Archive notice: This article was originally published on December 18, 2017. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Octane is a GPU-based unbiased PBR renderer from Otoy that is currently used in many pipelines. Now Unity Technologies has released OctaneRender integration for Unity, which could already be seen as a preview at Siggraph 2017. This expands Otoy’s software plug-in options – only a few months ago, the company released Octane for After Effects and Nuke.
Octane for Unity Features
- PBR Viewport: The PBR Viewport lets you view the path-tracing results of the respective 3D scene directly. When changes are made, your rendering is automatically refreshed via live updates.
- Materials and lights are integrated as part of the PBR features. You can create your materials in a node-based workflow using the Node Editor. Unity Technologies has also announced support for OSL.
- OctaneRender cameras allow familiar camera parameters to be adjusted. You can also use 360° renderings, stereo options and Baking Camera.
- Lightmapping is already integrated into the first version as a beta and enables GPU-accelerated “Live Lightmapping” that is up to ten times faster than previous lightmapping in Unity.
- FBX support for converting ORBX formats for better pipeline integration.
- Recorder: The OctaneRender Recorder combines batch rendering and play mode to obtain cinematic renderings directly from the Unity Timeline.
Real-time path tracing, which is set to appear with Brigade in the release of Octane 4 next year, is not yet included in OctanRender for Unity. For the time being, the current version is limited to the features mentioned with pre-rendered content.
You can find more videos on using OctaneRender for Unity here. You can also find all further information about the features in the Otoy manual for Unity.
Prices & Availability
The integration is available now for all Unity versions from 2017.1 here. You can choose between three models. You will also find free scenes in the Unity Asset Store with which you can test OctanRender.
- Free version includes all features – but is limited to a single GPU
- €16.95 per month (converted) with support for 2 local GPUs, OctaneRender plug-in for AE and Nuke, as well as an additional licence for plug-ins or OctaneRender Cloud (ORC)
- €50.88 per month (converted) comes with support for up to 20 GPUs, AE and Nuke plug-ins and three licences for plug-ins or ORC.
For more information: To the official blog post
