We are very excited to bring you the third alpha of Octane 2027. This version includes a preview of new features as well as improved support for features already included in the first and second alpha builds.
Octane 2027.1 Alpha 3 Highlights
- Real-time Neural Rendering updates.
- Improved support for MaterialX PBR and OpenPBR.
- Improved Physical Optics Material.
- Improved Environment Map Visibility Cache.
- UV atlas mode for HQ texture displacement.
- Increased maximum instance count.
- SDF to mesh baking.
- Support for OCIO 2.5.
As with all experimental builds, we advise to not use this release for production purposes. All features included in this build are still under active development, so we can't guarantee that scenes saved with this version will be compatible in future releases.
Important notes:
- The minimum NVIDIA driver version required is 572.
- Supported versions of macOS currently are macOS15 and macOS26.
This version introduces significant quality updates to Octane's new real-time mode with refined sampling, denoising, and upscaling to deliver a cleaner and more temporally stable interactive experience.
These improvements focus on improving the image quality of real time mode with less distracting flickering GI noise, better preservation of material textures, and more consistency between frames.
The denoising and upscaling pipeline has been reworked to pass more reliable information of the frame, with improved denoising guidance for reflective and also refractive surfaces.
Upscaling is also improved to bring reconstruction closer to the ground truth image, with the additional ultra performance setting introduced in this version to bring the real time mode's rendering cost down.
While the current real-time mode is still restricted to Windows and Linux, we are still working on the macOS version coming in a later release.
Improved support for MaterialX PBR and OpenPBR.
This release extends Octane's MaterialX support to version 1.39.6 for material import, including importing and authoring Flake2D and Flake3D nodes.
It also extends the set of supported MaterialX BSDF layer nodes with Conductor, Dielectric, Generalized Schlick, Burley Diffuse, Oren Nayar Diffuse and Sheen nodes. Conductor, Dielectric and Generalized Schlick also Retroreflective.
There's been new helper nodes being added to add more control over reflecting materials and improvements to normal and bump generation, particularly for workflows without UVs, with the MaterialX Bump node now supporting UV-free workflows as well.
Below are sample renders of the Lion MaterialX reference asset belonging to the ASWF Digital Production Example Library (DPEL), which can be downloaded here.
More sample renders from Pixar's Stirling MaterialX reference asset.
Improved Environment Map Visibility Cache
The environment map visibility cache is a method to improve HDRI environment sampling which helps especially under low light conditions and specially suited to render indoor environments where most of the light contribution is provided by an external source.
Until this version, the environment visibility cache used to support image textures exclusively. Now, it can also be used with OSL or constant value texture inputs to the environment.
Furthermore, for daylight environments, the cache can now also be used to sample the procedural sky if no sky texture is connected.
Support has also been added for the planetary environment, both with or without a connected star field texture.
In addition to that, this version also enables the use of the cache on macOS and with network rendering.
SDF to mesh baking
This version introduces the ability to convert an input SDF into a mesh. The input can contain Vectron primitives and operators.
The primary purpose of this feature is to create a proxy geometry for an SDF, so the resulting geometry can be used as a target surface for scattering or in physics simulations.
The new "Bake SDF to mesh" node uses a bounding box to define the region that is converted into a mesh. Use the transform controls to position and resize the bounding box around the desired portion of the source SDF. You can disable baking while adjusting the bounding box to avoid triggering a new bake after every change. When baking is disabled, the input SDF is passed through to the output unchanged.
Once the bounding box is in place, use the Level of detail input to control how densely the SDF is sampled within it. Lower values produce a coarser mesh that captures the overall shape. Higher values preserve finer features, at the cost of longer baking times and a denser mesh.
Thee same SDF can be connected multiple Bake SDF to mesh nodes to bake different regions of the object separately if needed.
UV atlas mode for HQ texture displacement
This version introduces the ability to use non-UV projections and vertex attributes when using texture displacement maps in high quality mode.
To achieve this, displacement node now can operate in two modes:
- Normalized UV. The displacement map will be baked into 0..1 UV square. Best when tiling is required. This mode can only be used with Mesh UV projection.
- UV atlas. The displacement map will be baked into an atlas made of mesh UV triangles. Used for high quality texture displacement only.
The active mode ("Normalized UV" or "UV atlas") is displayed in the Displacement node inspector.
In the "UV atlas" mode, mesh UVs are used to bake heightmap into the atlas, because of this, the UVs must fulfill the following requirements:
- UV triangles can't overlap
- UV coordinates must be in range
0..1.
All Changes Since Version 2027.1 Alpha 2
New features
- Added support for OCIO 2.5 configurations.
- Added retro reflective support to OpenPBR and Universal material nodes.
- Added support for SDF to mesh baking, allowing SDFs to be used in operations requiring real-world mesh data.
- Added a "Force reload all materials" option to the USD stage editor.
- Added support loading scenes via a URLs when launching via command line.
- Added support for user-specific unattended authentication, which takes priority over system-wide settings.
- Windows
%APPDATA%/OctaneRender(user-specific)%PROGRAMDATA%\OctaneRender(system-wide)
- Linux
~/.OctaneRender(user-specific)/etc/OctaneRender(system-wide)
- macOS
~/Library/OctaneRender(user-specific)/Library/OctaneRender(system-wide)
- Windows
- Real-Time Neural Rendering
- Improved realistic glass transparency.
- Reduced noise artifacts during sample accumulation.
- Reduced flickering in specular reflections.
- Enhanced smoothness of motion and frame consistency.
- Increased clarity of surface textures and lighting details.
- MaterialX
- Added support for MaterialX 1.39.6 when importing materials, including importing and authoring of Flake2D and Flake3D nodes.
- Added MaterialX BSDF layers nodes: Conductor, Dielectric, Generalized Schlick, Burley Diffuse, Oren Nayar Diffuse and Sheen.
- Added MaterialX Artistic IOR helper texture node with more artistic control over reflectance tinging for Conductor BSDF node.
- Added MaterialX Roughness Dual, Roughness Anisotropy, and Glossiness Anisotropy nodes for artistic control over roughness of reflecting BSDFs.
- Added support for Retroreflective pins in Conductor, Dielectric and Generalized Schlick BSDF layer nodes, for both authoring and importing.
- Added a TexCoord input pin to HeightToNormal node which specifies the texture coordinates that the heightfield gradient is computed with respect to.
- MaterialX HeightToNormal node can still generate normals without UVs, when the new TexCoord pin is not connected.
- Improved MaterialX Bump node to support UV-free workflows when upstream Height nodes also don't require UVs.
- OpenPBR
- Added a version pin to the OpenPBR material node for switching between OpenPBR 1.1 and OpenPBR 1.2 versions.
- Added support for specular haze and emission weight when using OpenPBR 1.2.
- Enhanced specular weight control to modulate Fresnel-based reflectance presence.
- Enabled specular weights exceeding 1 to boost dielectric reflectance.
- Removed unintended complementary color tinting in transmission when using specular color.
- Updated transmission scattering parameterization to use a simpler version.
- Physical Optics Material
- Added a thin wall node pin, enabling backfaces to be treated as front faces for accurate light interaction.
- Added dispersion support for the extraordinary IOR.
- Added support for retro reflectivity.
- Added support for fake shadows.
- Added support for mediums.
- Changed the optical axis representation from using azimuth and polar angles to bounded 3D vectors.
- Added support for polarization-aware thin-film simulation and polarization filtering to enable more accurate rendering of layered coatings and polarization-dependent effects.
- Enhanced thin-film interference calculations to account for multiple internal reflections, improving realism in complex surface interactions.
- Enabled polarization data transport through physical optics simulations, preserving polarization states across light bounces for consistent material behavior.
- Added a visual polarization film layer to the thin-film simulation, making it easier to observe and adjust polarization effects during rendering.
- Extended polarization filter support to realistic, thin, and universal cameras, allowing direct visualization and isolation of polarization-dependent results in the viewport.
- Accurately represented birefringent interference in polarized light transport, ensuring these effects are visible through material films or camera filters rather than appearing in unpolarized light.
- Birefringent media optical axes are now expressed in world coordinates.
- Environment Map Visibility Cache
- In addition to image textures, other types of varying textures, such as OSL textures, are now also supported.
- Added support for constant value textures.
- It is no longer a requirement to have "Importance sampling" enabled on environment nodes to use the visibility cache.
- Added support for sky sampling when using the daylight environment without a sky texture.
- Added support for planetary environments with or without a connected star field texture.
- Added support for macOS.
- Added support for network rendering.
- USD Support
- Added support for USD import with MaterialX image nodes, allowing relative file paths for all image node types.
- Added support for USD importing of DomeLight_1 and of image textures used in RectLights.
- USD importing of lights that use Blackbody emission is now at parity with non-Blackbody emissions.
- Improved displacement node to support non-UV texture projections (e.g. XYZ to UVW), adding "Normalized UV" and "UV atlas" modes. The selected mode is visible in the node inspector, with "UV atlas" automatically applied when baking displacement maps for projections other than "Mesh UV". This mode requires mesh UV coordinates to be non-overlapping and within 0–1 range for proper heightmap atlas generation.
- Improved the Greyscale Image node to support color output for re-tinting purposes, and automatically applied the color setting when loading scenes saved prior to version 2026.1.
- Improved undo and redo functionality for grouping and ungrouping node graphs to preserve the selection state during operations.
- Increased the maximum number of mesh instances supported by Optix due to value limts by a factor of 3.
- MaterialX
- Fixed crash on macOS when connecting MaterialX HexTiledImage or HexTiledNormalMap nodes to derivative-taking nodes like MaterialX Bump.
- Fixed MaterialX Surface support for Thin Wall transmission of Dielectric and Generalized Schlick BSDF layer nodes.
- Fixed MaterialX Bump node to align the results with usage of Bump pins in material and layer nodes.
- Fixed MaterialX Surface node to update correctly when using layer switch nodes upstream from its BSDF pin, of when layer pins are not connected.
- Fixed handling of world-space normals for the normal pin of material and layer nodes.
- When HeightToNormal, Bump or NormalMap nodes are upstream from normal pins, the pins must receive world-space normals as normal/vector type.
- TexCoord pins of all MaterialX nodes now use the default mesh UVs of the first UV set when they are not connected.
- MaterialX Image nodes using UDIM file paths now extract tile numbers more reliably and properly place rightmost UDIM tiles (1010, 1020, 1030, etc.).
- MaterialX Image nodes no longer display a warning message when their file input is set to an empty string, when the scene containing them is loaded.
- Physical Optics Material
- Fixed dark artifacts in caustics when accurate color is enabled and the object casting caustics has dispersion active.
- Fixed mismatch in physical optics material path tracing and photon tracing caustics calculations for improved accuracy.
- Network Rendering Improvements
- Fixed a render engine error causing photon mapping to hang when using network rendering.
- Fixed inconsistent image quality between regions of large renders using photon mapping across multiple GPUs or network render nodes.
- Restored network rendering compatibility with the new texture displacement.
- USD Support
- Fixed an issue where USD materials in ORBX files could not be saved or loaded when originating from referenced .mtlx files.
- Fixed import errors when using unsupported MaterialX nodes from USD files, now completes with empty materials and optional warnings enabled via a project setting.
- Fixed "Image not found" error dialog that appeared when loading USDZ files.
- Fixed USD import errors when displacement attributes are unconnected in MaterialX materials.
- Fixed missing connections when ungrouping a node graph with direct input-to-output links.
- Improved handling of unconnected input linkers by converting them into expanded nodes to prevent accidental deletion.
- Fixed
Dx(pow(a, b))in OSL to correctly handle cases where the base (a) is zero. - Fixed
octane.file.fopenno longer prevents from saving when opening files in the currently open package. - Fixed a potential render hang when using photon mapping with subsampling.
- Fixed a race condition in the photon tracing kernel.
- Fixed an issue where the first UV set could not be accessed by name.
- Fixed an issue where toggling the denoiser during rendering of scenes with meshlet meshes caused incorrect LOD data handling, leading to render errors.
- Fixed default orientation of anisotropy in OpenPBR materials when the tangent input is not connected.
- Fixed displacement map import for OpenPBR materials from MaterialX and USD files.
- Fixed improper undo behavior when ungrouping a node graph containing linkers not connected to external nodes.
- Fixed incorrect calculation of light contributions from indirect emitters when certain lights are excluded from rendering.
- Fixed issue with multi-GPU resulting in render errors.
- Fixed memory leak when using Gaussian splats on Windows and Linux.
- Fixed output value typing for Float Image and Alpha Image texture nodes to ensure correct data handling in material connections.
- Fixed shadows appearing jagged when using very small sun or directional light sources.
- Fixed unnecessary reloading of mesh and image nodes when making copies of them in the node graph.
- Fixed crash when rendering texture displacement using a mesh without UVs.
- Fix render failure on macOS if an OSL shader has a local array variable with non-zero differentials.
- Changed MaterialX displacement import to use the default High displacement quality mode.
OctaneRender Studio+ 2027.1 Alpha 3 Standalone for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2027.1 Alpha 3 Standalone for Windows (ZIP archive)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2027.1 Alpha 3 Standalone for Linux
OctaneRender Prime 2027.1 Alpha 3 Standalone for macOS
OctaneRender Studio+ 2027.1 Alpha 3 Node for Windows (installer)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2027.1 Alpha 3 Node for Windows (ZIP archive)
OctaneRender Studio+ 2027.1 Alpha 3 Node for Linux
Happy rendering,
Your OTOY Team
