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. It runs on Ampere, Kepler, Maxwell, Pascal, Titan, 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 RTX 4090 combined with a RTX A6000. 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:
If you're considering purchasing a new GPU, purchase one with the most RAM - we recommend 2 GB VRAM or more - with the most amount of 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 Octane's denoiser features, you'll need additional memory to collect all necessary information. For 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 other 3D modeling software, so it is necessary to increase the available system RAM and about 450 MB VRAM on devices to run the denosier.
If you need to free up some space for the denoiser, use out-of-core features to move geometry and textures onto system memory.
The plugin is compatible with Houdini production builds 18.5.759, 19.0.720, 19.5.534, 19.5.569, 19.5.605, and 19.5.640. The plugin is also compatible with Houdini Indie version. While running on the Indie version, the plugin limits the sequence render resolution to 4k (4096 x 4096), and it disables the scene export and cloud features.
OctaneRender for Houdini is available for the following operating systems:
● Windows® 64-bit
● Linux gcc 4.8
● macOS ARM64®
To install OctaneRender on Windows, make sure that you install a suitable driver for your video card. After this, run the installer.
The OpenGL-based IPRProvides artists a quick preview of the image prior to the final render, and efficiently allows for adjusting some elements in the scene such as lights, shaders and textures interactively. An IPR image contains shading and lighting data including some for visibility, in addition to the software render. window works over the freeglut library. On Linux, install this library in the system, otherwise the plugin won't load. Check your Linux distribution documentation about how to install the library, if it is not already available in your system.
The minimum supported version of macOS is 10.11.x. CUDA support on macOS 10.11 through 10.13 requires CUDA driver 9.1 or higher. For a complete list of macOS-compatible CUDA drivers, please refer to and download from http://www.nvidia.com/object/mac-driver-archive.html
OctaneRender v4.0 is a CUDA 9.1 application. Please make sure to use a NVIDIA Studio driver with version at least 456.38 on Windows or 455.23 on Linux. You can download the latest video card drivers for Windows and Linux from http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx.
For macOS versions, use the most suitable driver released from the NVIDIA website (http://www.nvidia.com/object/mac-driver-archive.html).
Failure to install these drivers can result in stability problems. 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, 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 only for development, and does not have to be installed. The toolkit includes a graphics driver, but it may not be the latest version.
OctaneRender v4 requires NVIDIA CuDNN to run. You can download the file from: https://render.otoy.com/downloads/1c/42/12/04/cudnn64_7.dll.
Place the library file in the either of these folders:
C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Local\OctaneRender\thirdparty\cudnn_7_0_5\
or
C:\Program Files\OTOY\[OctaneRender 2019]\
Except for the demo versions, all OctaneRender editions require authentication with its designated license key, and requires internet access for its initial launch. During its first launch, OctaneRender requests your OTOY credentials, and attempts to retrieve an available license from the OctaneRender LiveTM server.
We recommend that you use your on-board graphics or a second graphics card for the Windows display adapter and dedicate a more powerful CUDA-enabled card for rendering.