Following the fashion of free 3D engines, this time it’s the turn of OctaneVR, a powerful tool to create realistic cinematic experiences for virtual and augmented reality.
OctaneVR is a tool from OTOY, and will be available on Windows, Mac and Linux for free for an as yet unannounced period of time. With this, they intend that artists and content creators can experience OTOY’s cinematic tools. OctaneVR allows you to export images and animations in a format compatible with the Oculus 360 Photos and Oculus 360 Videos apps that Samsung Gear VR incorporates. Navigable content the VR and menus created with Octane Lua scripts can be exported in ORBX format to be played using the ORBX Media Player app for Gear VR.
“Virtual and augmented reality are going to allow new and phenomenal experiences in education, entertainment and video games, but we are still at the beginning of this movement,” says Jules Urbach, founder and CEO of OTOY. “With OctaneVR we make OTOY’s VR technology available to everyone, at no cost, so that they can check out the incredible experiences that can be created in this medium, once artists are limited only by their art and their imagination. OctaneVR can render video and CG content, on a par with the commercial version of OctaneRender, but we bet that when people realize what can be done in VR, they won’t want to experience content in any other way again.”
OctaneVR will be available to download for free in April, and the ORBX Media Player app will hit the Oculus Store right then and there. By the end of 2015 it will be updated with support for Microsoft HoloLens and HTML5 WebVR.
