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OctaneRender™ for Blender plugin. Windows x64 version.




The bundle consists from two parts:
1. OctaneRender™ Server
2. Blender - OctaneRender™ edition.

The first part (server) should be run on the same computer as the second one. To stop the server - just right-click its icon in the tray.
After the server is run - you can start rendering (or open a rendered view) from inside Blender. Before the very first rendering you should fill in the server address (only 127.0.0.1 at the time), login and password (your license key info) to activate the server. After the first rendering the server will remember this activation info, and you will not need to enter it again.

You should use only OctaneRender materials inside Blender scenes - the plugin knows nothing about Blender specific materials and textures (about any Blender nodes, generally speaking).


FIXES AND NEW FEATURES SINCE LAST RELEASE

• Fixed the UV-unwrap bug in Octane image textures.
• Now Octane image textures are visible in Blender viewport.
• LiveDB now is serialized as graph, not as tree. So, you should get no doubled nodes from now on...
• Added Octane Imager preset.
• Minor improvements and bug fixes...

After starting OctaneServer it will take some time before the LiveDB tree and LiveDB material previews will be available from Blender - as OctaneServer caches the LiveDB data from remote server right after starting. But only the materials groups tree will be re-cached every time after server start, LiveDB material preview images will be cached only once - so only the very first OctaneServer start will need some more time before LiveDB tree will be available in Blender.

DOWNLOAD (both distributives must be reinstalled, they depend on each other)

Blender Octane Edition - 1.20.2 - 2.5 beta (2.68a) (51.8MB autoinstaller file)
Octane Server - 1.20.2 - 2.5 beta (32.3MB autoinstaller file)

Thanks JS - can't wait to give it a try.

Edit:
Everything is looking great. I really like the images in the view-port. Thanks for all your hard work on this.

I do have a question for you. In order to keep the UI performance up while rendering in the preview window, I switch off a couple of my GPU's. When it's time to run actual renders, I switch them back on. Would it be possible to have a GPU selection for preview and another for render?

Thanks JS

ephdot wrote:I do have a question for you. In order to keep the UI performance up while rendering in the preview window, I switch off a couple of my GPU's. When it's time to run actual renders, I switch them back on. Would it be possible to have a GPU selection for preview and another for render?

Perhaps I have not understood it correctly... Why do you switch off a couple of GPUs? Or do you use different GPUs for different monitors, and switch off all these connected to the monitors?..

Thanks for the texture fix!

Is it going to be possible to do post processing on a final rendered image as in the stand alone version of Octane render?

Marten74 wrote:Thanks for the texture fix!

Is it going to be possible to do post processing on a final rendered image as in the stand alone version of Octane render?

I will try to explain...

It is NOT possible in standalone to postprocess the "final rendered" image, as standalone does not have "final" image - it ALWAIS works in LIVE mode, the image is alwais "alive". So, even if render has reached needed samples and stopped - the session is still active.
You have absolutely the same in Blender plugin when in live-render mode, and you can postprocess the image at any stage, this is exactly the purpose of Live-mode.

But F12 render - is another way, it is OFFLINE mode by definition. It has sent the render-job to server, server has rendered it, retutned the result, and closed the session, letting other jobs (e.g. next frames) to start. After the session is closed - session is closed. You can't change anything in the final render as the render-job simply does not exist anymore on the server, as it is OFFLINE render mode, not Live-render mode. If you want to do LIVE changes to rendered job - you can do it ONLY in LIVE render mode. Offline render supposes that you have already choosen the render settings for this frame previously playing in Live-mode and you know what you will get from server after this job will be finished...

Thanks for the explanation about LIVE and OFFLINE render mode.

So, I would like to be able to save out an image from the LIVE render mode then, as in the stand alone. The thing is that when in LIVE render mode in the view port you can´t save out an image. A screen dump is not an option here =) Would it be possible to add a "LIVE render" alternative where you can access the post processing options in the render view and be able to save out an image?

License/technical issues behind the current solution? Don´t see why else the f12 render should not have been LIVE from the beginning...

JimStar wrote:

ephdot wrote:I do have a question for you. In order to keep the UI performance up while rendering in the preview window, I switch off a couple of my GPU's. When it's time to run actual renders, I switch them back on. Would it be possible to have a GPU selection for preview and another for render?

Perhaps I have not understood it correctly... Why do you switch off a couple of GPUs? Or do you use different GPUs for different monitors, and switch off all these connected to the monitors?..

Jim-

I found that when I have all three of my GPU's selected and I am running a live render, that the Blender UI becomes somewhat unresponsive. When I tried switching off one of the GPU's, I found that the UI was more responsive. Perhaps I am suffering from a placebo effect here, but I've begun working with one or more of the GPU's disabled. I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that pressing F12 for a final render also utilizes the check-boxes to determine which GPU's to use for the render. So, if my perceived performance boost is real and the live render and final render both use the check-boxes to determine which GPU's to use, would it make sense to allow one to specify which GPU's to use for live render and which to use for a final render?

I should also mention that I have a GTX590 and a GTX480 and run in dual monitor mode. I have one monitor connected to the 590 and the other connected to the 480.

Marten74 wrote:License/technical issues behind the current solution? Don´t see why else the f12 render should not have been LIVE from the beginning...

If you don't see - it is unlikely I will be able to explain it more here... But I will try last time...

To "see why" - you should at least dig into Blender source code to understand the offline conception. Or just look at your internet browser from this angle to understand the "online" and "offline" conceptions and "why offline is needed at all".
When e.g. the plain internet page (we are not talking about AYAX) is rendered by browser, the browser sends request with all parameters to server, gets the response data from server, renders this data on your screen, and closes this request's connection. So, you are not able to change anything on the page look without re-rendering the full page in new server-connection session. This mode (in contrast to LIVE mode where the session keeps "alive" during work with rendered data) is very usable in a lot of cases and is used often due to lot of different reasons.
In Blender for example you have the opportunity to use both these modes (so in OctaneRender for Blender too). And F12 render mode in Blender is made OFFLINE by definition, it is ideological conception inside Blender, and it is needed due to different reasons. The need to free resources after rendering one frame to be able to immediately start render the next frame - is just one of them. So, all Blender's source code is build such a straightforward and well-thought-out way - in the offline mode all the rendering by internal render-module is done in just one modal callback from Blender core, after returning from this callback all the rendering process is supposed to be finished, and no other "interactive" callbacks from Blender core interfere with work of this main offline rendering callback.
Sure I can rewrite all this ideology inside Blender - but it will not only a big work (which is not purpose of this plugin), but it will be most stupid thing I ever done in my life - to break all the well-thought-out and well-implemented Blender's internal rendering ideology and turn it into something not having the ideology at all, with mixed online-offline behavior between different render-modes...

So, taking into account Blender already has both these modes, "online" and "offline" - all you need is just use already existing "online" mode (Live-render in our terms). So, here we go:

Marten74 wrote:So, I would like to be able to save out an image from the LIVE render mode then, as in the stand alone. The thing is that when in LIVE render mode in the view port you can´t save out an image. A screen dump is not an option here =) Would it be possible to add a "LIVE render" alternative where you can access the post processing options in the render view and be able to save out an image?

The only thing which stops you here - is the fact that Blender does not have the feature of saving the live-rendered image to file. But. The key-phrase here is "Blender does not have". As this feature is the universal feature of Blender itself, more specifically - its viewport's "rendered" mode. As you are not able to save any live-image rendered in Cycles too.
But it is not the purpose of this plugin - improve the Blender core itself. As if I start to do it - it will take a lot of additional work-time which is not covered by this plugin's price... So, if the modifications are simple enough to add them into plugin itself (having a risk that after the same feature will be implemented by Blender developers, it will just double the existing one and make the work with plugin less intuitive) - perhaps I will make these modifications later. But such a modifications have less priority than the work on main features of plugin itself.
Sure I can add the "save live image" feature to Blender core itself - but I avoid to modify the Blender core as much as possible. As any modification to Blender core makes the patching of new Blender versions more and more complicated, and issuing every new plugin version for every new Blender version becomes more complicated and work-time consuming, with reworking all the Blender internals again and again after some new feature is implemented by Blender developers (even worse when this new feature will double already implemented by this plugin due to lack of this feature in previous Blender versions)...

Something like this.

PS. I have added the ticket "implement saving of live-render to file", but you should understand - as it must be a Blender's feature (not the plugin's), this ticket has low priority... I should implement the most important features of the plugin first (on which I'm working hard right now), and only after it I will be perhaps given some work-time to modify the lack of some features in Blender itself... Anyway - Blender is open-sourced project, so anyone can contribute (not only me) - just add this feature, send the patch to Blender developers, and have this "Save live-viewport" feature in next trunk...

Thanks, that's a nice explanation. Do you have any idea how far away volumetric lighting is on the roadmap? Any plans/expectations on that?