Octane Render: Fully GPU Unbiased render engine
It was made public yesterday the existence of a new renderer called Octane Render. This is new software that works with Unbiased render algorithms in a different way than we are used to interact. If you have already used LuxRender or Indigo Render, both using unbiased render methods, you know how realistic the rendered images can get. The downside of unbiased render engines is the amount of time we need to have a clean and noise free image, which in some cases could demand several hours or a network of computers to speed up the process.
How different Octane is from that? Well, first of all Octane is not CPU based and it uses the cores of the GPU. By using the modern GPU power, a render made with unbiased algorithms can be created at an incredible short time. Besides the fact that we can create realistic images with Octane using a GPU, another great thing about it is that by default we can manipulate and work with or scene interactively.
If you want to know a bit more about Octane, which is developed by a company called Refractive Software, watch the video bellow that shows a brief intro to Octane.
One of the persons behind Octane is a well know artist and developer of the Blender community called Radiance. You might remember him from the LuxRender project and back to the Indigo Render community, back in the days it was a Freeware.
As you might see with a visit to the company website, Octane will be a commercial renderer with probably a demo version for users to play around.
How about Blender 3D support? Well, in the demo video showed above the author uses a scene created in Blender 3D. The renderer can import 3d files saved in OBJ format, making it compatible with a lot of 3d packages without the need of an exporter script or another interface.
I haven`t played around for that long with Octane so far, but expect a detailed review of the renderer soon. Of course, I will test the renderer for architectural visualization projects and furniture visualization. I`m pretty exited about the earlier results and quick tests with the software. For now, I recommend a visit to the renderer web site to check out for more demos and a quick view in the image gallery.
Comments
Blenderificus
nice, an unbiased GPU render engine. I’ll keep an eye on this one, thanks for sharing the news.
Alain
Thanks Allan.
This seems to be very interesting news but makes it even more hard to make a decission for the right Renderengine.
Until today V-Ray for Blender was the best solution for arch-viz in my opinion, but if everything is true what they promise Octane Renderer could be my new favorite.
But what if V-Ray Standard uses GPU Power as well ?
I tested V-Ray RT with GPU Power and it was to slow, maybe because my graphiccard didn’t support CUDA ?
Kind regards
Genscher
Not worth mentioning. It’s just the commercial project of Radiance, the former luxRender lead dev. So in the end he went the same way that Indigo went.
This is not cool nor great in any way.
Keep up luxrender!
BigPilot
Wow, this is really neat. It renders almost instantaneously what takes Luxrender HOURS. This is truly a great advance and I hope the Luxrender comes up with something similar soon.
I was also struck by the neat, intuitive and easy to use interface. Blender could certainly learn from this.
BX
Too sad it’s not open source 🙁
yoff
No less than awesome…!
melon
Cool, I was wondering what is Radiance doing, so I guess Octane is the answer. Looking forward for a Linux beta version:)
glman
At first I thought it would just be an accelerated Lux, but there are some really impressive features presented in the video.
I especially like the film response curve option (just need to see Ilford in there 😉 ).
I would still like to see GPU rendering added to Lux (has anyone even tried compiling it in yet?), and I agree with BX, but this looks different enough, with enough new features to be worth experimenting with.
OIB
May I add that luxrender is going to get a GPU render in version 0.7 or the one after that? Witch will be ATI compactible as it is being written in openCL?
You can follow the topic here: http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2947
Its GUI is nice but appart from that I expected a bit more, really.
glman
Thanks for the info OIB.
Allan Brito
I wasn`t aware of that OIB, I will check it out.
Thanks
OIB
I wanted to clarify my comment a bit that the dev(s?) are in a early stage on the GPU rendering and only have a testing tool (no luxrender implementation) or support for textures or anything like that.
I think that its also slower.
But I’am patently waiting 🙂
Samo
“This is not cool nor great in any way.”
Genscher, how old are you? Never heared of the concept that a) people need to make a living and b) people are prepared to pay money for something that is of value to them, have you? If you feel so strongly about the issue, use your time to learn to code and continue working on luxrender yourself — you already have a pretty good base to work from and if you spend only 40hrs a week learning/coding you’ll be up and contributing meaningfully to the project in no time! Good luck!
kivig
Mind blowing!
Ok – 200 euro. And I bet there will be a bit more than twice of users willing to buy it for 100, so that’s clever.
Personally I’d buy it right now IF there’d be a guarantee of connection with modeling apps (blender), what seems to be weak for now.
Animation through obj??
Procedural textures and import of scene materials?
Import of material and procedural texture animation???
Render-farming?
Graphic cards not computers as rendering nodes would be really, really cool especially if they would be able to work on same render, but that’s a wish only.
Ephalim
This is great news!
No more hours of waiting for your rendering to complete!
Cant wait for it.
Benjamin Bailey
Awesome. 🙂 This looks quite friendly. Simple GUI, amazing real-time rendering, and easy-to-use object/color selection. Wonder how it works with animations?
Alain
BTW:
Chaosgroup is working on unsing GPU-Power in V-Ray RT since at least August 2009:
http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/SIGGRAPH-2009-CHAOS-GROUP-GPU.shtml
The conclusion for me is, that they will use GPU for V-Ray standard as well 😉
And I just can repead what I always say:”We don’t need thousends of different renderer, we need just one but a good one ;-)”.
Go back to make things simple and do not divide them in thousend different possibilities.
GPU sounds for me like a huge step in rendertechnology.
We will see what the future brings 🙂
Kind regards
O.I.B.
@Alain
Having only 1 renderer will be the worst that that can ever happen IMHO. Having competition will not only drive innovation but will also lower the prices.
I don’t want 1 thing and having to deal whit it, give me a 100 options so I can pick one that fits me best.
WillC
By the look of things, Octane is definitely taking short cuts, and I’d even be hesitant to call it fully “unbiased” because it looks like it is set to the minimum amount of ray bounces (like 10 bounces?) and the quality of renders is quite poor compared to fully unbiased renderers that use 1500+ bounces.
Not only that, but everyone is getting on the GPU bandwagon – I think I’ll stick with the big boys like Fry and Indigo who have proven that they implement decent and hack-free code.
uniqued
Hello , I`m a VFX supervisor of company in middle europe working hard with film/commercials industry. I was interested a lot in that GPU renderer , but I realy not recomend to even think about this software – octane renderer – because thair makers are realy not professional and childlish, after few posts asking about error what apears in te rendered pictures they said “that this posts are not alowed because it looks bad about thair software, after explaining that my posts are only explain potencial customers what they can expect for alpha version, OCTANE MAKERS banned my account.
Realy this is not professional and chaidlish bechaviour not fit to doftware what you can put in your pipeline.
Think about that in production are always problems and errors apear, and If my projects or projects my customers will be crashed because of not professional support from side which are building this software, I lost a money , lose customers and propobly my company too so try to understad that I not recomend software wich are not professional supported…
Conclusion: software with futrure when makers and support will be professional.
UniqueD
ejjejj
The real problem is the maximum of 2GB memory size on affordable cards. A Tesla and a 100 euro license is not so cheap anymore, is it?
Zeller Samuel
UniqueD was pissed and now he post negative comments in every possible website around the web 🙂
You shouldn’t listen to him, and I don’t even think he’s a VFX supervisor at all…
Here’s more info
http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=427
ROUBAL
For my own, I have only a poor Geforce 8800 GTS 512 graphic card, and I must say that after playing with the early 0.7alpha to 0.81alpha demo, I have seen enough of Octane to pre-order the commercial version !
This Render engine is amazing in term of both speed, quality and interactivity. I am a Blender user, and owner of a Indigo license as well and I had never done image of the same level of quality so fast and with so few efforts.
I became an Octane addict in one week, and the next Nvidia Fermi cards will allow rendering around 6 to 8 times faster than I can currently render with my 8800.
The only unknown area is the way Octane will allow to render animations, but I’m almost sure that we will be informed in a closed future.
If you have some doubts about Octane, have a look to the images displayed in the competition section of their site, or to the images on my own website.
I have no commercial links with Octane, I’m only a very impressed and grateful user.
Best regards,
Philippe Roubal.
UniqueD
Hello, After few months of watching things with Octane is getting better and better (future is came soon I thought, so I`m sure I will buy some of licenses of octane. See Ya. Wish luck.
UniqueD