Archive notice: This article was originally published on January 24, 2017. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The future of Octane
The Octane Renderer is widely known in the VFX community as a GPU renderer for interesting cinematics, but since the 2016 keynote, Otoy has also increasingly addressed game makers. Jules Urbach, CEO of Otoy, speaks in this video about the future version of Octane. Tools for baking are discussed in particular. Lightfield baking, for example, is currently in an experimental phase and is intended to provide an alternative to conventional baking via textures. This will make it possible, for example, to bake information that enables a model to be relit. Accordingly, with a focus on real-time game engines and baking pipelines, Jules also addresses another focus for Octane 4: dynamic path tracers in real time, with which the Octane functions in Unity’s editor mode are also intended to work in game mode. For Otoy, this is consequently an important future step for VR and AR content.
What’s all this about VR?
Anyone puzzling over the whole VR topic: in our next issue, we provide a detailed overview of the subject of virtual reality. Alongside an introduction to all the terminology, we also provide insights into current projects and tools—the publication date is February 20.
2016 keynote
In November, Otoy announced that it would integrate Octane and ORBX directly into Unity, including the free version of the game engine. Here is the talk about it.
Octane in DP
We have followed the Octane Renderer since its first version. The 2.0 version was explored in a detailed report in DP issue 14 : 06. We also provided you with a calorie-free hamburger. Anyone looking for free Octane material libraries for Cinema 4D will find them here. Octane was also part of our cover story in DP issue 16 : 06. Here you can see a small breakdown by Cornelius Dämmerich.
More about the renderer and Otoy at www.otoy.com
