OTOY Forums

I know new caustics capabilities are on the roadmap, but I want to pop on and say I'd LOVE to see whatever voodoo LuxCoreRender is using implemented into Octane. Their caustics converge almost instantly without fiddling with a bunch of different settings or battling fireflies:
Gorgeous! Caustics have for too long been the missing link in cg photorealism (they're everywhere!), I look forward to taking them for granted in the future.

I completely agree.

Wow!

Is that 5 hour render time with path tracing kernel? I would imagine for a scene like this PMC would actually speed things up. Not to the LuxCore 1 min mark but 5 hours is crazy.

james_conkle wrote:Is that 5 hour render time with path tracing kernel? I would imagine for a scene like this PMC would actually speed things up. Not to the LuxCore 1 min mark but 5 hours is crazy.

Yes, unfortunately. I’ve been experimenting with PCM settings and have exhausted all the tutorial info I can find online about Octane caustics, but I can’t get caustics to resolve adequately unless I crank up the caustic blur which destroys all the interesting caustic detail.

Happy for any tips if you’ve got em!

Hi
PMC is not fast, and the time obviously depends on the OctaneBench power of your system (mine is ~600), but 5h seems definitely too high
Please, try with the following PMC settings, the most important for caustics, is the Parallel Samples, that must be set to 1: ciao Beppe

bepeg4d wrote:Hi
PMC is not fast, and the time obviously depends on the OctaneBench power of your system (mine is ~600), but 5h seems definitely too high
Please, try with the following PMC settings, the most important for caustics, is the Parallel Samples, that must be set to 1:

1BA29478-9E4C-446E-A5DC-02606B8399B6.jpeg

ciao Beppe

Interesting, I'll give it a try. FYI - The Octane manual for Houdini and the YouTube tutorial videos that Otoy has published only mention that raising Parallel Samples can help render speed. There is no connection made to caustic rendering (even in the video about the PMC kernel and caustics). It might help others to have that info published.

bepeg4d wrote:Hi
PMC is not fast, and the time obviously depends on the OctaneBench power of your system (mine is ~600), but 5h seems definitely too high
Please, try with the following PMC settings, the most important for caustics, is the Parallel Samples, that must be set to 1:

The attachment 1BA29478-9E4C-446E-A5DC-02606B8399B6.jpeg is no longer available

ciao Beppe

No luck with those settings, sadly. Still the same result in almost 6 hours.

Hi,
do you mind to share the scene with me via Private Message?

ciao Beppe

1min on LuxCoroRender. But ATTENTION: lack of indirect caustics (reflection, refraction...) On Octane Render, INDIRECT caustics required causes 5 hours.

SOLUTION: We wait the new (S)PPM kernel for quick direct+indirect caustics until this or next month after PMC.