We are incredibly excited to bring you the first alpha of Octane 2027. This version includes an early version of some of the features that will be included in the final 2027 release.
2027.1 Alpha 1 Feature Highlights
- Real-time neural viewport
- DLSS & FSR up-samplers
- AI Light 2.0
- Geometry export to USD
- Built-in USD variants and layers
- MaterialX EDF nodes
- Increased UV count support
As with all experimental builds, we advise to not use this release for production purposes. All features included in this build are still under active development, so we can't guarantee that scenes saved with this version will be compatible in future releases.
Important notes:
- The minimum NVIDIA driver version required is 572.
- This is a Windows only release. macOS and Linux versions will come in a subsequent build.
Octane 2027 features a new real-time neural rendering mode, built on Octane 2026’s NRC framework, which enables near noise-free interactive rendering without any compromises to Octane’s spectral path-tracing, even in complex lighting conditions, using a combination of OTOY's latest research and NVIDA's DLSS Ray Reconstruction.
This feature can be enabled and disabled using the thunderbolt button on the viewport components bar. It enables near noise-free interactive rendering in Octane with very low sample counts compared to traditional path-tracing, even in complex lighting conditions. The quality setting can be changed for the real-time denoiser under the imager node, allowing you to balance between quality and performance depending on your hardware.
Here you can see a preview of the new real-time mode in a variety of environments, featuring camera movement and object and light manipulation in real-time while keeping viewport interactivity.
Please be aware that we are still actively working on improving some quality and memory management aspects of the new real-time mode but do not hesitate sharing your feedback.
DLSS & FSR up-samplers
In this version we have added support for two new up-sampling methods to Octane:
- NVIDIA DLSS4 Super Resolution
- AMD FSR3 (on NVIDIA cards only)
Upsampler sub-section of the Octane imager node similar to the previously existing up-sampling methods.AI Light 2.0 for many light sampling
This is a hierarchical light-sampling algorithm that improves on earlier Octane’s AI Light and traditional power-based sampling by incorporating full spatial and directional information for all emissive primitives, which allows sampling the emitters with the most contribution, delivering more accurate results with significantly reduced noise.
AI light 2.0 focuses on improvement in both render-time execution speed and scalability to a large number of light instances from AI light 1.0. This feature can be enabled in kernel settings as a selection available next to Power and AI light.
Below is a comparison between the new method and Octane’s earlier sampling algorithm:
Amazon Lumberyard Bistro, Open Research Content Archive (ORCA) 2017
The difference is even more noticeable between the new method and Octane’s AI light sampling algorithm:
Amazon Lumberyard Bistro, Open Research Content Archive (ORCA) 2017
Geometry export to USD
The geometry exporter node has been extended to allow exporting geometry as USD. There is currently limited support in the exporter to write USD Preview Surface materials. The exporter can also embed Octane materials directly into the USD file, ensuring the scene can be fully restored when the file is imported back into Octane.
Built-in USD variants and layers
In Octane Standalone a new
Stage editor button has been added to USD geometry archive node entry in the node inspector, which opens the interface that allows selecting both variants and layers in the USD scene without the need to save and reopen the USD file anymore.MaterialX EDF nodes
As part of ongoing support for MaterialX in Octane, a sub-set of PBR nodes is now supported for defining and combining spatial distributions of emissions:
- Conical EDF: An emission distribution in the form of a cone like a spot-light.
- Measured EDF: An emission distribution from an IES profile.
- General Schlick EDF: A view-dependent emission distribution using Fresnel.
Increased UV count support
We have increased the maximum count of UV maps allowed per primitive to 10 since the previous maximum of 3 was quite limiting for some workflows, and especially with some specific DCC applications. The reason for this is to make it consistent with other vertex attributes we already support. If you have any use cases that might still require a higher count please let us know since we are still working on this and considering all options.
In addition to that, UV sets can now also be assigned arbitrary names in DCC applications with support for it, so they are easier to identify by the user.
All Changes Since Version 2026.2
New features
- Added new real-time neural viewport which replaces the previous real-time mode.
- Added support for new DLSS and FSR up-sampling modes.
- Added new light sampling method Ai Light 2.0 which results in faster noise resolution.
- Added support for exporting USD to the geometry exporter node.
- Added support for MaterialX EDF nodes for combining emission distribution functions.
- Added support for color4 output to nodes: UV Tiles and Tile grid image.
- Added the ability to export a scene in USD format.
- Added support for color vertex attributes to be used in vertex displacement.
- Added support for named UV vertex attributes.
- Added the ability to use vertex attributes in bump maps.
- Add Vectron tube primitive.
- Added MaterialX Blackbody node
Improvements
- Added emission pin to Null material that can be used for additive semi-transparent emission.
- Added built-in support for authoring variants and muting USD layers directly within the USD geometry archive.
- Added color space pin to Gaussian splat node.
- Increased the number of UV sets to 10, available on triangles, spheres and hair.
- Added opacity texture pin to Baking texture node for use when baking to a
color4. - OSL function
getattribute()can now be used to fetch UV attributes by using either avector2or afloat[2]as output variable.
- Fixed application crash when loading a DDS file and opening preferences.
- Fixed high quality displacement artifacts when combined with sub surface scattering.
- Fixed high quality displacement when UVs are not assigned.
- Fixed instancing in meshes loaded from Alembic files.
- Fixed usage of OSL
select()function in shaders with values that require differentials, eg. UVs for virtual textures. - Fixed MaterialX HexTiledImage node Alpha blending for color4 outputs.
- Fixed MaterialX TransformNormal and TransformPoint to operate on normals and points properly.
- Fixed RGB Image node with Color4 output in normal input failing to compile.
- Fixed USD points not loading correctly.
- Fixed rendering regression in texture displacement on Windows and Linux platforms that was introduced in version 2025.1.
- Fixed error importing Glossy materials with IOR/Film-IOR from the LiveDB.
- Fixed issue causing the last frame of 2-frame animation to produce an invalid value and potential an application crash.
- Fixed empty submenus when picking an OCIO color space for some OCIO configs.
- Fixed errors logged when loading scenes with MaterialX Time and Frame nodes.
- Fixed loading of scenes containing the MaterialX Ambient Occlusion node across Octane versions.
- Fixed artifacts with high quality displacement.
- Fixed an issue where animated USD point instances would not be imported correctly.
- Fixed an issue with the USD importer causing wrong materials to be assigned.
- Fixed an issue causing other geometry disappear when changing high quality texture displacement settings.
- Fixed meshlet mesh geometry missing in the scene statistics in some circumstances, i.e. when it is a memory-only meshlet mesh that is being built during the scene compilation.
- Removed Clock Rate and Cores fields from the GPU information panel.
- Deprecated
renderSizeXin favor oftextureRenderWidthinLuaGeometryExporterProperties. - Deprecated
renderSizeYin favor oftextureRenderHeightinLuaGeometryExporterProperties. - Deprecated
writeOcsDatain favor ofembedNativeDatainLuaGeometryExporterProperties.
OctaneRender Studio+ 2027.1 Alpha 1 Standalone for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2027.1 Alpha 1 Standalone for Windows (ZIP archive)
All other build types will be included in subsequent releases.
Happy rendering
Your OTOY team
