Otoy Has Announced Octane 3

Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 26, 2015. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.

With Otoy’s current upgrade, OctaneRender 3, OctaneVR and the OctaneRender Cloud Service are being introduced anew, as is the open-source ORBX file format, which was designed for HTML5, VR and AR platforms.

OctaneRender 3

New features of OctaneRender 3 include volumetric rendering, for example for CG volumes such as clouds, smoke, fire or fog. The new feature also supports Dreamworks Open VDB, allowing particle simulations to be rendered directly in the camera. OpenSL support has also been added, enabling users to create their own materials, procedural textures and shaders.

Deep pixel rendering, improved live texture baking and unlimited mesh and polygon size are other new features. Autodesk .fbx and Disney .ptex files can now also be imported into Octane. The ability to split render passes into "Raw Lighting" and "Albedo Passes" now makes it possible to control object reflections better.

In addition, the OctaneRender 3 user interface is completely configurable to personal preferences, and new API plugins have also been added.

ORBX File Format

The .orbx file container format was first introduced in Octane Renderer 1.5 to enable a robust exchange of scenes, materials, lighting and more, because it can be imported into any Octane plugin. The new version of the format has similar performance for rendered output, but also supports video, audio, spectral rendering and light-field as well as baked .fbx cache, plus compositing and deep-pixel metadata.

In addition, it offers navigable scene controls otherwise known only from real-time engines. Otoy believes that .orbx will become the future format for VR and AR applications. When the Octane Renderer is available, the company therefore wants to make the file format open source and make it available on GitHub.

OctaneRender Cloud

Otoy already presented the corresponding cloud for the renderer at Siggraph 2014. It is based on the same code base as OctaneRenderer 3. By using desktop.otoy.com, artists can create content live in OctaneRenderer – from any HTML5 browser. This spring, Otoy is inviting selected developers to take part in the OctaneRender Cloud beta release.

Octane currently supports 21 third-party applications as a plugin, including Cinema 4D. Plug-ins for Nuke, Houdini and MotionBuilder are currently in public beta and are due to be released soon. Plug-ins for After Effects, Photoshop and ZBrush are also due to follow soon.

Octane is available for Windows, Mac and Linux and costs from 299 euros.

Here you can also download a Standalone Edition demo.

In one of the upcoming DP issues, we will have a focus topic on the best render tools, in which Octane will certainly not be missing …