Refractive Software® is proud to announce the availability of beta 2.52, which is the first stable beta release since the introduction of the new render framework. There have been many changes since beta 2.46b of which the most important ones are listed below.
This release was built for CUDA 4.0. Please read the driver/toolkit requirements for the supported platforms:
CUDA driver requirements for Windows
To run OctaneRender® on Windows you only need to have a current NVIDIA graphics driver installed. We have tested this release with the NVIDIA GeForce drivers 275.33 and 280.26. To improve the available graphics memory on Windows 7/Vista, we recommend to disable Windows Aero, SLI and PhysX.
CUDA driver requirements for Linux
To run OctaneRender® on Linux you need to install the CUDA toolkit 4.0, which you can download here:
http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit-40#Linux
Beside the toolkit you also need a current NVIDIA graphics driver that works with that toolkit. We have tested this release with the NVIDIA GeForce drivers 275.21 and 280.13. OctaneRender for Linux was built and tested on CentOS 5.6 using GCC 4.1.2. Due to that libstdc++ must be of version 4.1.2 or higher.
CUDA driver requirements for Macintosh
On MacOS the situation is a bit more complicated: If you keep your MacOS up-to-date you already have the latest NVIDIA graphics driver installed (which is done by the OS software updates), but you also need a Mac CUDA driver and the CUDA toolkit 4.0. All 3 components must work together.
First get and install the CUDA toolkit 4.0, which you can download here:
http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit-40#MacOS
After that you will need the latest Mac CUDA driver (currently 4.0.19), which you can download here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/mac-driver-archive.html
It can happen, that after some weeks a system update installs a new NVIDIA graphics driver. If then Octane ceases to function, go to the Mac CUDA driver archive and check if there is a newer CUDA driver is available and install that one.
OctaneLive®
Please note this version requires you to enter your OctaneLive® license information. These can be found as explained here:
http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum ... =24&t=3095
How to connect to OctaneLive® through a firewall/router
If you have a firewall/router, and you cannot log into the OctaneLive® service (e.g. the server cannot be contacted), configure your firewall or router to allow outbound connections to the URL named 'live1.refractivesoftware.com'.
Download Here:
OctaneRender for MS Windows
Self installing executables (including the TdrLevel registry patch recommended for new users):
- 64bit version: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/custo ... in_x64.exe
- 32bit version: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/custo ... _win32.exe
or as ZIP archives:
- 64bit version: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/custo ... in_x64.zip
- 32bit version: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/custo ... _win32.zip
OctaneRender for GNU/Linux
Gzipped/tar archives:
- 64bit version: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/custo ... ux_x64.tgz
OctaneRender for Apple Mac OS X (10.5/10.6)
Installer package:
- 32bit version: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/custo ... acos32.pkg
Bug fixes since beta 2.51
- fixed bug in PMc kernel that kept the exploration strength at the minimum
- fixed bug in absorption that reduced precision at very short absorption depths
- improved UI responsiveness on Linux during rendering
- fixed alpha channel bug, which caused the alpha channel to not be initialised correctly
Main new features since beta 2.46b
There have been a lot of changes in many areas since beta 2.46b, these were the most important ones:
- a completely rewritten render framework, that
- allows you to use many GPUs with almost 100% scaling
- allows you to enable/disable devices at any time
- allows you to use non-NVIDIA cards as display card while using NVIDIA graphics cards for rendering
- doesn't crash the application if there is a CUDA problem
- future-proofs Octane and allows us to add more advanced features like network rendering in the future
- a new render kernel "PMC", that can handle much more complicated lighting scenarios than path tracing
- it works with GPUs with compute model 1.1 or higher and works best on GPUs with compute model 2.0 or higher
- added a portal material to guide environment sampling in interior scenes
- here you can find an explanation when and how to use portals: http://refractivesoftware.com/forum/vie ... =21&t=7210
- added a material preview to the LiveDB
- the direct lighting kernel supports now correct handling of alpha-transparencies as well as 4 new GI modes, which allow you to either speed up rendering or improve the accuracy/correctness
- find a more detailed explanation here: http://refractivesoftware.com/forum/vie ... =33&t=7522
- added new offline mode, that
- allows you to run OctaneLive® when you don't have Internet connection or there is a problem with OctaneLive
- requires Internet connection and a conenction to OctaneLive® every time you switch to a different version
- HDR output to 16-bit PNGs and OpenEXR
- to control the output format via the command line those command line options were added: --output-png16 / --output-exr / --output-exr-tm
- added dispersion and absorption to specular materials, which are explained here: http://refractivesoftware.com/forum/vie ... =21&t=8027
- many, many bug fixes and small improvements
Please post your experiences and issues with this release in this thread. Your help is much appreciated.
Yours,
The OctaneRender® Team.
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