For those who don’t know the event: ICE.ART is a webinar-style conference for people who build 3D worlds, with sessions published on YouTube for on-demand catching up.

After the fact

ICE.ART 2026.I has published its full set of presentation and panel recordings for free streaming. If you could not make the live dates on 7 and 8 April 2026, the recrodings now turn the whole event into an on-demand playlist you can dip into between dailies.
The archive covers both conference days, including intros, individual talks, and panel discussions. As always, test any new workflow ideas before you put them into production, even if the speaker makes it sound like it will fix your envrionment pipeline overnight.

The Videos

ICE.ART 2026.I Day I Intro
A quick warm-up that sets the tone before the pixels start doing push-ups.

ICE.ART 2026.I Day I Christian Tanner | Toyota City Hunt Physics: A behind-the-scenes look at the project, with physics as the main character and the first steps into Unreal realtime smoking tires. Strap in!

ICE.ART 2026.I Day I Goran Pavles Art directing Physics Simulations for Hollywood Blockbusters: A talk for anyone who has ever argued with gravity and lost.

ICE.ART 2026.I Day II Andrey Lebrov Gaussian Splat Environment Pipeline for Octane Render: A pipeline-focused session that connects splats, environments, and renderer reality checks.

ICE.ART 2026.I Day II Tobias Hauck Geospatial Gaussian Splats 3D Maps of Large Environments: If you know how much fun can be had in large-scale data and larger-scale scenes, this one is for you.

ICE.ART 2026.I Day II Prof. Dr. André Thomas Planning Physical Studios Business and Creativity: A business and studio-planning angle that still remembers artists need working chairs and working budgets.

https://www.ice.art/

The post ICE.ART 2026.I recordings are now live first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For those who don’t know the tool: OctaneRender is a GPU renderer that sits after lookdev and before finals, and it talks fluently with DCC plugins plus OpenUSD and MaterialX, when it is in a good mood.

The alpha, the scope, the fine print

OctaneRender 2027.1 Alpha 1 is out as a public development build intended for testing by experienced users, and it is explicitly not positioned as production ready. Scenes saved in this alpha are not guaranteed to stay compatible with future builds. The build is Windows only right now, the minimum required NVIDIA driver version is 572. The downloads listed for this alpha are the standalone Windows installer and a ZIP archive. Other build types are planned for subsequent releases.

Real time neural viewport, now with thunderbolt energy

The headline feature is a new real-time neural viewport mode that replaces the previous real-time mode. It is built on the neural radiance cache framework introduced in OctaneRender 2026. The alpha describes the new mode as enabling near noise-free interactive rendering at very low sample counts compared to traditional path tracing. The mode is designed to preserve the spectral path-tracing behaviour while improving interactive feedback, even under complex lighting conditions. It combines internal research with NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction.

In the UI, the alpha notes a dedicated toggle. The real-time neural viewport can be enabled or disabled using a Thunderbolt button in the viewport components bar. Quality settings for the real-time denoiser live under the imager node, with the goal of balancing performance and quality depending on the hardware. If you have ever watched a veiwport go from soup to something readable right as a director walks over, you already know why this matters. The promise here is faster clarity, not just faster pixels.

Upscaling joins the party: DLSS and FSR modes

This alpha adds support for new up-sampling modes based on NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR. The build also references AMD FSR 3. The implementation sits in the Upsampler section of the imager node, alongside other up-sampling methods. On the DLSS side, the referenced technology page describes DLSS Ray Reconstruction as an AI method that replaces hand-tuned denoisers with an AI network that generates higher quality pixels between sampled rays in intensive ray-traced scenes. Those statements describe DLSS generally, not a specific Octane integration result. This renderer is CUDA based, and the Windows alpha focuses on NVIDIA GPUs (Big surprise!).

AI Light 2.0: sampling that tries harder

AI Light 2.0 lands as a new light sampling method intended to resolve noise faster. AI Light is described as a hierarchical algorithm for sampling scenes with many light sources, and the update is positioned as a major revision compared to the original introduction back in OctaneRender 4.0.

For lighting heavy setups, this is the kind of change that can alter how fast you converge on creative decisions. If your daily routine includes juggling dozens of practicals, emissive set dressing, and a few too many hero gobos, any sampling improvement tends to show up right where it hurts, in the first minutes of iteration.

USD export and a more hands on USD workflow

OpenUSD workflows get a concrete upgrade. Geometry export to USD is included, and the build adds the ability to export a scene in USD format. The cgchannel overview also notes that geometry export in USD can include limited support for USD Preview Surface materials.

On the editing side, the standalone edition includes a USD Stage editor that allows selecting variants and layers without saving and reopening the USD file. The alpha also adds built in support for authoring variants and muting USD layers directly within the USD geometry archive.

If your pipeline already treats USD as a transport layer between layout, lookdev, lighting, and downstream tools, these changes aim straight at friction. More export options reduce the number of awkward handoffs that turn into late night chat messages that start with “hey quick question….”

UVs and geometry: more room for messy reality

The UV ceiling changes, because production UVs are never as polite as tool demos. The maximum number of UV maps allowed per primitive increases to 10, up from 3, and UV sets can be assigned arbitrary names in DCC apps that support it.

Other geometry and attribute changes include support for named UV vertex attributes, support for using vertex attributes in bump maps, support for colour vertex attributes in vertex displacement, and a Vectron tube primitive addition.

If you have ever inherited an asset with five UV sets and a note that says do not touch UV4, you now have more breathing room. The named UV support also helps keep humans oriented when the same mesh carries multiple UV purposes across shading, decals, and baking.

Changelog nuggets for TDs who read release notes for fun

Beyond new features, the alpha lists a spread of resolved issues and smaller changes. A few examples include fixes around DDS preference crashes, Alembic instancing, several MaterialX node behaviors, and multiple OpenUSD import issues such as points not loading correctly and animated point instances importing incorrectly.

The Lua API gets deprecations in geometry exporter properties, including moving from renderSizeX and renderSizeY to textureRenderWidth and textureRenderHeight, and replacing writeOcsData with embedNativeData. A small UI level tweak removes Clock Rate and Cores fields from the GPU information panel. This is where you start thinking about tool glue. If you have scripts that poke exporter properties or automate export settings, the deprecations are your early warning sign to check for breakage.

Availability, licensing, and pricing

This alpha is available alongside the stable OctaneRender 2026 releases. The software is offered as rental only via Studio+ subscriptions. The pricing listed is €23.95 per month or €239.88 per year, and the Studio+ subscription page also lists an annual price presented as 19.99 € per month billed yearly.

Free Prime editions are also available for OctaneRender and Octane X, with the Prime editions limited to rendering on a single GPU and offering a smaller set of DCC integration plugins. The alpha download links themselves require a licensed customer login for access. That is where OTOY enters the picture in the most practical way possible.

Production reality check

This build is explicitly framed as experimental, and it is not recommended for production use. That guidance aligns with the normal alpha reality: features change, files drift, and stability work continues in later builds.

New tools and innovations should always be tested before use in production, ideally on representative scenes with your actual assets, shading conventions, and deadline pressure.

What to watch while you test

The big workflow test is whether the neural viewport mode makes iteration measurably smoother on your scenes, and whether AI Light 2.0 shifts your sampling strategy. The second test is whether USD export plus USD Stage editing reduces round-trip times in YOUR pipeline. The third is whether the DLSS and FSR upsampler options behave predictably inside your lookdev and review loop, especially when you rely on consistent framing and visual stability.

https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=85551

The post OctaneRender 2027.1 alpha goes neural first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Manuel Kotulla.

The World Creator (by BiteTheBytes) has issued version 2025.3 of its real-time GPU-based terrain-generation tool. The release adds significant pipeline and export enhancements.

ORBX export enables OctaneRender workflows

Version 2025.3 introduces support for exporting terrain in ORBX format — the scene format used by OctaneRender. This makes it possible to take terrains created in World Creator directly into any DCC (digital-content creation) application that has an OctaneRender plugin, such as Blender, Maya, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max or Nuke. This provides a more streamlined route for pushing terrain through professional rendering pipelines.

Godot bridge plugin extends engine support

The update adds an official bridge plugin for Godot (open-source game engine), allowing direct export of terrain to Godot. With this, Godot joins the list of engines and DCCs supported by World Creator, alongside Blender, Cinema 4D, Houdini, Unity and Unreal Engine.

Paint-holes and cave/tunnel masks for terrain design

A new “paint holes” feature enables artists to carve holes directly into terrain for caves, tunnels or dungeons. The position of those holes can be exported as a mask for use in game engines or DCC apps, giving more control over subterranean or cut-away geometry. In addition, World Creator 2025.3 allows exporting relief maps for terrain. Relief maps emphasise elevation variation and can be used for topographic visualisations or stylised designs.

What this means for studios and creators

For studios and artists working in game development, VFX, environment art or realtime rendering, the ORBX export plus Godot integration expands pipeline flexibility. You can now build terrain in World Creator and send it directly into OctaneRender or Godot, without manual format conversions. Cave and tunnel masking adds value for level design. That said, as always: test these new features thoroughly before integrating them in a production pipeline, especially for complex terrains or engine builds.

The post World Creator 2025.3 adds ORBX , Godot bridge and caves first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Otoy’s Lino Grandi has released Octane Edge Tools, a no-cost Blender add-on targeting users of OctaneRender. The toolkit brings a streamlined, geometry-based workflow for creating outline renders within Blender, relying on Geometry Nodes and vertex groups to generate mesh-based edges.

Described by Grandi as “clean, fast, and completely integrated into your workflow”, Octane Edge Tools is pitched as a solution for artists seeking quick, customizable anime-style or technical outline renders—no scripting or complicated shader hacks required.

How Does It Work?

The add-on leverages Blender’s Geometry Nodes system to generate mesh outlines directly on your 3D model. These edges are then rendered using OctaneRender’s Toon Material and Toon Light features, producing classic NPR (non-photorealistic rendering) results.

Artists can set outline thickness globally, per object, or even assign different values to specific model parts. Control extends down to selecting whether to render all edge loops, specific loops, or even individual edges. The result: both technical documentation–style pure outlines and stylized, toon-shaded anime looks are a few clicks away.

The toolkit is intended for use with OctaneRender, which remains free for Blender users running a single GPU. According to Grandi, the process is “quick” and “intuitive”, as demonstrated in a workflow video. Grandi, currently Product Manager for Octane for Blender at Otoy, is no stranger to stylized rendering. His ArtStation gallery showcases anime-inspired animation.

Is Blender Itself Getting This? Not Quite Yet

Blender proper is also working on its own non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) tech, collaborating with DillonGoo Studios on an experimental NPR branch. However, this branch is not scheduled for mainline Blender integration until after version 5.0 is released, which the Blender Foundation says will arrive in November. Until then, add-ons like Octane Edge Tools fill the gap for NPR stylists.

Download and System Requirements

Octane Edge Tools requires Blender 4.4.3 or later, and OctaneRender 2025.2 or newer. The add-on is available as a free download. Full documentation is online for artists who want to explore its feature set before installing. Download here and see the Octane Edge Tools Documentation

The post Draw the Line: Octane Edge Tools Brings Outlines to Blender – For Free first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

After the teaser in February, something is here: LightWave 2025 debuts RIPR (Real-time Path Rendering), a GPU-accelerated viewport renderer utilizing NVIDIA’s OptiX framework. RIPR supports HDR lighting, depth of field, and improved transparency handling, offering a more realistic preview experience. It requires a NVIDIA GeForce 10 Series or Quadro Pascal GPU or newer and is currently limited to a single viewport.

Rigging Enhancements: Steppit, Handdit, and Pickkit

The RHiggit! rigging system receives three new tools:

• Steppit!: Automates walk cycles for bipeds and creatures, allowing integration with keyframe animation for added flexibility.
• Handdit!: Provides intuitive controls for hand and finger animation, accessible via its own tab or within RHiggit! and Steppit! menus.
• Pickkit!: Offers a streamlined rig picking interface for quick access to commonly adjusted rig points, fully compatible with Steppit! and Handdit!.
  
  

Modeling Tools: SuperPatcher, Displacement Brush, and SuperNormals

New modeling features include:

• SuperPatcher: Caps holes in quad meshes efficiently.
• Displacement Brush: Allows painting of surface details like wrinkles or cracks on polygonal geometry (not compatible with SubPatch models).
• SuperNormals: Enables per-model normal editing, useful for correcting shading artifacts or preparing assets for game engines.

Procedural Modeling: Construct

The new Construct tool facilitates procedural generation of structures such as stairs, decks, and bridges. Its Stair Calculator is available in both Modeler and Layout applications, aiding in architectural visualization and set design.

Stylized Rendering: Cel Shader

A new Cel Shader offers enhanced control over object and surface-based shading, enabling the creation of stylized, non-photorealistic visuals. This post-shading tool is visible in the VPR, allowing artists to fine-tune the shading process for desired stylization.

Rendering Integration: OctaneRender Updates

The integration with OctaneRender has been updated, including the addition of three new gradient nodes and workflow improvements, enhancing the rendering capabilities within LightWave 2025.

Pricing and Availability

LightWave 2025 is available for pre-order at £295.00. System requirements include an Intel® Core 2 or AMD64 processor with SSE4 instruction set, and a minimum of 4 GB RAM. For macOS, Intel® systems require macOS 10.15 (Catalina), while Silicon systems require macOS 11 (Big Sur). As with any new release, it’s advisable to thoroughly test LightWave 2025’s features in your specific production environment before integrating them into critical workflows. For more information and to pre-order, visit LightWave 3D’s official website.

And to see all changes, see the full list of updates here.

The post LightWave 2025! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.