OTOY’s cinematic render engine for the Unity editor has arrived! OctaneRender® is the first and fastest path-traced, GPU-accelerated render engine. In Unity, OctaneRender is available for free, or at $20 or $60 for packages that unlock more GPUs and OctaneRender plugins for leading 3D authoring tools.

Cinematic rendering in Timeline and Play mode

OctaneRender arms Unity creators with greater rendering power and quality for cinematic use cases. Born on GPUs, OctaneRender is an unbiased render engine, tracing each ray of light in a scene with physics-grade precision to deliver unrivaled photorealism in CG and VFX.

OctaneRender Recorder now allows you to record animations or sequences made with Unity’s Timeline and export either as a movie file or as an ORBX® format, which can leverage OctaneRender Cloud®. Recorder makes composing films through Timeline, Cinemachine, and now Play mode, that much easier.

In advance of next year’s Octane 4 with Brigade, our real-time path-tracer, OctaneRender for Unity is limited to pre-rendered content. However through cinematic rendering and the upcoming Live Lightmap Baking, OctaneRender for Unity expands what you can do in the engine today.

This Made with Unity scene is rendered with OctaneRender for Unity and is available for free on the Asset Store.

Overview of the main OctaneRender for Unity features in action. All within the Unity editor.

The PBR (Physically-Based Rendering) Viewport

One of the immediately noticeable features in OctaneRender for Unity is the PBR Viewport. It provides a window into your scene as viewed by a path-traced render engine. With Cinematic Rendering in OctaneRender, what you see is what you get. You can now use a Hollywood-grade render engine inside of Unity to create cinematic output from Cinemachine and Timeline.

The PBR Viewport showing a glimpse into the Docking Bay with OctaneRender for Unity— scene available on the Asset Store.

OctaneRender materials and lighting

For pre-rendered sequences, OctaneRender steps up the quality of the scene immediately, even with standard Unity shaders. You can also choose to leverage OctaneRender’s node-based material and lighting system, which improves the overall look even further with physics-based quality.

In future versions, OctaneRender for Unity will also support Open Shading Language (OSL) for even greater flexibility.

You can find tutorials that walk you through the new workflow here.

Views of The Orbital and Docking Bay scenes with OctaneRender for Unity available on the Asset Store for free.

OctaneRender for Unity on the Asset Store



Getting started with OctaneRender is easy: simply head to the Asset Store and download any of our scene packages. When you load any one of them, you will be prompted to install OctaneRender for Unity.

The Installer Scene is a good place to start, as it’s lightweight and friendly, but any package from OTOY’s storefront will install OctaneRender. Once you are prompted to install OctaneRender for Unity, check out the Octane for Unity installation guide for the step-by-step process.

We’ll be updating the Asset Store with new scenes to inspire you and provide some free goodies to use in your own projects. Keeping checking back!

These scenes will also be used in our project-based guides, so download and follow along to learn how to get the most out of OctaneRender for Unity.

OctaneRender Prime, Studio, and Creator

OctaneRender for Unity comes in three versions—a free tier and two subscription options—each of which is feature complete.

OctaneRender Prime is available for free by downloading an OctaneRender asset from the Asset Store. Prime only allows access to your primary GPU and comes with no additional plugins.

Annual subscriptions to OctaneRender Studio and OctaneRender Creator offer access to more GPUs and a selection of additional plugins. They can be purchased here.

OctaneRender Studio is $20 per month and allows access to 2 GPUs and a selection of 1 additional plugin.

OctaneRender Creator is $60 per month and allows access to up to 20 GPUs and a selection of 3 additional plugins Both OctaneRender Studio and Creator also include OctaneRender for NUKE and for After Effects as standard plugins. Simply follow the instructions emailed after loading OctaneRender Studio or Creator to redeem and download while selecting your additional plugins.



The paid tiers also provide access to OctaneRender Cloud as one of the plugin selections, where you can render in OTOY’s cloud to harness hundreds of GPUs for longer cutscenes or baking jobs.

Live Lightmap Baking Beta

Currently available in beta, Live Lightmap Baking will soon be completed and launched. GPU-accelerated baking can deliver 10x the speeds of current solutions, redefining how lightmapping in Unity is done today. Because OctaneRender can read Unity materials and lights, even legacy lightmap workflows can be accelerated with path-tracing. The Unity community can experiment with OctaneRender’s baking system in beta today, and more features and support will come shortly.

Live real time Octane GPU baking in @unity3d viewport on my laptop! Entire scene baking on GPU shared w/ Unity game viewport! No slowdown ? pic.twitter.com/lgk7hl9apT — Jules Urbach (@JulesUrbach) October 11, 2017

Javier Leon’s Mini Metaverse, rendered and baked in OctaneRender for Unity.

Resources

From hardware requirements and installation guides to project-based tutorials, learn how to unleash the power of OctaneRender for Unity:

Installation and project-based guides: To get started, check out the Installation Guide and the Introduction to OctaneRender for Unity tutorial.

Manual: Take a deeper dive with the OctaneRender for Unity Manual

FAQs: See an extended list of FAQs

Unity Assets: Download OctaneRender’s astonishing sample scenes for free to see for yourself what’s possible.

Updates: Don’t forget to check out the OTOY Forums for the most up-to-date information and to ask more in-depth questions.

More about OctaneRender for Unity. Get additional resources and information such as the OctaneRender for Unity roadmap.

Note: This post was written by our friends at OTOY