Octane X | PR1 GPU renderer launches on macOS

OTOY, Inc. has launched Octane X | PR1 on macOS, introducing what it says is “the industry’s leading unbiased GPU renderer” to millions of Macs powered by Apple’s Metal graphics technology. Jules Urbach, CEO of OTOY, says it delivers the industry’s fastest OctaneBench score ever recorded for a single slot graphics card.

Metal is a core graphics technology that gives apps near-direct access to the GPU [graphics processing unit]. This means faster and more efficient rendering performance across the system.

Octane X is fully compatible with macOS Catalina and will be available for free for new users on Macs with the release of macOS Big Sur this fall. Octane X was introduced to the world during the opening keynote at Apple’s 2019 Worldwide Developer Conference. Today OTOY is releasing the first public preview (PR1) of Octane X for macOS Catalina 10.15.6. It’s completely rebuilt from the ground up using Apple’s Metal Graphics application programming interface and fully optimized for performance on AMD Vega and Navi GPUs across the Mac Pro, iMac Pro, iMac and MacBook Pro products, says Urbach.

Octane X sports over a dozen integrated plug-ins for macOS 3D content creation tools in motion graphics, design, product visualization and VFX – including Maxon Cinema 4D, SideFX Houdini and Autodesk Maya. Octane X | PR1 ships with full support for RNDR, the first distributed GPU rendering platform – enabling artists to scale their rendering jobs through the processing power available through decentralized GPUs.