Installation

Before you can use Octane Light Studio, you need two things: a working Octane Render setup for Blender and the Octane Light Studio addon itself. This page walks you through both.

Step 1: Install Octane Render for Blender

If you do not have Octane Render yet, you can get started for free. OTOY offers Octane Prime, a free version with full rendering capabilities. Visit the official download page at render.otoy.com/shop/prime.php  to create an account and access the downloads.

You need to download two components:

First, download and install the Octane Server. This is the background service that handles all GPU rendering. The server must be running whenever you work with Octane — without it, Octane will not function at all. After installation, launch the Octane Server and activate it with your OTOY account credentials. Make sure the server is running before you start Blender.

Second, download Octane Prime for Blender. This is not a regular Blender plugin — it is a special build of Blender with the Octane renderer fully integrated. Install it like you would install any version of Blender.

Octane Light Studio has been tested with both the Prime and Studio editions of Octane. The most recently verified versions are Octane Render Prime 2025.5 and Octane Server Prime 2025.5 on Windows. Everything   

 runs smoothly with this configuration.

Step 2: Install Octane Light Studio

The addon installs like any standard Blender addon. Open Blender and go to Edit, then Preferences. Select the Add-ons tab and click the Install button in the top-right corner. Browse to the Octane Light Studio  

ZIP file and select it. Do not extract the ZIP file beforehand — Blender installs addons directly from the archive.

After installation, search for "Octane Light Studio" in the addon list and enable it by checking the checkbox. The addon will appear as the OLS2.1 tab in the 3D Viewport sidebar. Press N to open the sidebar if it  is not visible.

Step 3: Verify Your Setup

Open the OLS2.1 tab in the sidebar. You should see the "Start Octane Light Studio" button. Click it to initialize the addon. This will automatically configure the Octane render engine and kernel settings for your  

scene. If the button does not respond, make sure the Octane Server is running in the background.

You are now ready to start lighting your scene.