Octane Render

Octane Render


Original author(s)	Refractive Software (2009 - 2012)
Developer(s)	OTOY (2012 - present)
Stable release	v2.17 / February 12, 2015 (2015-02-12)
Written in	C++
Operating system	Windows XP and later^[1] Mac OS X Lion or later^[1] Linux^[1]
Platform	IA-32 or x64 CUDA-enabled NVIDIA GPU^[1]
Type	Rendering system
License	Proprietary commercial software
Website	render.otoy.com/index.php

Octane Render is a real-time 3D unbiased rendering application that was started by the New Zealand-based company Refractive Software, Ltd and OTOY took over on March 2012. The first non-beta stable version, v1.0, was released on 28 November 2012 and later versions of Octane Render continue to be deployed as a Web release software.^[2] It is the first commercially available unbiased renderer to work exclusively on the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) and has the ability to work in real time.^[3]^[4] This allows users to modify materials, lighting and render settings “on the fly” because the rendering viewport updates immediately whenever a change is made. Octane Render runs exclusively on Nvidia's CUDA technology and is incompatible with video cards by other vendors.^[5]

Overview

Octane Render is the first GPU-based unbiased renderer to be released to the public.^[6]^[7]^[8]^[9] It uses the graphics card to calculate all measures of light, reflection and refraction.^[10]

Features

USER INTERFACE

Real-time interactive texturing and lighting
Node-based user interface allowing complex procedural materials
Sharing of materials between users via OctaneLive

ENGINE

Physically based / spectral light transport
Motion blur (for camera movement only)
Pause/resume render
Multiple GPU support

KERNELS

Render Passes:
- Position
- Z-Depth
- Geometric Normals
- Color ID
Direct Lighting:
- 4 Levels of Global Illumination
Path Tracing
PMC

SPECTRA

Gaussian spectra
Blackbody spectra
Supports multiple colour spaces

TEXTURES

Loads 40 different image file formats
HDR, Canon RAW, and OpenEXR HDRI image textures

LIGHTS

Spectrum or HDRI environment lighting
Sun-sky daylight with location / date control system
Emissive materials - emitter texture or blackbody spectrum

MATERIALS

Glossy, diffuse, translucent, and emissive materials
Bump mapping and normal mapping
Opacity / alpha mapping
Thin film coatings
Mixing/stacking of materials and layers
OctaneLive online community material database

CAMERAS

Thin lens perspective with true depth of field
3D stereo anaglyph rendering
Realistic camera controls:
- Depth of field
- Focal length
- F-stop
- Shutter speed
Camera response curves to simulate dozens of cameras
Real-time tone mapping pipeline
Built-in noise ("firefly") removal tool

EXPORT

Portable Network Graphics [PNG] - 8bpc
Portable Network Graphics [PNG] - 16bpc
Open EXR Untonemapped
Open EXR Tonemapped

Integration with other software

SCRIPTS

Octane Render (commercial version) comes with free export scripts for the following software:

PLUGINS

Refractive Software announced that they will offer plug-ins for several applications, which will give users full access to Octane Render without the need of exporting scenes into the Octane standalone software.Users must have a license of the standalone version in order to purchase any of the listed plugins.^[11] The plugins will be available for:

Acquisition

On the 13th of March 2012, it was announced that Refractive Software® has been acquired by the company “OTOY®”. OTOY is a company that specializes in cloud based technology.Development on Octane Render will continue as planned.^[12]

References