Octane Renderer is Now Officially Released for Unity

nonesuch00

I'm not sure if this post is allowed, Unity is a Game Engine but they do have their 3D Asset Store (which DAZ 3D participates in) and now a serious PBR renderer in Octane which I've learned plenty of DAZ Studio users use and have paid good money for.

https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/12/14/available-now-octanerender-for-unity/

kyoto kid

...does this version support the GPU + CPU mode?

nonesuch00

kyoto kid said:

...does this version support the GPU + CPU mode?

No, unless you buy the $20 (multi-GPUs but few GPUs than the $60 version plus choise of 1 plugin) or $60 (many multi-GPUs plus 2 plugins) month subscription only 1 GPU and no plugins are supported with the Free $0 version.

So in my can as I have intel GPU only it will render on the integrated intel GPU. Others with AMD or nVidia GPU will get that GPU used.

They are implementing (but not done) use OSL (open shader language) so that material definitions are easily portable between renderers and apps, eg, Blender can use OSL as can other renderers.

kyoto kid

..aww bugger.  Recently received a small (4GB) GPU which isn't enough to contain both the geometry and textures of most of my scenes, but the GPU+CPU mode that Octane has (which dumps the textures to the CPU but keeps the geometry on the GPU) would still put a reasonable dent in render time over pure CPU rendering.

nonesuch00

kyoto kid said:

..aww bugger.  Recently received a small (4GB) GPU which isn't enough to contain both the geometry and textures of most of my scenes, but the GPU+CPU mode that Octane has (which dumps the textures to the CPU but keeps the geometry on the GPU) would still put a reasonable dent in render time over pure CPU rendering.

I would check on their site to see if you can choose via a menu setting whether it used CPU or GPU. I know it won't use both though with the free version.

DustRider

I think what KK is asking is if Octane for Unity uses out of core textures. Unless there is something new with Octane for Unity, Octane has never used CPU for rendering, but has had the ability to use system RAM to store textures since version 3. It's possible that this new version in Unity supports CPU rendering as they have been working to support other additional hardware beyond Nvidia, but I did a quick search and couldn't find anything specific about CPU or AMD support.

Anyway, I think that what KK is interested in is being able to use it with his existing hardware with 4Gb on the card. My guess is that they have included out of core memory support for the Unity version because I couldn't find anything aboout video memory limitations. But I did find one little note about not supporting any cards older than a 970. I'm sure someone else here knows more about it??

nonesuch00

DustRider said:

I think what KK is asking is if Octane for Unity uses out of core textures. Unless there is something new with Octane for Unity, Octane has never used CPU for rendering, but has had the ability to use system RAM to store textures since version 3. It's possible that this new version in Unity supports CPU rendering as they have been working to support other additional hardware beyond Nvidia, but I did a quick search and couldn't find anything specific about CPU or AMD support.

Anyway, I think that what KK is interested in is being able to use it with his existing hardware with 4Gb on the card. My guess is that they have included out of core memory support for the Unity version because I couldn't find anything aboout video memory limitations. But I did find one little note about not supporting any cards older than a 970. I'm sure someone else here knows more about it??

Their write up

https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/12/14/available-now-octanerender-for-unity/ (search on page for AVX2 and see comment by Jules Urbach)

said that the CPU needs to support AVX2 instructions which is a Haswell or newer Intel CPU. Mine is only a Ivy Bridge so I am out of luck CPU rendering.

And yes, one of the things I read was that the textures were streamed in from RAM as Jules Urbach also states that all the features of Octane Standalone are included with the Octane Unity plugin.