Octane version 3.0 Alpha 1 has been released

[Grimm]

This is a huge update for Octane, so many things have been added that I will just point you to the web page:

 

https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=51681

 

Here are the changes in 3.0 from 2.2x:

 

https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=51679

 

All 2.0 license holders can run 3.0 Alpha and Beta, but you are going to need a license to download and see this content. For those of you who don't have a license there is a short list of the added features:

 

Volume rendering with OpenVDB with support for absorption, scattering, and emission.

Environment medium volume support

Deep image rendering with EXR 2.0 support and a Photoshop compositing plugin.

 

Soon support for OpenSL, OpenCL, and other features will be added.  So far my tests have been good, Octane is even a bit faster than 2.2x versions.  The devs have even gone as far as writing compilers and ported code for OpenVDB and OpenSL that is also for both CUDA and OpenCL.  

 

Here is a test of a smoke volume:

 

 

Jason

[AbnRanger]

This is a huge update for Octane, so many things have been added that I will just point you to the web page:

 

https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=51681

 

Here are the changes in 3.0 from 2.2x:

 

https://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=51679

 

All 2.0 license holders can run 3.0 Alpha and Beta, but you are going to need a license to download and see this content. For those of you who don't have a license there is a short list of the added features:

 

Volume rendering with OpenVDB with support for absorption, scattering, and emission.

Environment medium volume support

Deep image rendering with EXR 2.0 support and a Photoshop compositing plugin.

 

Soon support for OpenSL, OpenCL, and other features will be added.  So far my tests have been good, Octane is even a bit faster than 2.2x versions.  The devs have even gone as far as writing compilers and ported code for OpenVDB and OpenSL that is also for both CUDA and OpenCL.  

 

Here is a test of a smoke volume:

 

O3-smoke-test.png

 

Jason

I still don't understand the appeal of OpenVDB support, when Houdini is about the only app I know of that exports it, currently. I would prefer that they simply support popular volumetric effects engines/plugins for the 3D apps they have plugins for. For Max, it would be FumeFX. For C4D and Lightwave, it would be TurbulenceFD. For Maya, it's own fluids/smoke/fire. Something is better than nothing, but OpenVDB support in Max doesn't seem offer me anything on that front.

 

Not trying to bash Octane. I'm actually heavily considering it, but just a bit skeptical about the appeal of OpenVDB support.

[Grimm]

That's a good question, I don't know.     If you go to  http://www.openvdb.org/ they also list Renderman, Arnold, Realflow, Clarrise, Guerilla Render, and Maxwell as supporting it.  I know that Blender will support it at some point as well.  I have poked at the library a bit and it's pretty easy to setup a volume with it and there is a lot of built in tools.  It seems to be a trend these days with many companies releasing their in-house tools as open source.  In general I don't mind as then us little guys can play with the big boy's toys.  

[Grimm]

Arrg, all of the OpenSL should be OSL for Open Shading Language, not Open Sound Library.    Sorry about that. 

[AbnRanger]

Arrg, all of the OpenSL should be OSL for Open Shading Language, not Open Sound Library.    Sorry about that. 

No worries. That's what I understood it to mean.

[Rebelismo]

I still don't understand the appeal of OpenVDB support, when Houdini is about the only app I know of that exports it, currently. I would prefer that they simply support popular volumetric effects engines/plugins for the 3D apps they have plugins for. For Max, it would be FumeFX. For C4D and Lightwave, it would be TurbulenceFD. For Maya, it's own fluids/smoke/fire. Something is better than nothing, but OpenVDB support in Max doesn't seem offer me anything on that front.

 

Not trying to bash Octane. I'm actually heavily considering it, but just a bit skeptical about the appeal of OpenVDB support.

Well, OpenVDB is supposed to be an open standard. I bet that OpenVDB saves a ton of time and headaches when compared to supporting each and every package and their corresponding fluid systems. I haven't met any FX artist who said that they love Maya fluids . It's definitely the opposite. 

[Grimm]

Out of curiosity I spent some time looking into what makes OpenVDB different.  The first thing is that OVDB is a sparse volume dataset, in that if there is nothing at a particular 3D point in space, then there isn't a voxel there as well.  This is different from dense volume datasets that have voxels at every point in 3d space if they are empty or not.  This can save a huge amount of space in memory and on disk and makes it faster to load and process.  This also means that you don't have to have a pre-defined domain for the volume, it grows and shrinks as needed.  With Blender's smoke and fire simulations you have to have a defined domain and if the simulation goes out of the domain it gets cut off.  

 

Another plus with OpenVDB is the huge amount of work that has gone into it's internal data structure.  This structure allows really fast access to the voxel data with both random and linear methods.  This makes it really nice for renderers and for applying transformations, noise, etc. on the voxel data itself.

 

The OpenVDB file format also allows multiple grids in the same file.  So you can include smoke and fire, or have a whole sequence of grids for animation.  

 

I don't know how this compares to other particle systems, but it's would be a definite step up with Blender's.  

 

Jason