 | | | Render Farms | Render Farms 2005-04-14 - By Stefan Andersson
Back
gonna wake up this thread again :) Anyone tried using Muster?
http://www.vvertex.com/
Seems nice since it can also run on Linux. I would be interested in
hearing what Linux people uses for renderfarm software. If both the 3D
machines are Linux and also the farm.
regards
stefan andersson
On 4/8/05, Andy Jones <andy@(protected)> wrote:
> At PLF we use BatchServe and are semi-content with it, in that we are
> usually able to render 2K frames for film jobs. The big issues we still
> run into are caused by poor memory management in Windows leading to XSI
> crashes which BatchServe handles very ungracefully (machines freeze and
> stop rendering until someone intervenes). I agree with the jist of what
> everyone is saying -- BatchServe isn't a good idea unless you want to
> use it as a starting point for some extended development. And if you
> choose to go with a Windows farm, go ahead and kick yourself now so you
> won't have do it later while you're scrambling to get your frames to
> render. I think the underlying concepts in BatchServe are really good,
> but it's not a finished product. We've been talking to Softimage about
> ways to get the product moving forward again, and I think we're nearing
> a resolution.
>
> Ultimately, I think the only lasting solution to the render pipeline is
> to have a completely open source project that we can all contribute to
> and benefit from. Facilities will always need to have the power to
> customize their pipeline on a moment's notice, but in most cases, for
> every last-second hacky fix that has to be made in the middle of a
> production, there is a more robust feature that could be incorporated
> into an official release. I think there are a lot of small to mid-size
> facilities right now that have the ability to make those types of fixes
> to a render pipeline, so I think the talent base is there. We're just
> missing a central authority that can supervise the collection,
> refinement and incorporation of the improved code.
>
> That's why I'm sort of excited about drqueue, despite not really knowing
> much about it. Unfortunately, their website doesn't seem to be working
> right now (not a good sign). Maybe the guy who made it is just hosting
> it out of his house or something. You can still see the cached version
> of the site on google if you search for drqueue. I sent an email to the
> drqueue guy, so hopefully he'll get it going again. In the meantime,
> you can download some files at
> <http://projects.blender.org/projects/drqueue>. I think maybe that's a
> slightly old version, though.
>
> -Andy
>
> kim aldis wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >>-- --Original Message-- --
> >>From: owner-xsi@(protected)
> >>[mailto:owner-xsi@(protected)] On Behalf Of Bernard Lebel
> >>Sent: 08 April 2005 16:29
> >>To: XSI@(protected)
> >>Subject: Re: Render Farms
> >>
> >>See [Bernard] below...
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>It does only XSI
> >>>
> >>>It won't render Fxtrees.
> >>>
> >>>It won't run scripts.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>[Bernard] Well, one thing though it that at Action Synthese
> >>it did FxTrees and scripts, and could do mr standalone if we
> >>had the licenses.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Does it? Didn't know that.
> >
> >
> >>[Bernard] Well, one of my full-time dutie, with my co-td
> >>there, was to look in that specific aspect of render farming.
> >>For example, there was a version of XSIBATCH that had a bug
> >>with skip rendered frame, so we had to disable altogether on the farm.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >I've never used anything other than skip rendered frame and I've not seen a
> >bug there since way back in version 1. But then Batchserve doesn't use skip
> >rendered frames, does it?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >>There were a lot of weird things going on. For example, I had
> >>a scene with a reference model containing instances that when
> >>rendered on my machine, either in XSI or XSIBATCH, would
> >>render fine. But on the farm it would render "invisible". I
> >>had the same XSI installed on my machine as on the farm....
> >>go figure. Things like that occured on a dayly basis.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > There have been for a long time issues with reference models and it's only
> >in recent versions - 4.2, not 4.0 - that they've become even remotely
> >reliable. I also know that for years there's been problems with Xsi messing
> >with UNC paths, converting them back to mapped drives at random. Anything in
> >Xsi that deals with external files is prone to problems but I'd say these
> >are more general XSI problems rather than specific XSIbatch problems.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >>Cheers
> >>Bernard
> >>---
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> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >---
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> >
> >
> >
>
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