OctaneRender™ Blender 4.2 plugin version 2024.1 - 29.16 [STABLE] released

linograndi · September 23, 2024, 8:14pm

Projects created with 2023.1.3 may present issues when loaded in 2024. We’re working on a fix.
About the clay render, that’s odd. Is the Kernel set correctly?

RobWu · September 24, 2024, 6:38am

@kilian89 : This is what I was trying to say… New can of worms…
I hope you figure out your issues, and get the renders out the door

linograndi · September 24, 2024, 9:46am

The issue we just fixed was about the presence of “empty” RGB Image nodes connected to a material.
We’ll make a new release soon.

linograndi · September 24, 2024, 9:47am

We just fixed a crash due to the presence of “empty” RGB Image nodes connected to a material. I feel that may be the main issue here.

We’ll make a new release soon.

CrossstarDesigns · September 25, 2024, 3:18am

When removing an image from the RGB Image node by pressing X while Viewport Render is on, Blender crashes immediately. This issue occurs only when the viewport render is active

linograndi · September 25, 2024, 9:48am

Yeah, that’s been fixed already, it’s due to the fact that the node remains empty (which was a known issue).
We’ll release a new build very soon!

linograndi · September 26, 2024, 7:55am

OctaneRender™ for Blender 2024.1 - 29.14 [STABLE] is now available!

FIXES SINCE LAST RELEASE

Fixed an "empty ramp" problem when using ramp nodes(Gradient map, Toon ramp, Volume ramp)
Fixed some bugs as for the Cycles wrapper node
Fixed a render issue when using vertical camera sensor
Fixed offset problem when applying "camera dimension as preview resolution"
Fixed some other render issues of "camera dimension as preview resolution"
Fixed a material converter issue
Fixed a Vectron node render issue
Fixed crash when right clicking on the Server icon
Fixed renaming material update issue
Fixed crash when using empty image

KNOWN ISSUES

There’s a known issue in this release, that occurs when the horizontal width of the preview/camera window is smaller than the vertical width (i.e. when using a portrait aspect ratio). In this scenario, the Octane Preview and the 3D View may become inconsistent.

A Hotfix for this issue will be coming soon. For now, in order to work around this issue:

Ensure the Render Preview Viewport maintains a landscape aspect ratio (e.g. 1:1, 4:3, or 16:9).
Avoid using a portrait aspect ratio (i.e. where the vertical width exceeds the horizontal width).

You can set the Camera to any aspect ratio - for now however, it is recommended to ensure that the Viewport Window does not use a portrait orientation.

linograndi · September 30, 2024, 1:53pm

There’s a new hotfix available!

Yash_Raj · October 1, 2024, 7:16pm

Can you provide me a link to the lastest build to fix the portrait issue.

dobe · October 3, 2024, 10:20am

@linograndi

can I use the latest Nvidia driver in combination with Octane 19.14, or still the old version 552.22?

linograndi · October 3, 2024, 10:37am

I would wait a little bit more before updating the drivers.

linograndi · October 4, 2024, 11:39am

Most updated Prime links:

Windows:

https://render.otoy.com/plugindownloads/29/d6/b9/42/Blender_Octane_Edition_2024.1_29.14.1_stable.exe

Linux:

https://render.otoy.com/plugindownloads/d5/f7/c6/f1/octane_blender_2024.1-29.14.1-stable.run
MacOS:

https://render.otoy.com/plugindownloads/ef/9d/da/5a/Blender_Octane_Edition_2024.1_29.14.1_stable.zip

Grimm · October 21, 2024, 10:29pm

by azen » Mon Oct 21, 2024 2:34 pm

OctaneRender™ for Blender plugin. Windows, and Linux versions. The download links, provided on this page, are for Studio+ License Holders

CHANGES SINCE LAST RELEASE

Updated Octane Default Startup scene
Supported multiple node groups in the same shader node tree
Updated the subtype of some texture layer nodes, changing from float to percentage

FIXES SINCE LAST RELEASE

Fixed viewport render issue when toggling “Auto-Smooth”
Fixed misalignment bug when using “Always use camera resolution”
Fixed the missing viewport overlay GUI issue
Fixed issues of OSL Camera node
Fixed issues when loading some legacy scenes
Fixed the problem of wrong osl camera transformation
Fixed the out-of-date OctaneDB GUI issue when localDB path is changed
Fixed the light direction issue of directional light
Fixed issues of domain transform node
Fixed a redundant update caused by ramp and OSL nodes
Fixed a reiterated update issue when rotating light direction
Fixed traceback when converting legacy data
Minor Bug fixes

You can read about new features of OctaneRender™ 2024.1 here:
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=83998

ibotpl · October 29, 2024, 9:56pm

I’m getting a “No net Gpu” error when I want to switch to renderview. Stays black. Octane server version is correct, activation state says Ok, too. I’ve updated to latest nvidia driver, problem still here. Any ideas?

Edit: nevermind. the default blender lights apparently don’t work anymore. adding a new (octane) light “fixed” it.

PR59 · October 31, 2024, 11:47pm

Same issue, can’t load materials from octane DB…

Grimm · November 18, 2024, 11:48pm

by mojave » Mon Nov 18, 2024 12:36 pm

Hi all,

This is a bug-fix release for 2024.1. Thanks again to all those who reported issues, and sent us feedback.

Important notes

The minimum NVIDIA driver version required is 522.
The GPU version of Open Image Denoise is supported on CUDA compute model 7 (Volta) and later. The CPU version is used on machines with older models, and on macOS.
The minimum version of macOS required is 14.5.

Changes since 2024.1

Fixes

Fixed gizmo move tool in local mode.
Fixed progress bar not getting removed from the status bar after loading a saved render state in the Standalone.
Fixed issue causing scenes older than 2023.1 to have the light pass mask on environment medium enabled for the extra light passes introduced in more recent versions.
Fixed issue causing cudNN downloads to fail.
Fixed crash that occurred when the denoising operation was cancelled.
Fixed crash loading some scenes with volumetric data.
Fixed a deadlock happening potentially during scene updates.
Fixed crash on macOS when double clicking an orbx/ocs.
Fixed crash trying when trying to load a scene during another load.
Fixed bump mapping when using an orthographic camera.
Fixed possible crash on shutting down Octane on Windows.
Fixed regression introduced by a prior fix to avoid double highlights by introducing a compatibility mode.

Grimm · November 19, 2024, 2:49pm

by azen » Tue Nov 19, 2024 1:20 am

OctaneRender™ for Blender plugin. Windows, and Linux versions. The download links, provided on this page, are for Studio+ License Holders

CHANGES SINCE LAST RELEASE

Updated to Blender 4.2.3
Upgrade the export system
Implemented the OCIO Look node
Completed attributes for Tiled images
Supported specifying server address & ports in Python API

FIXES SINCE LAST RELEASE

Fix several export crashes
Fixed the Octane DB problem of Prime version
Fixed the missing object data panel of lights
Fixed auto smooth problem
Fixed traceback when converting property with invalid values
Fixed crash when using empty legacy image nodes
Fixed crash when trying to resolve legacy disabled sockets
Fixed empty property in the legacy Dirt Texture
Minor Bug fixes

You can read about new features of OctaneRender™ 2024.1 here:
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=83998

Grimm · November 29, 2024, 3:59pm

by mojave » Thu Nov 28, 2024 5:58 pm

Hi everyone,

We are excited to make available the first release candidate of Octane 2025.1. Thanks again to all those who reported issues, and sent us feedback.

2025.1 Feature Highlights

Rest Attributes: Support for rest attributes on meshes with animated vertices
New Vectron Texture Displacement: Support for texture displacement in Vectron and Volume SDF nodes
New Spectral LensFX: Matches the physically accurate measured effects of real world cameras lenses
New Chaos Texture System: Overhauled the Chaos texture node with a number of new features and attributes
Native Decal Support: New system in core to support easy and efficient placement of surface decals on geometry
Render Network Integration in core: The Render Network web service and UX is now available in core as a native window panel
Metal-RT: Major speed and memory improvements to hardware acceleration on Apple M3 and M4 devices with scenes using non-triangle geometry
Speed/Quality Volume Rendering Slider: Increasing this value means the performance will be boosted and the rendering quality will get degraded as a result, but the balance can now be tuned by the user
11 new blend modes for output AOV layers

As with all experimental builds, we advise to not use this release for production purposes. We are trying to, but we can’t guarantee that scenes saved with this version will be compatible in future releases. Changes are still being made daily.

Rest Attributes

Rest attributes remove texture shifting/distortion when using a texture projection that is not UV mapped (no UVs on the mesh) on a mesh with animated vertices. When enabled, the projections will use rest vertex positions and normals to calculate the UVW coordinates. Rest attributes don’t change during the animation so the texture mapping remains consistent.

https://render.otoy.com/downloads/c2/d1/24/b8/rest_attributes.webp(image larger than 5 MB)

Rest attributes must be supported by the plugin and can be used by enabling Use rest attributes pin in a projection node with support for it.

When importing a geometry archive, Rest attributes must be enabled in the archive’s import settings (e.g. set it to From bind pose for FBX or From animation time for Alembic). From file assumes that the FBX or Alembic file was produced by octane (e.g. exported to orbx via OctaneRender plugin that supports rest attributes).

Vectron Displacement

The new Vectron displacement node lets you displace a Vectron or a Volume SDF with an input texture.

It works in real time, at any scale, and is compatible with complex SDF trees or Mesh Volume SDF. You can also use a field texture to limit the area of action.

You can achieve virtually endless detail by stacking noises on top of each other giving you great results at minimal cost.

vectron-displacement.orbx
Vectron Displacement Test Scene
(219.94 KiB) Downloaded 10 times

Spectral LensFX - physically accurate rendering with real world camera data

This version introduces a realistic lens camera which produces aberrations and other effects similar to real glass camera lenses. The effects included are:

Bokeh
Optical vignetting.
Lens imperfections: such as soft focus, soft edges, and barrel distortion.
Chromatic aberration

A series of images showing different bokeh effects with different settings:

Imperfections can also be added to bokeh effects:

The camera implements simulation of the following lens models:

Angénieux 100mm
Primoplan 58mm f/1.5
Petzval 100mm
Nikon 28mm f/2.8
Canon 14.2mm f/2.8
Kodak Petzval 85mm
Cooke 40mm f/2.0
Nikon 51.6mm f/1.25
Biotar Zeiss 58mm
Asahi 50mm
SMC Takumar 50mm f2.0
Flektagon Zeiss 35mm f/2.8
Minolta 16mm f/2.8 180° fisheye
Canon 35mm f/1.8
Schneider 31mm
100mm magnifying glass

Below is a sample image generated using the new realistic lens camera:

Overhauled Chaos Texture System

The Chaos texture node has been updated with the following new features.

Support for projections other than Mesh UV.
Use as a normal map with corrected rotation.
Distort the grid with a texture.
Distort the grid with an internal noise.
Seed input controlling the main mapping randomization.
Tile transform to offset all tiles’ rotation/scale/translation.
Rotation steps on random rotation.
Option to disable blending.
Increased max blending exponent.
Option to colorize the hexagonal tiles for visualization purposes.

Native Decal Support

The decal feature allow you to project textures onto surfaces, adding visual details like dirt, damage or patterns without altering the underlying geometry. Decals are only compatible with mesh geometries.

Because of the complexity of the Octane materials, it is necessary to specify which channel receives the decal by connecting a decal texture node to the appropriate channel.

To help position the decal in 3D, you can use the decal wire-frame, which can be toggled using the decal wire-frame button located next to the sub-sample button under the render viewport in standalone.

Render Network Integration in Core

The Render Network service is directly integrated into Octane’s core workspace to provide a more seamless experience for users who take advantage of its computational resources. You can dock the new Render Network browser like any other work pane or keep it in a separate window and check your uploaded scenes and render jobs directly from Octane.

Please note that the Render Network integration is only available on Windows and Linux for now.

Metal-RT optimized HW acceleration on Apple devices

This version improves support for hardware acceleration on Apple M3 and M4 hardware by adding support for non-triangle primitives such as hair, particles, texture displacement and analytic lights.

This means that scenes that use non-triangle geometry will be also able to leverage the HW instead of falling back to the software implementation as before. Scenes with large amounts of triangles as well as other primitives will initially benefit most from this approach.

Below is a performance comparison using a synthetic test scene on an Apple M4Pro chip. Please note the performance may not be indicative of the final version since there’s still some work to do.

Octane Server (Experimental)

The new Octane server node allows submitting scene to a octane server and obtain result of the rendering by the network. The server can currently be another Standalone app instance or a separate Octane Server app.

This is an experimental feature which currently works in Octane Standalone only on Windows and with limited Linux support. To enable it go to Settings -> Application, enable the Enable experimental node graphs checkbox, press OK and restart Octane

Here you can find a scene with a minimal setup that uses a server instance on the same computer. In order to start the server in a separate instance of Octane Standalone go to Octane Server -> Start.

octane-server.ocs
Octane Server Test Scene
(85 KiB) Downloaded 9 times

All Changes Since Version 2024.1.1

New features

Added support for decals.
Added a realistic lens camera node, with a choice of real world lenses to simulate.
Addded a render pass which tells where the camera generates valid rays, and what the average throughput of camera rays is.
Added new experimental Octane Server. To make this visible, go to Preferences -> Application and check the “Enable experimental node graphs” setting. This is only available in Standalone Studio+ (Windows) and Standalone Prime (Mac OS).
Added support for rest position and normal attributes. It can be used in projections (e.g. XYZ to UVW) to make UV coordinates consistent if the mesh geometry is animated. In standalone, FBX and Alembic geometry archives now have a setting to import rest positions. Projections (triplanar, box, cylindrical, perspective, spherical, XYZ to UVW) now have “Use rest position” pin. If set to true, the rest attributes will be used for the calculations, when they are available.
Speed/Quality Volume Rendering Slider: There is a new pin added to each kind of medium called “Ray step increase factor”. Larger values means using larger ray marching step lengths for indirect rays. Increasing this value means the performance will be boosted and the rendering quality will get degraded as a result, but the balance is in the user’s hands. This pin defines the increase factor as percentage value. Regular value range will be from 0% to 100%. But it can support a maximal value of 300%, i.e. the step length can be scaled three times at most.
11 new blend modes for output AOV layers:
- Lighter color (SDR only)
- Darker color (SDR only)
- Linear burn (SDR only)
- Vivid light (SDR only)
- Linear light (SDR only)
- Pin light (SDR only)
- Hard mix (SDR only)
- Hue (SDR only)
- Saturation (SDR only)
- Color (hue + saturation) (SDR only)
- Luminosity (SDR only)

Lua API

octane.render.start() will only return when no updates are pending.
Added octane.json.decode: Parses a JSON string
Added octane.json.encode: Serialize a Lua value to a JSON string.
Added octane.scriptgraph.PROPS_BIT_MASK_PIN_INFO to initialize PT_BIT_MASK input linkers in script graphs.
Fixed octane.scriptgraph.getInputValue for PT_BIT_MASK input linkers.

Resolved issues

Fixed magnitude of OSL differentials generated for UV projection when used in an environment map.
Fixed possible crash on shutting down Octane on Windows.
Fixed hang when trying to load certain IES files.
Fixed bump mapping when using an orthographic camera
Fixed regression making some old scenes appear darker by adding a compatibility mode that allows using second highlights.
Fixed UI getting disabled while a baking texture node was being updated.
Fixed issue causing the render not to update properly after selecting a new image file in a node that has BCx compression enabled.
Fixed an application crash that occurred when the denoising operation was cancelled.
Fixed texture in rendered image not being updated when you load a new texture file into an image texture node with texture compression (BCx) enabled.
Fixed progress bar not getting removed from the status bar after loading a saved render state in the Standalone.
Fixed OSL UV, OSL projection, matcap and instance position getting mirrored when used inemission distribution inputs and texture environments
Fixed discrepancy between transforms on surface textures, and environment or emission distribution textures. For all of those a positive rotation angle
Fixed appearance of metallic materials inside other dielectrics. Before these materials would sometimes be rendered too dark.
Fixed textures rendered wrong on very large scenes.
Fixed issue causing OctaneRender Standalone to jump to the front if you hover over the node graph editor.
Fixed artefacts on large volumes in null material nodes which have high density absorption and emission.
Fixed potential application crash when displacement was applied to geometry without UVs
Fixed potential render failure if a shader had a large amount of texture inputs with delayed evaluation
Fixed post processing environment compositing when using alpha channel + environment render AOV + post processing render AOV (with “Include environment” enabled). The post processing render AOV node has a new compatibility mode to preserve the old behavior for existing scenes.
Fixed incorrect premultiplication for non-z-depth info render AOVs and the shadow render AOV when used in a render AOV. The render AOV output AOV layer node has a new compatibility mode to preserve the old behavior for existing scenes.
Fixed incorrect alpha premultiplication for some info render AOVs when displaying in the viewport or saving as TIFF files with premultiplied alpha.
Fixed post volume effects fog base color being interepreted as XYZ, not linear sRGB. The post volume effects node has a new compatibility mode to preserve the old behavior for existing scenes.
Fixed incorrect alpha compositing for post volume effects. The post volume effects node has a new compatibility mode to preserve the old behavior for existing scenes.
Fixed ccoating layer of the Standard Surface material not coloring the transmission as expected. This has been fixed and a compatibility mode has been added to keep the changes from affecting existing scenes.
Fixed inconsistent appearance of glossy materials inside specular materials with nested dielectrics enabled. The appearance would sometimes depend on priorities of other materials: if all priorities were the same it would switch as if the nested dielectrics were disabled.
Fixed the undo action of collapsing a Scene node failing in certain circumstances.
Fixed 4D hash noise in OSL (noise("hash", uvw, t))
Fixed an invalid pin access error when using a standard surface material with a displacement node input.
Fixed soft light blend mode in output AOV layers.
Fixed a potential application crash when closing a project.
Fixed auto bump on vertex displacement if using the second or third UV set.
Fixed too strong bump mapping in material previews using the sphere view
Fixed loading of animated VDBs with animated import parameters.
Fixed broken fast rounded edges.
Fixed potential memory leak while updating the scene geometry.

Improvements

OSL textures specifying [[string variant = "image"]] on an input now receive the same UV coordinates as image textures. You may use transform(1.0 / M, uv - vector(0.5, 0.5, 0)) + vector(0.5, 0.5, 0) to get the same rotation and scaling behaviour as image texture nodes.
The specular color input on metal material has an RGB node by default
Added “UV coordinate with transform” node. This is similar to the existing “UV coordinate” node but it has a transform input and the output value is affected by UVW transform nodes.
The “merge unwelded vertices” preference can be used with FBX files.
Hair uses now less memory and renders a bit faster.
Vertex displacement takes the “merge unwelded vertices” option into account.
Directional lights can be transformed by placement nodes. This only affects the light direction, not the spread angle.
Add missing “Volume scatter” cryptomatte for scattering medium inside null material on macOS.
Added the rendering scene’s analytic light count into the geometry statistics.
Improvements to Chaos texture
- Support projections other than Mesh UV.
- Added option to use as Normal map with corrected rotation.
- Added option to distort the grid with a texture.
- Added option to distort the grid with an internal noise.
- Added seed input controlling the main mapping randomization.
- Added tile transform to offset all tiles’ rotation/scale/translation.
- Added rotation steps on random rotation.
- Added option to disable blending.
- Increased max blending exponent.
- Added option to colorize the hexagonal tiles for visualization purposes.
Bumped the maximum number of analytic lights from 8 to 48.
OSL shaders can use differentials from vertex attributes for Dx() / Dy() and related functions.
You can now use the second and third UV set for bump mapping if the first UV set is constant or not set.
Improved support for hardware ray tracing using Metal on Apple devices by supporting all primitive types.

Important notes:

The minimum NVIDIA driver version required is 522.
The GPU version of Open Image Denoise is supported on CUDA compute model 7 (Volta) and later. The CPU version is used on machines with older models, and on macOS.
The minimum version of macOS required is 14.5.

Grimm · November 29, 2024, 4:02pm

by mojave » Thu Nov 28, 2024 6:00 pm

Hi all,

We are excited to bring you the first alpha preview of next year’s Octane 2026.1.

2026.1 Feature Highlights

Full path traced GPU rendering of gaussian splats: Neural objects can be implemented on top of this system
New live texture shader based texture displacement: no need to bake textures for pre-pixel texture displacement
Full support for trace sets: named objects or nodes can include/exclude other objects or scene data from within any shader or object node graph
New Neural Radiance Cache System: adaptive neural network at runtime significantly reduces noise on first pixel
Native support for MaterialX
Added support for textures with typed inputs and outputs
Meshlets: streaming massive scene geometry assets adaptively from disk, like Unreal Engine Nanite, but for Path Tracing
New bufferless virtual textures: adaptively streaming massive Gigapixel-scale textures directly from disk
Neural Rendering Modules and Nodes (experimental): Launch ML and Neural Filters locally or through the Render Network

As with all experimental builds, we advise to not use this release for production purposes. We are trying to, but we can’t guarantee that scenes saved with this version will be compatible in future releases. Changes are still being made daily.

Meshlets

This feature allows Octane to render very detailed geometry while not using a lot of device memory. It works similar to “Nanite” in Unreal Engine by adaptively choosing a not too fine and not too coarse level of detail for different parts of a mesh - depending on what is visible in the render.

In its current form it needs to be enabled explicitly in the geometry preferences as it requires a fairly expensive preprocessing step. During the preprocessing, Octane clusters a mesh into “meshlets” and then reduces the amount of geometry iteratively into multiple levels of detail. The preprocessed data is stored in a cache file in the OctaneRender cache directory to avoid having to redo the preprocessing every time the mesh is used.

During rendering, Octane chooses a selection of “meshlets” that results in a watertight mesh while making sure that the triangles are not too small or too large in image space and compared to the pixel size. This automatically limits the amount of data that is actually loaded into VRAM without showing a visible difference to the original high resolution geometry. Since Octane needs to render the scene to determine the meshlet selection, we introduced the concept of a “settling phase” where Octane determines a fitting meshlet and virtual texture selection by iteratively rendering the current scene, and only starts progressive rendering after meshlets and virtual textures (see below) have settled.

This feature is very well suited for 3D scans and/or vertex displaced, subdivided geometry.

The video below initially shows a scene where meshlets are not being used and then get enabled. The memory savings in device memory used by geometry data after the switch are quite significant (1 GB > 0.3 GB). You can also see how the geometry LODs change seamlessly while moving the camera around which makes this very useful for lookdev applications. Finally the video displays the various watertight meshlet patches using different colors and updating as required.

Please note meshlets will be part of Octane 2026.1 but this feature is not included in this build.

Virtual Streaming “Bufferless” Textures

This feature allows Octane to render very large image textures (many billions of pixels). Octane will create an on-disk tile cache, containing the texture at various levels of detail, and Octane will interactively stream the parts needed for the current camera view point into VRAM. This takes indirect effects like glossy reflections into account.

We can render large textures while only using a few dozen megabytes of VRAM.
For far away view points, or rough glossy or diffuse reflections, lower levels of detail will be used, this works as automatic texture filtering and reduces sampling noise.
Although creating the tile cache takes a long time, once cached Octane can open the texture instantly regardless of size.

This video demonstrates the use of an extremely large 113Kx94K texture being loaded and rendered at real-time while keeping on memory only the required LOD for each tile:

Please note virtual textures will be part of Octane 2026.1 but this feature is not included in this build.

Gaussian Splatting

Gaussian splats can capture complex lighting effects such as reflections and refraction that change depending on the viewing angle.

Octane supports loading .PLY files that contain Gaussian splatting data which can be produced from a set of images in software such as NeRF Studio or Polycam or the new LumaLabs AI services being added to Render Network.

The video below shows Gaussian splats being rendered at real-time using camera DoF as well as how they affect global illumination when other objects are also included in the scene.

Gaussian splatting typically assumes black background so to make it look correctly you will need to:

Disable the environment lighting
Enable alpha channel in kernel settings. Add an output AOV layer with black color to serve as a background.

Performance of ray-traced Gaussian splatting is slower than rasterization based approaches, however it comes with all the benefits of ray-tracing e.g. Gaussian splats are visible in reflections and refraction and can illuminate scene objects and cast shadows on them.
To improve rendering time consider making use of adaptive sampling and enabling sub-sampling in the viewport navigation tools.

Current limitations:

Gaussian splats are always rendered on top of volumes
Can’t receive shadows from the regular scene geometry (but regular scene geometry can receive shadows from gaussian splats)
Render layers are not fully supported
Network rendering is not supported

New Real Time Per-Pixel Texture Displacement

Octane’s texture displacement system is being given a complete overhaul. The quality of the displaced surface, especially with high frequency input data has been much improved. It is also now possible to use OSL textures directly with texture displacement.

The implementation in Octane still has several issues left to solve, including feature interoperability, the Metal implementation, UV mapping, and most importantly, there has been no performance optimizations yet. VRAM consumption in this alpha is far heavier than it will be with the next set of changes. Please also note that you must use a Mesh UV projection in the input texture, at the moment. We are planning for this requirement to be lifted when we get to stable.

Note that at least in this version, old scenes using texture displacement will continue using the old method for compatibility issues, if you wish to switch to the new mode you must change the node’s compatibility mode to use the latest approach.

Trace Sets

Trace sets allow geometry to be made invisible to other geometry. For example, an object’s reflection can be hidden in another reflective object, or an object can be prevented from casting shadows on another object.

Trace sets are set up via object layer nodes and apply to the geometry that belongs to the object layer. Object layers can belong to zero or more trace sets (currently limited to 31) and different object layers can belong to the same trace set. Each object layer can use any number of trace set exclusion rules, which can apply to reflection, refraction, diffuse and shadow ray bounce types and can optionally apply to multiple bounces rather than just the next one. The combination of these two makes this feature quite powerful and versatile.

In the example below you can see how the red cube is excluded from reflections in the mirror while the rest of objects are still displayed.

Here is a sample setup of how to achieve this result using two separate object layer nodes:

Current limitations:

Trace sets are ignored for dirt, round edges, post volume and Gaussian splats
Visibility rules on volumes are not applied (but volumes themselves can still be excluded).

MaterialX Support

MaterialX is an open exchange format for representing materials which allows using them across different applications and renderers.

This version introduces native MaterialX workflows in Octane using a set of new texture nodes, which enables support for importing MaterialX from .mtlx files or as part of USD (i.e: from Apple’s Reality Composer Pro). Initial support covers the most essential texture pattern nodes in MaterialX v1.38.

MaterialX can optionally be imported as non-MaterialX nodes into Octane. This is currently an experimental feature that can be turned on in the application preferences MaterialX tab.

Future work will include more recent updates from later versions of MaterialX, including support for OpenPBR.

Non-pattern nodes like BxDFs, EDFs are currently not supported.

Neural Radiance Cache

Neural radiance cache (NRC) is a technique that allows for faster noise resolution by using a neural network that is trained at render time.

This is specially useful in scenes with indirect lighting where many rays might not reach the camera.

NRC can be enabled using a flag in both Direct lighting and Path tracing kernels.

Here’s a comparison of a low sample count render where early noise reduction can be seen when using NRC in these videos showing side-by-side comparison of early noise reduction with and without NRC in a scene where light contribution comes from indirect sources:

Here is another example set with NRC and live GPU denoising working concurrently:

Current limitations:

Only supported on Windows and Linux on NVIDIA devices with compute capability 7.5 (Turing) or higher.
The first few samples are expected to be not accurate due to the network’s initial learning phase. To resolve this, please set the “Max. samples” in the kernel node to 1 and move around the camera for the network to train, then restart the render.
This manual process is planned to be turned into an automatic process in the future.
If the GPU memory consumption shoots up when the feature is enabled, please try to lower the max tile sample count.
Limited to a single GPU.

Typed Textures

This version introduces a much improved workflow for authoring shader graphs using nodes since now node inputs and outpus have specific value types.

The OSL Texture node can now have texture pins that are typed to supported OSL types including 2D/4D vectors/colors and matrices.

Additional texture value nodes have been added for providing 4D vector and color values and for matrix values.

Image texture nodes can now output RGBA colors with alpha channel (when applicable).

Binary math operation texture node can now operate on selected value types with adaptive UX.

2026.1 Roadmap: New Features in Active Development
Neural Render Network Jobs and Modules in Node Graph (experimental)

All Changes Since Version 2025.1

New features

Added support for Gaussian splatting which allows rendering of PLY Gaussian splat data.
Added new texture displacement method which improves the quality of the displaced surface and allows use of OSL textures.
Added support for trace sets.
Added support for MaterialX exchange format. Supported nodes include:
- Application (frame/time)
- Geometry Properties (position/normal/tangent/uv)
- Images (tiled/normalmap)
- Math (scalar/vector/matrix/transforms)
- Compositing (blend/mask/matte/merge)
- Color Adjustment (hsv/rgb/saturation/luminance)
- Procedural (noises/ramps/splits)
- Channels (combine/separate/extract)
- Conditionals (if/greater/switch)Material responses nodes, volumes and emission nodes are not currently supported.
  .mtlx files can be imported into Octane as a graph of either MaterialX nodes or Octane equivalents (with limited support). Currently only MaterialX graphs using Standard Surface or MaterialX’s UsdPreviewSurfaceare supported for importing. Importing MaterialX materials from USD is also supported when using the USD importer for USD files that contain MaterialX materials in USD format.
Added neural radiance cache, an online learning network for faster gathering on indirect lighting. A new pin has been is introduced to direct lighting and path tracing kernels which toggles the feature on/off.
Added support for typed texture values:
- Updated OSL Texture and Binary math operation texture nodes so their inputs and output are no longer always limited to just the color value type. Supported types now include: int, float, vector2, vector, vector4, normal, point, color and color4. Texture pins can still connect freely with any typed or untyped pins, with implicit type conversions happening as needed transparently. The node inspector adapts dynamically when types change.
- Updated node OSL Texture so it can now use shader input types of any type. A metadata label [[string inputType = "texture"]] is required make them texture pins.
- Updated Binary math operation texture node with a type selector affecting the inputs and output and a checkbox for forcing the second input to be a scalar.
- Added new RGBA color texture node type can carry a value of any supported type, including a color with alpha transparency or a 4D vector.
- Updated nodes RGB color and Grayscale color so they can also carry any type.
- Added new Matrix value node which repersents a 4x4 matrix.
- Added mew Transform to matrix conversion node that takes a transform and outputs a texture of type matrix or matrix33.
- Updated node OSL Texture so it can now take an input and/or output of type matrix or matrix33.

Improvements

The OSL matrix type has been re-implemented to follow the de facto standard. Basis vectors of a matrix are arranged now in rows instead of columns. This behavior will only apply to new nodes since the old ones will continue working by using a compatibility mode. In practice the new behavior means that:
- The 16-float version of the matrix constructor gets transposed. As an example, an affine transform matrix would be arranged like this:
  matrix(v1x, v1y, v1z, 0, v2x, v2y, v2z, 0, v3x, v3y, v3z, 0, trx, try, trz, 1)
- When using the [] matrix operator the two indices are swapped.
- Matrix multiplication order is also swapped, so to get a matrix that applies M1 and then M2 to a vector, use M1 * M2.

Other changes

The specular color input on metal material has an RGB node by default.
OSL UV, OSL projection, matcap and instance position no longer get mirrored when used in emission distribution inputs and texture environments.
OSL textures specifying [[string variant = "image"]] on an input receive the same UV coordinates as image textures. If desired, use transform(1.0 / M, uv - vector(0.5, 0.5, 0)) + vector(0.5, 0.5, 0) to get the same rotation and scaling behaviour as image texture nodes.

Fixes

Fixed discrepancy between transforms on surface textures, and environment or emission distribution textures. For all of those, a positive rotation angle results in counter clockwise rotation.

Lua API

Updated function octane.node.getPinInfo so it now returns a octane.apiinfo.PROPS_INT_PIN_INFO/octane.apiinfo.PROPS_FLOAT_PIN_INFO property table for non-color typed texture pins depending on their types.
Updated property octane.apiinfo.PROPS_TEXTURE_PIN_INFO:defaultValue so it defaults now to a 4D array instead of 3D.
Added property octane.apiinfo.PROPS_NODE_INFO:textureInputValueTypeIds: The ids of possible types of values that main texture inputs can be chosen to have in this node.
Added property octane.apiinfo.PROPS_NODE_INFO:textureInputValueTypeNames: The names of possible types of values that main texture inputs can be chosen to have in this node.
Added property octane.apiinfo.PROPS_NODE_INFO:textureInputValueTypeTogglePinId: The pin id of the input who’s texture type may be toggled.
Added function octane.node.getPinTextureValueType: The possible types of values that main texture inputs can be chosen to have in this node.
Added function octane.node.getPinTextureValueTypeIx: The possible types of values that main texture inputs can be chosen to have in this node.
Added function octane.node.getPinTextureValueTypeName: The possible types of values that main texture inputs can be chosen to have in this node.
Added function octane.node.getPinTextureValueTypeNameIx: The possible types of values that main texture inputs can be chosen to have in this node.
Added function octane.node.getOutputTextureValueTypeId: The id of the type of texture value of the node’s texture output.
Added function octane.node.getOutputTextureValueTypeName: The name of the type of texture value of the node’s texture output.

Important notes:

The minimum NVIDIA driver version required is 522.
The GPU version of Open Image Denoise is supported on CUDA compute model 7 (Volta) and later. The CPU version is used on machines with older models, and on macOS.
This is a Windows only release. macOS and Linux versions will come in a subsequent build.

Only Windows at this time.

Grimm · December 9, 2024, 11:10pm

by mojave » Mon Dec 09, 2024 1:06 pm

Hi all,

This is a bug-fix release for 2024.1.1. Thanks again to all those who reported issues, and sent us feedback.

Your plugin authentication keys should be available on your respective Filedrop folders.

Important notes

The minimum NVIDIA driver version required is 522.
The GPU version of Open Image Denoise is supported on CUDA compute model 7 (Volta) and later. The CPU version is used on machines with older models, and on macOS.
The minimum version of macOS required is 14.5.

Changes since 2024.1.1

Fixes

Fixed a potential memory leak on Windows and Linux while updating scene instances.
Fixed magnitude of OSL differentials generated for UV projection when used in an environment map.
Fixed differentials on fisheye, cubic and orthographic cameras.
Fixed denoised render AOVs and volume mask render AOV containing an unintended alpha premultiplication when kernel alpha channel is enabled.