OctaneRender™ 3.0 for LightWave™ - Alpha build 3.00.0.1

[juanjgon]

This is a new alpha build of the OctaneRender™ 3.0 for LightWave™ plugin. This 3.00.0.1 release is available for Lightwave 10.1, 11.6 and 2015.3 Windows x64 and OSX.

Alpha and beta version disclaimer
In contrast to v2 we want to do the alpha and beta testing publicly, to get more feedback earlier and to have changes tested more thoroughly. The plan is to let all users with a valid v2 license use the v3 alpha and beta versions until we decide that the beta period has ended and we release the first stable v3. After that you will have to upgrade to v3 or will not be able to use any v3 versions (including alpha and beta versions) anymore. We don't know yet, when that will be, but we will give you a warning a few weeks in advance so you can prepare.

This is an alpha release, so please consider this more a test or development release which may not be stable enough for a production environment. All the new 3.0 features are under development.

Alpha release 3.00.0.1
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... indows.zip
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... .1_OSX.zip

Volumetric demo scenes
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... scenes.zip

Standalone version for the network rendering nodes
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... _2_win.exe
https://render.otoy.com/customerdownloa ... _macos.dmg

New features of OctaneRender™ 3.00
viewtopic.php?f=33&t=51679

How to install the plugin
- (Only for Windows) Remove all the old Octane plugin 2.2 files (octane.dll, octane.dat and the .p plugin file), or add a new LightWave installation to your system to test Octane 3.0
- (Only for Windows) Copy the octane.dll, tbb.dll and octane.dat files into you install Lightwave/bin directory. You must overwrite the LightWave tbb.dll file.
- Add the plugin to the Lightwave Layout.
- Install the custom menu bar to get access to the Octane features.


=============================================
RELEASE 3.00.0.1
=============================================

* NEW FEATURES:
- The "shift" parameter in the displacement node has been replaced by a new option "mid-level". The old parameter defined the shift of the displacement in meters, while the new parameter defines it in texture value range.
- Added texture and lighting baking by introducing a new baking camera.
- Added the backing camera to the root node context menu.
- Added the backing ID object parameter to the render layers panel.
- Added the medium nodes to the volumetrics root node context menu medium input.
- Added diffuse, reflection, refraction and transmission filter info passes, which go into a new "Material passes" group along with opacity, IOR and roughness.
- Added diffuse, reflection, refraction and transmission filter channels to the infochannel kernel.
- Improved sampling of AO pass to clear up faster.
- Implemented basics of render layers for volumes.
- Offline authentication is disabled for the alpha / beta period and this version will time out on March 1st 2016.
- Support of OpenVDB sequences. The "$F" token in the OpenVDB file is used to inster the frame number. For example, the file "fire_$F.vbd" is expanded as "fire_0023.vdb" in the frame 23.

* BUGS FIXED:
- Removed the deprecated "ray step" input from the emission nodes.
- The default volume material is now more opaque, to see something without attach an medium node.
- Improved reporting of GPU failures.
- Dramatically improved memory usage during volume import.
- Fixed the issue that the AO render pass ignored shadow/general and layer visibility.
- Fixed bug that the import scale got ignored when a regular grid is imported.
- Fixed two cases where shadow rays ignored solid geometry within a volume.
- Tone mapping of some info passes doesn't apply a gamma correction. This affects all passes that store vectors or linear values like alpha or distance.
- Working around a the problem that some scenes cause the geometry compilation to run out of memory
- Fixed a crash in deep image tonemapping.


-Juanjo

[FrankPooleFloating]

YES!!!!! Giddy like a little school girl!

Thanx sooooooo much Juanjo! Merry Xmas bro!

[vipvip]

incredible-fast realease !! thanks & happy christmas

[FrankPooleFloating]

Holy smokes... Baking is... wow... exactly what I was hoping it would be.

[ristoraven]

Omg.

I have Octane baked material in UE4.

Merrryyyy christmas Otoy & Juanjo!

[BorisGoreta]

When working with a single object which has more then a million polygons every action in node editor halts interface for 2-3 seconds, like adding a node ( not even connected to anything ) to changing any of the parameters of the node.

There was a similar slowdown with that bug if only one surface had a texture, but now this slowdown is always present.

[mstewart152]

Is ptex support coming in 3.0?

[Goldorak]

Is ptex support coming in 3.0?

It's in 3.x

[mstewart152]

Like it's in it now? Working in lightwave plug in too?

[Goldorak]

Like it's in it now? Working in lightwave plug in too?

Not at the moment, although Paul has it working in one of his plug-ins, showing it can be implemented in the app layer, even in 2.x, outside the core engine.

Native V3 support is coming to make this feature easier to implement. It is on the list of items being developed for the full 3.x roadmap. It is likely to show up after FBX support.