OctaneRender 1.0 review

OctaneRender is an unbiased rendering application featuring real-time processing based only on the GPU (graphics processing unit). OctaneRender was originally developed by a New Zealand company called Refractive Software and the development of the renderer was later taken over by OTOY. OctaneRender is the first GPU based unbiased renderer released to the public. It uses the graphics card to calculate all measures of light, reflection and refraction. It runs only on NVidia’s GPUs and takes advantage of the CUDA technology and it’s incompatible with other video cards by other vendors. Is a true GPU based engine, not a hybrid CPU/GPU, nor a CPU based engine that was modified with GPU acceleration. Since a CPU adds a negligible speedup to the total rendering speed, having your CPU free for other tasks while rendering with OctaneRender allows you to use your system for other tasks while rendering.

OctaneRender was for a long time in a beta testing stage where the developers were tightly communicating with the artists testing the renderer and using the feedback for improving and fixing it. Now after the beta testing of OctaneRender is over we got the opportunity to review and compare the first official release of OctaneRender among other renderers on the market to determine if the technology of GPU based rendering can really bring the speed and quality in „seconds“.

OctaneRender 1.0 specification & features

OctaneRender 1.0 overview

OctaneRender operates as a stand-alone application but also as a plug-in with popular 3D modelling software like Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk Maya and Smith Micro Poser and will soon be available for Autodesk Softimage, Autodesk AutoCAD, Daz3D Daz Studio, Newtek Lightwave and Maxon Cinema4D. The tightly integrated plug-ins deliver OctaneRender's  incredible speed and quality right in the viewport of the 3D application, allowing artists to interactively change lights, camera, materials, exposure, depth of field, other effects  and object placement and immediately see the rendered result with final quality. This basically means that the viewport on the screen is also the final render and it’s changing according to the artist’s changes. This revolutionary real-time workflow is a key change for animators and other 3d artists and was possible by using GPU as the main calculating unit instead of CPU as other renderers. OctaneRender is a fully physically based, unbiased render engine. It cuts no corners and all computations are done at the same accuracy as traditional CPU unbiased render engines. With the current technology OctaneRender can produce final images 10 to 50 times faster than CPU unbiased render engines, or even more with multiple GPUs. The stand-alone version of OctaneRender allows you to import the scene from almost any 3D application using the *.obj format and even preserve the materials ids set-up in the 3D application. There are also unofficial scripts which can help you to export the scene preserving even the lightning and cameras and automatically start the OctaneRender. Moreover OctaneRender allows you to export the final renders in LDR and HDR formats, and can be easily implemented into different pipelines and workflows. We were mainly reviewing the integration inside Autodesk 3ds Max and this review is also focused on it.
Render engine

• Physically based / Spectral Light Transport
• Unbiased and Direct Lighting / Ambient Occlusion
• Custom Sampling Algorithm (Custom MLT-like implementation)
• Multiple GPU Support
• Geometry Instances
• Pause / Resume render
• Built-in Firefly removal tool (note: available in OctaneRender stand-alone)
• "Deep Channel" kernel mode to provide renders for geometric normals, shading normals, z-depth, material ID, UV co-ordinates

Materials & Lightning

OctaneRender integrates between the default materials and shaders included in 3ds Max four new materials and shaders optimized to work with OctaneRender; Diffuse Material, Glossy Material, Mix Material and Specular Material. Next to the materials OctaneRender comes with a lot of maps allowing you to define any material just by using the four basic material types.  The step of defining the materials is very important and necessary for high quality and photorealistic renders and OTOY is aware of this fact. You have basically the absolute control over the materials and even the user can use the Node Editor (note: available in OctaneRender stand-alone)to create complex materials changing and editing procedural textures, colours and textures mapped to different material parameters for better control.  OctaneRender supports Subsurface Light Scattering (SSS), Complex IOR, Chromatic Dispersion, and absorption to create photorealistic and physical accurate materials.  One of the most exciting feature OTOY implemented inside the renderer is the possibility to access a community material library without the need of leaving the OctaneRender user interface. Like this you can access the library and add new materials inside the material editor with just one click. Beside the option of creating new materials OctaneRender can convert materials created using MentalRay or V-Ray to Octane materials and so save you precious time. The convert function is accessible from the render tab menu and works quite well but I preferred to create new materials instead of converting them.
 

Next to the material set-up another setting crucial for a high quality scene and render is the lightning. OctaneRender brings together three new light types; Standard lights, IES Files and sun/sky system inside 3ds Max. All of the lights are fully customizable and the user can take a full control about the parameters. OctaneRender simulates light not as RGB colours but as an electromagnetic wave. Since it is based on the physics of light, it captures all light interactions in the scene just as in real-world. The real-time approach gives a great advantage to the user; he can adjust the shadows literally absolutely and place the light to mostly fit the final image. You can also turn any object into a mesh light by enabling the emission property of the material where the colour is controlled by a blackbody spectra or a texture.

Lights

• Spectral Sun / Sky daylight with real-time location / date control system
• Spectrum or HDRI environment lighting
• Customizable texture and blackbody spectra emissions from geometry with controls for temperature, power (watts), distribution, efficiency
• Support for IES light files

Environment & Render setup

The OctaneRender plug-in seamlessly integrates all functions inside Autodesk 3ds Max which includes next to the render engine; lights, camera and materials & shaders. The render settings are very simple and the engine itself takes control about most of the stuff. However, the basic controls which affect and define the light bouncing, Global Illumination methods and samples are settable by the user. The settings also includes a „Camera“ and „Imager“ properties where you can set-up several options which affects the final result of the render such as focalDepth, camera aperuture, exposure, ISO, camera filters and more. Using these settings you can also achieve the basic effects present also in other renderers like Z-Depth. The render tab also includes the access to the material library with which help you can directly add new materials to 3ds Max without the need to leave the application. Also, the function converting materials from other renderers is accessible through the render tab menu and allows you with one click convert materials to materials compatible with OctaneRender.

User Interface

• Real-time interactive editing, monitoring and rendering of scene
• Flexible nodegraph based user interface (note: available in OctaneRender stand-alone)
• Build complex procedural objects and materials by connecting nodes (note: available in OctaneRender stand-alone)
• Sharing of material, texture and emitter macros using the LiveDB
• Executable command line parameters for automation of rendering (note: available in OctaneRender stand-alone)
• Customisable toolbars, add, remove and re-arrange items

The active shade is started from the render tab menu and shows you the computing and rendering of the current image. All changes you made are transformed immediately to the active window and the engine start to re-calculate all the changes. Using just one GPU could slow down the system and the use of two GPUs is recommend: one for the rendering and the second for the system.
OctaneRender implements also a new camera inside 3ds Max to be used with the engine allowing you to change the basic settings of a camera aperture. Mostly of these settings are also inside the render tab settings but using the camera give you a bit more control over the overall render and output.

 

Conclusion

OctaneRender is a true GPU based unbiased render engine for a more than a reasonable price. The price of OctaneRender comparing to other renders looks like a type mistake, but it’s really the end price. The integrated plug-in inside 3ds Max works very well and I haven’t any problems with instability or other issues while working with it. The main advantage of Octane is indeed the GPU based rendering together with the real-time function allowing you to see all the changes you do within seconds. Like this you have no problems with bad shadows alignment, lights set-up or materials because you can set-up the scene and see the changes in the render window and if you like the result just leave OctaneRender to compute the scene to a final render. I have to recommend using two GPUs with OctaneRender; one for the render itself and the second of the system. Like this you can render images and work without any lags, how cool is that! Personally I think the combination of the render capability and the price makes from OctaneRender a unique product on the CG market. Moreover, during the time I was writing the review the next version of the stand-alone version of OctaneRender was released, 1.01. In this version OTOY presented new features such as the “importance sampling” by using the hdri map as a light source were now the noise created by the map is processed a lot faster, also some postproduction options were added and a lot more. All these new features together would be implemented also in the 3ds Max plugin soon.

Comparing OctaneRender 1.0 to V-Ray 2.0, KeyShot 3.x and Arion 2.0.x

I would like to mention something before we go and compare the final images. OctaneRender is render engine and it’s impossible to compare it and his function for example to V-Ray where V-Ray is not only a render engine but a complete render solution. Moreover, all of these renderers are in a constant development even in the time I was writing this review. For example Arion is now presenting his new version of Arion 2.0.4 with highly optimized new sampling method and KeyShot on the other hand presented a while ago the new interactive KeyShotVR and is going to release a new version of KeyShot, 4.0. Still, we can compare the final result of render quality and render time because these factors should be optimized in all four renderers at maximum.
 

OctaneRender 1.0 vs V-Ray 2.0 vs Arion 1.6.x vs KeyShot 3.3 vs MentalRay

Highly quality renders and 10 to 50 times faster? This is really bold statement by OTOY. So let’s take a look if it’s really true and the GPU rendering technology is really faster than CPU. To be able to test the quality and render speed of OctaneRender 1.0  I decided to compare it to V-Ray 2.0, KeyShot 3.3, Arion 2.0.3 and MentalRay. The renders were pointed on these three main factors; render speed, render quality and the real time (RT) renderer. As the object for comparison I choose a Home Theater System which will be later also as a tutorial consisting from four different objects and materials;  metal material with texture based look, a plastic material with mate and reflective shader and some other textures symbolizing the logos and other stuff on the objects.

The testing PC had the following specifications:

• CPU – i7 2600K 3,5 GHz
• RAM - 16 GB
• GPU – GTX560 TI 2GB DDR5
• Windows 7 x64
• 3ds Max 2012 x64

The overall scene was built from the “Home Teather” and a plane (a ramp) on which was in all four applications (scenes) were applied a neutral material consisting just from a diffuse colour which wasn’t taking or generating reflections. In all applications were used an hdri map for the environment and reflections. The render set-ups and comparing conditions are listed in the tables bellow.

MentalRay

 

So, let’s take a look on the results. Next to the final render I did also two more to see how the quality and time will change with changing the settings lower or somewhere higher. The final renders which I used for comparison together with the rest of the outputs are in the gallery bellow. The “final” tag indicates that this picture was used for the comparison and the “low” or “high” tag was used to point out if the setting was higher than the final render or lower. The images are sorted from lowest render time to the highest where the render time is embedded also in to the image.

Conclusion

OctaneRender is for me a very pleasant surprise. The render power, quality and GPU speed is very impressive and opens new ways of rendering. Comparing the final results either from the plug-in or the stand-alone version we can say that the rendering method based on GPU was good step and can compete with other renderers based on the CPU. Moreover, the constant development on both versions ensures that the renderer will evolve and new features and performance improvements will be added soon. Looking above on all renders I can’t choose any winner, all are good, all renderers have their own advantages and different hardware needs. Choosing just one without optimizing every single scene and also the hardware is impossible. Still, I don’t see a fair way how to say the final conclusion about who is the winner of this comparison so I will let you to decide this.