Refractive Software LTD is proud to announce the availability of version 1 beta2.2 2nd Release Candidate of Octane Render.
Please read this thread completely and carefully as this is a major update and has many new things you should be aware of.
This is an unfinished RC, it's not recommended for newcommers! New users should use the beta2.1 version
This release is not backwards compatible with beta 2.1 or older OCS project / scene files.
Many things have changed, 'floatnodes' are now not useable as textures anymore, they are only for parameters.
Instead we now have additional 'floattexture' nodes which are in the class of textures and can be used along with the other texture types.
First of all, this release candidate comes only as zips/archives.
You'll notice this release is a lot more flexible texture and procedural texture wise.
We'd like to hear from you, and please report any problems you might have,
as we do not have all the required hardware in our offices to test everything (eg multi-gpu combinations on the 3 supported platforms)
Note that we have opened new forums for the exporter scripts in question, please use those forums for questions/support/discussion regarding the exporter scripts/plugins.
Changes since beta2.2 RC1
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- new saturation slider in the camera imager/tonemapper :)
- blocky horizontal artifacts/shading problem is fixed (we hope, please test!)
- GPU memory management bugs solved (we hope, please test!)
- it's faster. ;)
- this version refuses to open 2.1 or older scene files as they are not compatible and would only cause problems/confusion.
- bump mapping works, can be scaled with float or float2
- turbulence procedural can be scaled with float, float2 and float3
- crash on exit on windows 32bit, linux and mac should be fixed
- resolution change crashes fixed
- render display shows card having 0MB video ram on some systems (win32) fixed
- CTRL key on linux now works for panning viewport and zooming mousewheel
- focal length command line argument is working (for controlling from export/plugin scripts)
- OBJ's MTL file can contain spaces and a path (for rhino's OBJ exporter)
- linux multi-gpu works, no more error/exit
- linux and mac loading of OBJ without vertex normals is fixed (no more black objects)
- autofocus differences between single and multi-gpu modes is solved
- turntable animation without motion blur is fixed
- other small fixes.
Known Problems and Unfinished Items
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- turbulence does not work on bump channels, we will fix this in the last RC3 with the last finishing touches tomorrow,
that one should then go final.
- gaussian spectrum is currently disabled. we will reenable it in the final release tomorrow.
- when rendering with more than 1 gpu, and 'filtering' is enabled, you might see a horizontal line on your render.
we will remove the filtering system in bet2.3, as it's better to supersample instead, so we'll add supersampling as a built-in feature.
- direct sunlight through opacity mapped geometry is not working yet, this is scheduled for beta 2.3 with MLT making it much easier.
- we have not yet parallelized the tonemapping.
this is a complex thing as it's different for the 3 architectures of GPU types (eg 8000, 9000+ and GTX400)
we need more time to work on it will improve it as we go along.
due to this, you will not achieve 2x speedup with 2 cards.
with fermi cards (GTX400 series) you will get near 2x speedup,
but with earlier cards it will be more like 1.6x or equiv.
this will be improved upon during the coming weeks.
- we have no multi-GPU mac system yet, so we have not tested the software in multi-gpu mode on a Mac.
we're very interested to hear about mac user's experiences.
Download
MS Windows XP/Vista/7
32bit: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/rcdow ... _win32.zip (7.1MB)
x64: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/rcdow ... in_x64.zip (7.9MB)
Apple MAC OS X 10.5/6
32bit: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/rcdow ... MacOSX.zip (9.1MB)
(Note: Current Nvidia CUDA toolkits are 32bit only, we will supply x64 Mac OS X packages in the future, when nvidia supports it)
GNU/Linux
x64: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/rcdow ... ux_x64.tgz (8.8MB)
(Note: This is a gzip'ed tarball, just untar it with the z flag, and run it, you might have to set the executable flag/perm on it)
Please post your experiences and possible issues with this release candidate in this thread.
Your help is much appreciated.
Thanks for your help in testing and good luck!
Yours,
The Octane Render Team
