGB, even if the imager has an OCIO view set.
octane.outputColorSpaceType.USE_IMAGER_SETTINGS is now deprecated; use octane.outputColorSpaceType.KNOWN_COLOR_SPACE (with forceToneMapping set to false) instead.

Mon Feb 09, 2026 2:30 pm

Awesome update! Thanks!

Mon Feb 09, 2026 4:29 pm

Fixed excessive VRAM usage with some setups.

Good news! Thank you!

But can you fix unsmooth shadows issue at 0.1x sun size (daylight environment only)?