Octane can now leverage RTX hardware acceleration to evaluate previously CUDA-only shaders, such as the new dirt shader. After removing this limitation we have experienced significant 1.6x+ performance increases in many production scenes that previously had almost no speed improvements with RTX activated.
OctaneRender® requires an NVIDIA® CUDA®-enabled video card. OctaneRender® v2021.x runs on Nvidia cards with a compute model of 3.5 or higher, this includes Ampere, Maxwell, Pascal, high-end GTX Titanns, Volta, and Turing GPUs. Texture limits and differing power efficiency ratings also apply, depending on the GPUThe GPU is responsible for displaying graphical elements on a computer display. The GPU plays a key role in the Octane rendering process as the CUDA cores are utilized during the rendering process. microarchitecture. GPUs from the GeForce® line are clocked higher and render faster than the more expensive Quadro® and Tesla GPUs. GeForce® cards are fast and cost-effective, but have less VRAM than Quadro® and Tesla cards. OctaneRender® scales well in a multi-GPU configuration, and can use different types of NVIDIA® cards at once, such as a GeForce®RGTX 30801080 combined with a Quadro ®6000. The official list of NVIDIA® CUDA®-enabled products is located at https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus. OctaneRender® does not require RTX, but it does render some scenes much faster when RT Core hardware is present.
To use the engine's out-of-core features, we recommend using at least the following hardware:
There are several things to consider when purchasing a new GPU. You’ll want to purchase a video card with the largest amount of VRAM and the most CUDA® cores for your budget. Make sure your power supply can handle the new card as well. If you’re using a Mac®, make sure that you purchase an Apple®-approved GPU.
To use the OctaneRender® denoiser features, you need additional memory to collect all necessary information. As an example, a 4k render requires around 5 GB, while an 8k render requires around 20 GB. High-definition renders require around 0.5 GB. Memory is also required for geometry, textures, post-processing buffers, and for other 3D modeling software, so it's necessary to increase the system RAM along with about 450 MB VRAM on devices to run the denosier. Use out-of-core features to move geometry and textures onto system memory to free up some space for the denoiser on the device.
Except for the demo versions, all OctaneRender® editions require authentication with its designated license key, and it requires internet access during the initial launch. Once you launch the program, OctaneRender® requests your OTOY® credentials, and it attempts to retrieve an available license from the OctaneRender LiveTM server.
We recommend using your on-board graphics or a second graphics card for the Windows® display adapter, and dedicate a more powerful CUDA®-enabled card for rendering.
OctaneRender® for Blender® requires:
OctaneRender® for Blender® runs on the following operating systems:
OctaneRender® requires NVIDIA® CuDNN to run. Download the cuDNN library file from https://render.otoy.com/downloads/ef/08/f5/63/cudnn_8_0_4_win.zip
Place the library file here: C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Local\OctaneRender\thirdparty\cudnn_8_0_4\
OctaneRender® 2021 requires an NVIDIA® driver supporting at least CUDA® 11.1, and an NVIDIA Studio driver with version at least 456.38 or higher on Windows or 455.23 or higher on Linux. You can find the download links for Windows® and Linux here, and you can find the download links for Mac® here.
Not installing these drivers can cause instability. We cannot provide support for different driver versions. The CUDA® driver is the part of the NVIDIA® driver stack that OctaneRender® uses. On Linux and Windows® it is part of the NVIDIA® graphics driver, while on macOS® systems it is a separate installation. If you install any recent NVIDIA® graphics driver on Linux and Windows®, it installs a CUDA® driver that supports CUDA® 9.1. The CUDA® toolkit is for development - installation is optional. The toolkit includes a graphic driver, but it may not be the latest version.