OctaneStudio+ 2025: A Look at the Latest Updates and Features

The new release includes Greyscalegorilla Plus, up to €200 in render credits, and more.

OTOY has officially launched OctaneStudio+ 2025, coinciding with their highly anticipated Black Friday offer.

This year's bundle is priced at €15.99 per month (annual license only) and includes a year-long subscription to Greyscalegorilla Plus, offering an extensive library of materials, textures, and HDRIs. Additionally, the offer features up to €200 in Render Network credits for cloud rendering and access to advanced VFX generative neural workflows powered by tools like Topaz AI, RunwayML, and LumaLabs.

OctaneStudio+ 2025 subscriptions include unlimited network rendering with up to 10 nodes, compatibility with over 20 DCC integrations, a preselected KitBash3D kit, LightStage scan data, and full commercial licenses for MoI 3D, World Creator, Architron, Cascadeur, and Sculptron.

Alongside the release of the initial candidate for Octane 2025.1, OTOY is offering users the chance to explore a wide range of new features coming in next year’s major Octane update. These include Meshlets, Neural Radiance Caching, path-traced Gaussian splatting, procedural real-time texture displacement, trace sets, built-in Material X support, and generative neural workflows integrated into the Octane node graph.

Greyscalegorilla Plus Annual Pass

OTOY’s Black Friday bundle provides OctaneStudio+ artists with a final opportunity to secure a full-year subscription to Greyscalegorilla Plus, the industry-leading library for materials, textures, HDRIs, tutorials, plug-ins, and more.

This limited-time offer applies to annual subscriptions only and can be redeemed by new Greyscalegorilla Plus subscribers or returning Black Friday customers before January 31, 2025.

The Render Network

All OctaneStudio+ subscribers receive priority access to nearly unlimited decentralized cloud GPU rendering power on the Render Network, seamlessly integrated for 3D, VFX, and ML workflows in an artist-focused environment.

Subscriptions include up to €200 in free Render Credits to explore unlimited compute capabilities in your rendering pipeline. Subscribers can use €100 in Render Credits before the end of 2024, with an additional €100 available in 2025 for those who utilize most of their initial credits.
New features include native support for Cinema 4D files, Redshift for C4D integration, and a Render Network Cinema 4D wizard. These tools enable artists to submit projects to high-performance GPUs directly from C4D, supported by an intuitive scene checker for a smoother workflow. You can learn more about the latest features available on the Render Network here.

Render Network jobs can now be executed using tools like Flux by Blackforest Labs, Dream Machine by Luma Labs, Runway ML, and more, all powered by Render Credits. Additional features are rolling out, including AI upscaling tools from Topaz Labs, Skybox 360 – a cutting-edge text-to-360 8K HDRI image generator – and a Python-based launcher designed for seamless submission of generative neural tasks to thousands of concurrent GPUs on the Render Network.

Render Network jobs generated from within Octane Standalone:

KitBash3D for Octane

As part of the Black Friday annual subscription offer, subscribers can access KitBash3D’s Special Edition Soviet Blocks Kit at no extra cost. The kit is available for redemption through the KitBash3D store via coupons, with the offer valid until December 31, 2024.

World Creator

The newest version of the GPU-powered terrain and landscape generator is now available to all OctaneStudio+ subscribers, featuring custom ORBX export and live linking capabilities. Black Friday customers will also receive a one-year full commercial license as part of the offer.

MoI 3D

MoI 3D, the industry’s leading intuitive hard surface 3D modeling software, long used in conjunction with Octane, is now included with all subscriptions. Integration has been improved in Octane 2024, as demonstrated by Paul Chadeisson’s stunning MoI 3D + Octane creations that you can see above.

Cascadeur

Cascadeur, the AI-powered animation and physics system, is now also included as part of the subscription. This groundbreaking tool enables the creation of physically accurate animations for games and movies without the need for motion capture technology.

LightStage MetaFace and MetaBody Scans

OTOY has updated its Academy Award-winning digital human scans, featuring original LightStage data for hundreds of human faces, bodies, and expressions with retopologized meshes. This year’s release includes 5 new LightStage heads and 8 MetaBody scans, with more additions expected in the future.

Architron

Architron, built on LWCAD, is a modeling tool designed for polygonal, NURBS, and Boolean workflows, enabling advanced interior, exterior, and architectural visualization in Cinema 4D and other DCC applications.

Vectron Ultimate VFX Bundle – from Machina-Infinitum

Machina Infinitum’s Vectron Fractal tutorials, tools, and formulas are now available for next-generation generative rendering pipelines. These resources enable the creation of procedural worlds, abstract shapes, looping animations, and surreal environments. Vectron Boole introduces boolean combinations between SDF and Vectron, while Vectron Tools offers an extensive collection of new OSL cameras and generators.

LightWave & Octane Special Offer

Studio+ subscribers who join during the Black Friday promotion receive a £50 coupon code for Lightwave subscriptions.

Octane 2025 Features

What’s New in the Octane 2025.1 Release

New Spectral Camera LensFX: Matches the physically accurate measured effects of real-world cameras lenses
Rest Attributes: Support for rest attributes on meshes with animated vertices
New Vectron Texture Displacement: Support for texture displacement in Vectron and Volume SDF nodes
New Chaos Texture System: Overhauled the Chaos texture node with a number of new features and attributes
Native Decal Support: New system in core to support easy and efficient placement of surface decals on geometry
Render Network Integration in core: The Render Network web service and UX is now available in core as a native window panel
Metal-RT Major speed and memory improvements to hardware acceleration on Apple M3 and M4 devices with scenes using non-triangle geometry
Speed/Quality Volume Rendering Slider: Increasing this value means the performance will be boosted and the rendering quality will get degraded as a result, but the balance can now be tuned by the user
11 New blend modes for output AOV layers

New Spectral Camera LensFX

The new realistic lens camera in Octane 2025.1 replicates aberrations and other effects similar to real glass camera lenses, including bokeh, optical vignetting, chromatic aberration, and lens imperfections such as soft focus, soft edges, and barrel distortion. It comes with a library of iconic lenses from brands like Angénieux, Zeiss, Canon, Nikon, Cooke, Schneider, SMC Takumar, Kodak, Petzval, Minolta, Asahi, and more.

Rest Attributes

Rest position attributes help eliminate texture shifting and distortion when applying a texture projection to a mesh with animated vertices, particularly when the mesh lacks UV mapping. When enabled, the projections utilize the mesh's rest vertex positions and normals to compute UVW coordinates. Since rest attributes remain static throughout the animation, the texture mapping stays consistent.

Vectron Displacement

The new Vectron displacement node allows real-time displacement of Vectron or Volume SDF objects using input textures at any scale. It supports integration with complex SDF trees and Mesh Volume SDFs. Additionally, field textures can be used to restrict the displacement to specific areas.

Render Network Browser

The Render Network web service and user interface are now integrated into Octane as a native window panel. Users can dock the Render Network browser alongside other work panes or keep it in a separate window to manage uploaded scenes and monitor render jobs directly within Octane.

Improved Chaos Texture Nodes

The Chaos texture has been enhanced to support projection types beyond Mesh UV, introducing advanced grid, mapping, blending, and visualization capabilities. These updates provide greater flexibility and granular control over noise and randomization functions within Octane, enabling more precise and creative workflows.

Decals

The new decal system in Octane allows artists to project textures directly onto surfaces, enabling the addition of visual details such as dirt, damage, or patterns without modifying the underlying geometry.

Improved Hardware Acceleration on Apple M3 and M4 GPUs

Octane 2025.1 enhances the hardware acceleration introduced in Octane 2024.1 for Apple M3 and M4 GPUs by extending support to non-triangle primitives, including hair, particles, texture displacement, and analytic lights. This upgrade allows scenes with non-triangle geometry to benefit from ray tracing hardware acceleration, delivering up to 1.5x speed improvements in many cases.

For a comprehensive overview of all the new tools, improvements, and capabilities introduced in Octane 2025.1, be sure to check out the full list of features available here.

Early Access to the Next Version of Octane

New Features in Octane 2026.1 Alpha

Alongside the release of Octane 2025.1, OTOY has unveiled the initial alpha preview of Octane 2026.1, giving users the opportunity to explore and test dozens of new features set to debut in next year’s major update.

Meshlets: streaming massive scene geometry assets adaptively from disk, like Unreal Engine Nanite, but for Path Tracing
New bufferless virtual textures: adaptively streaming massive Gigapixel-scale textures directly from disk
Full path traced GPU rendering of Gaussian splats: Neural objects can be implemented on top of this system
New live texture shader-based texture displacement: no need to bake textures for pre-pixel texture displacement
Full support for trace sets: named objects or nodes can include/exclude other objects or scene data from within any shader or object node graph
Neural Radiance Cache System: adaptive neural network at runtime significantly reduces noise on the first pixel
Native support for MaterialX
Neural Rendering Modules and Nodes (experimental): Launch ML and Neural Filters locally or through the
Render Network with integrated local and remote neural rendering within the Octane Node Graph.

Meshlets

Meshlets enable Octane to render highly detailed geometry by adaptively streaming it from disk on demand, eliminating the need to load the entire model into GPU or CPU memory. Similar to Unreal Engine’s Nanite, Meshlets dynamically select an appropriate level of detail – neither too fine nor too coarse – for various parts of a mesh, based on what is visible in the render.

Path Traced 3D Gaussian Splatting

Octane 2026.1 introduces the ability to render Gaussian Splat radiance field volumes using its physically accurate, GPU-accelerated path tracing. This feature allows artists to capture intricate real-time lighting effects, such as reflections and refractions that shift with the viewing angle, delivering highly realistic lighting and shadows.

Octane also supports importing .PLY files containing Gaussian Splatting data from leading tools like LumaLabs, Poly Cam, and NeRDF Studio.

Neural Radiance Cache System

The Octane 2026.1 Alpha introduces a Neural Radiance Cache rendering system, leveraging a neural network at runtime to optimize the gathering of indirect lighting. When paired with Octane’s path-tracing, this new system significantly boosts rendering performance, achieving speeds close to real-time.

Virtual Streaming "Bufferless" Textures

Octane’s new Virtual "Bufferless" Texture Streaming system intelligently manages the on-demand streaming of textures directly from disk as the they appear in the camera view. This enables artists to create scenes with extremely high texture resolutions – reaching billions of pixels – without the risk of running out of GPU memory.

New Real-Time Per-Pixel Texture Displacement

Octane’s per-pixel texture displacement system has been completely redesigned, removing the need for texture baking when using per-pixel displacement mapping. The quality of displaced surfaces has been significantly enhanced, particularly for high-frequency input data. Additionally, the updated system now supports the direct use of OSL textures for texture displacement.

Trace Sets

In this example, the red cube is excluded from reflections in the mirror. In the cube’s object layer node, the cube is added to a trace set called "red", and in the mirror’s object layer node, "red" is excluded.

Trace Sets allow artists to isolate specific geometry from other objects, offering precise control over shadows and reflections within a scene. This feature helps streamline rendering by eliminating unnecessary shadows and reflections in complex environments.

Exclusions can optionally extend to multiple bounces, not just the next one, enabling independent management of direct and indirect visibility after each bounce. Additionally, excluded trace sets can be manually re-included at later bounces for further customization.

In this example, the red cube has been re-included in reflections in the metal sphere.

In this example, the red cone is excluded from all future hits after a reflection in the mirror, and the green code is excluded from only the next hit after a reflection in the mirror. The green cone is still visible in the mirror for light paths that bounce on the water after hitting the mirror.

Native MaterialX Integration

Octane 2026.1 introduces support for native MaterialX nodes and the ability to import .mtlx files, enhancing interoperability and compatibility between Octane’s GPU path-tracing renderer and other 3D graphics workflows.

Sub-graphs with customized interfaces inside Material X graphs are imported into Octane as node graphs:

Octane Server

OctaneServer enables rendering of any scene setup on a remote instance of Octane Standalone. The output can be used as an AOV or a texture, accessible as an experimental feature that can be enabled in Preferences.

Modular Neural Rendering Integrations

A new Octane Module integrates the latest AI text-to-image generators directly into the Octane interface, featuring advanced models from Luma Labs, Blockade Labs, Kling AI, Stability AI, Blackforest Labs, Topaz Labs, Fal AI, Rodin AI, Open AI, and Comfy UI. Additionally, a Python-based launcher is under development, enabling artists to effortlessly send Generative AI tasks to the Render Network. This provides a seamless platform for merging AI-driven workflows with 3D creation pipelines in a unified environment.

Neural Node Graphs

The new Octane Neural Generator Node allows artists to generate images, data, and other assets from arbitrary inputs within the parent node graph. Multiple neural models and frameworks are being introduced as modules, supporting both local and remote processing through the Render Network.

The new features introduced in the first public release candidate of Octane 2025.1 and the Octane 2026.1 alpha are now accessible to users, alongside the latest stable release of Octane 2024, which includes:

New Post FX Shader Graphs with Texture Nodes / OSL in the AOV Compositor

Powerful Denoise AOV Nodes and Filter Graphs (for both GPU and CPU)

New denoise AOV nodes, adapted from the Open Image Denoise framework, are now supported on both GPU and CPU. These nodes enable denoising for any render AOV, allowing for the creation of highly customizable and granular denoising filters within any composition AOV output graph. Features include per-light and per-beauty pass denoising, as well as OSL-driven denoising effects. The nodes are compatible with PMC and info kernels, as well as all AOV outputs.

Ray-Tracing Hardware Acceleration Speedups on Apple M3 and M4

Octane X 2024 introduces native optimization for GPU ray tracing hardware acceleration on next-generation Apple GPUs, delivering performance improvements of 2x to 12x in heavily instanced scenes, with results varying depending on the scene.

New Geometry Pipeline with Less Memory and Better Performance

The stable release of Octane 2024 features a redesigned geometry pipeline that enhances rendering speed, reduces memory usage, and unifies geometry data across different platforms. A consistent memory layout between macOS and Windows/Linux now enables mixed-platform network rendering. With network rendering, users can combine a Windows render node equipped with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 and an Apple M1 Max, leveraging the power of multiple GPU architectures for the first time.

Subscribe to OctaneStudio+ today to access OTOY’s most advanced suite of Octane software and services to date, including up to €200 in Render Credits for harnessing near-unlimited decentralized GPU rendering power on the Render Network.

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