OctaneRender 2025.2 for Houdini production (2025.2.0.0)

[dom_otoy]

[youtube][/youtube]

Thanks for the great release!
Question about ORBX, are you planning to improve the ORBX visibility inside Houdini, also would it be possible to make it similar to RS proxy in any way?

Hey lavrenovlad!
Thank you!
Yes, it is one of the items we will tackle next after IPR improvements.
Are there any specific features that the RS proxy has that you are particularly looking for?

Hey Dom!

Honestly I haven't used Redshift in years, but generally the main idea would be that a proxy could be used somewhere else. My friend for example told me that he uses RS Proxy for Houdini -> C4D export, if he makes a particle simulation he exports that as a RS Proxy and imports it to C4D, it's much better than let's say exporting a particle simulations as an .abc with no materials or attributes. I think it's the best use for ORBX too in general, I know that Arnold/RS Proxies can efficiently handle data for instancing and give some options like changing materials which I think is awesome, but the main use would be is to build a model with all the materials in one DCC and use it across other DCCs easily as an ORBX. Since ORBX is literally just an Octane Standalone scene I think it would be even possible to have some flexibility like appending a material after SOP ORBX and adding another material if needed, or maybe even extract materials as ORBX files with all the nodes for editing.
But generally the main thing is the visualization in the viewport, need some good geometry preview, and a decent ORBX node that isn't a brick with no outputs and parameters. Pretty much it.

Thanks for taking the time to respond!
I think it sounds like what we have planned will cover what you're hoping for!
Btw are you on the octane discord? I would highly recommend you to join!

[dom_otoy]

hi love the updates!

i installed the package. It's not showing up in lops tho.

Hey rifat!
Lops is a separate plugin, that you will have to install there.

[ps.productions]

Hi I am not sure if I am missing something but is it possible to have Solaris working at the same time? or do i need to delete the solaris .json for the time being and wait for its separate release?

[lavrenovlad]

Hey everyone again!

I got a question about Realistic Lens, my confusion about them comes from this fact that I need to have a specific scene scale for them to work in Houdini. I am still figuring out whether Blender and Houdini plugins are the same in this case, but in Houdini at the moment if I want to use 100mm magnifying glass camera, I need to scale my scene properly, otherwise it will be impossible to get the proper DOF for some reason. Does it work this way everywhere across all DCCs? I am testing it in Blender, it feels better here, but I am not 100% sure yet, need more tests.
Like if I have a "micro object" like a diamond and I use "100mm magnifying glass", I need this diamond to be very small, almost correct unit size as in real world, because if it's 1m^2 in houdini the camera doesn't seem to work as it should. What do you think?

[dom_otoy]

Hi I am not sure if I am missing something but is it possible to have Solaris working at the same time? or do i need to delete the solaris .json for the time being and wait for its separate release?

So you can't have both of them installed at the same time, since the solaris installation also includes an octane main version and they overwrite each other.
The current implementation with solaris writing to a sperate solaris.json is not good and we're going to change that in the next release so both versions write to octane.json overwriting each other, since only one can be active anyway.

[dom_otoy]

Hey everyone again!

I got a question about Realistic Lens, my confusion about them comes from this fact that I need to have a specific scene scale for them to work in Houdini. I am still figuring out whether Blender and Houdini plugins are the same in this case, but in Houdini at the moment if I want to use 100mm magnifying glass camera, I need to scale my scene properly, otherwise it will be impossible to get the proper DOF for some reason. Does it work this way everywhere across all DCCs? I am testing it in Blender, it feels better here, but I am not 100% sure yet, need more tests.
Like if I have a "micro object" like a diamond and I use "100mm magnifying glass", I need this diamond to be very small, almost correct unit size as in real world, because if it's 1m^2 in houdini the camera doesn't seem to work as it should. What do you think?

So you can get an increased depth of field using the fstop camera setting but there are limits to how far that can go. Generally you want to have the scene scale to be accurate real world dimensions to get the right depth of field as it's mimicking real world camera physics.

[lavrenovlad]

Hey everyone again!

I got a question about Realistic Lens, my confusion about them comes from this fact that I need to have a specific scene scale for them to work in Houdini. I am still figuring out whether Blender and Houdini plugins are the same in this case, but in Houdini at the moment if I want to use 100mm magnifying glass camera, I need to scale my scene properly, otherwise it will be impossible to get the proper DOF for some reason. Does it work this way everywhere across all DCCs? I am testing it in Blender, it feels better here, but I am not 100% sure yet, need more tests.
Like if I have a "micro object" like a diamond and I use "100mm magnifying glass", I need this diamond to be very small, almost correct unit size as in real world, because if it's 1m^2 in houdini the camera doesn't seem to work as it should. What do you think?

So you can get an increased depth of field using the fstop camera setting but there are limits to how far that can go. Generally you want to have the scene scale to be accurate real world dimensions to get the right depth of field as it's mimicking real world camera physics.

Okay, will take this as a note

[coresign]

light psas not working in mac version,when envirment enable.here is a test scene

[vurt]

[youtube][/youtube]

Hey lavrenovlad!
Thank you!
Yes, it is one of the items we will tackle next after IPR improvements.
Are there any specific features that the RS proxy has that you are particularly looking for?

Hey Dom!

Honestly I haven't used Redshift in years, but generally the main idea would be that a proxy could be used somewhere else. My friend for example told me that he uses RS Proxy for Houdini -> C4D export, if he makes a particle simulation he exports that as a RS Proxy and imports it to C4D, it's much better than let's say exporting a particle simulations as an .abc with no materials or attributes. I think it's the best use for ORBX too in general, I know that Arnold/RS Proxies can efficiently handle data for instancing and give some options like changing materials which I think is awesome, but the main use would be is to build a model with all the materials in one DCC and use it across other DCCs easily as an ORBX. Since ORBX is literally just an Octane Standalone scene I think it would be even possible to have some flexibility like appending a material after SOP ORBX and adding another material if needed, or maybe even extract materials as ORBX files with all the nodes for editing.
But generally the main thing is the visualization in the viewport, need some good geometry preview, and a decent ORBX node that isn't a brick with no outputs and parameters. Pretty much it.

Thanks for taking the time to respond!
I think it sounds like what we have planned will cover what you're hoping for!
Btw are you on the octane discord? I would highly recommend you to join!

+1 for more advanced ORBX in Houdini.
-The described workflow applies not only to a sharing between DCCs, but also internally in Houdini. For example we create a heavy mesh and a material, export just it and then having a SOP/OBJ node to load that ORBX file to a scene in Houdini. BTW a question about the architecture of this workflow, if I will have two ORBX loader nodes in the scene, will it load it to a GPU only once?
-Hopefully making it to load as animated would not be an issue too.
-Using ORBX as a scattered instances could be superb too!

[eh_studio]

Thanks for taking the time to respond!
I think it sounds like what we have planned will cover what you're hoping for!
Btw are you on the octane discord? I would highly recommend you to join!

What is the Octane Discord? I would like to join as well!