OTOY’s OctaneRender™ and .ORBX
Why this New GPU-Based Render may Change the Game for CGI



OctaneRender™
OctaneRender™ 1.5 is the world's first-fully GPU based physically based renderer - where the software uses the video card of the computer to render, rendering images at extreme speeds, up to 50x faster than CPU - where the processor (CPU) of the computer is used to calculate the rendering. It has a real-time 3D scene editing capability, allowing you to change camera viewpoints, lights, materials and object positions in real-time seeing the changes immediately update in the viewport...

Version 1.5 of OctaneRender™ is available as a standalone and as a plugin for the following 3D applications:

• ArchiCAD • Blender • Daz Studio • Lightwave • Poser • Rhino • MODO • 3ds Max • AutoCAD • Cinema4D • Inventor • Maya • Revit and Softimage. Versions for SketchUp and Carrara are in development…





Features
Here are other great features you will find in the OctaneRender™:

• New node-based system...
• Alembic file support – Along with the .ORBX file format, OctaneRender™ 1.5 supports the importing of .ABC Alembic files...
• Visibility groups – Users can now set visibility properties for objects, useful for creating fade-in and fade-out effects...
• Multiple GPU Support...
• Pause / Resume render...
• Supports multiple colour spaces...
• Image textures include support for loading over 40 different formats...
• Output of real-time GPU tone-mapped images...
• Output of raw HDR images (exr)...
• Spectrum or HDRI environment lighting...
• Support for IES light files...
• Physically based material models...
• Bump and normal mapping...
• Opacity / Alpha mapping...
• Transmission, absorption and scattering...
• Import of Wavefront OBJ format with parameters and material import...
• Windows 32 and 64 bit, Linux 64 bit and Mac OSX 10.5+, but it doesn’t mention 32 or 64 bit for the Mac… curious!

Check out the rest of the features , here!





.ORBX
With the release of OctaneRender™ 1.5, OTOY also introduces a NEW interchange file format called .ORBX: the .ORBX file format, which houses a comprehensive array of computer-generated scene data, enabling the most precise renderings possible across 15 of the top 3D modeling applications.

Here’s a description by OTOY on the .ORBX format on what it can do:

“…The new .ORBX file format improves considerably on traditional 3D formats such as .OBJ, .CAD, or .STL, going beyond storing simple geometry to include all aspects of a 3D scene, such as materials, properties, textures, lighting, transform hierarchies and cameras, all in a self-contained file format. Unlike the Alembic file format, .ORBX was designed in close collaboration with Autodesk and Mozilla to be a flexible container for a wide range of uses beyond computer graphics, including video, 3D printing, holography, design and engineering…”

Acronym of the day: WYSIWYG - “What You See Is What You Get” Hope the review and the acronym helps someone!


Cheers!