Maya|Mac|Rendering

[BillSpradlin]

What exactly is the logic behind going with Macs for rendering? They aren't exactly render horses especially for the price. Going Linux with dual Opterons would be a much more effective solution, economically as well as performance wise.

[Aneks]

mac render farm ............ I wouldn't. Macs and maya do not seem to play well together. One reseller I spoke suggested there was a significant problem with rendering speeds on the g5 platform even going so far as to suggest that a single proc Xeon will outperform a dual proc mac when using mental ray.

I have never seen a production company use g5's for the renderfarm, (there must be some out there I just have never experienced it) Nearly all the large production companies I have come into contact with use linux or windows on intel for the render farm.

At the company where I am currently working there are in excess of 800 cpu's on the farm and guess how many of these are macintosh ????

none

[Tocpe]

I appreciate the feedback guys, but I'm afraid the Mac decision is not my call. :( The boss has declared that we're to be an all Mac house...But I dunno seems to me one would look at any and all platforms for the best solution.

I'm afraid I don't know much about setting up a farm, and for sh!ts and giggles, I would like your opinion from your own experiences on what the best platform would be to set up a farm. I know my boss is insisting on setting up a Mac farm, but if a linux/Maya farm or some other combo will give us more bang for the buck, it'd be silly to go with the Macs. And maybe I can convince him to bend on this, if it'll make a big enough cost difference. Dunno, I can try right?

Personally, I don't care what platform it is. All I'm looking for is:

1. What platform will give us the most power for the least investment i.e. best value.
2. Which platform is better at handling the farm, easier to use, most stable, etc.
3. Which platform will give us the most flexibility in the future.

[beaker]

mac render farm ............ I wouldn't. Macs and maya do not seem to play well together. One reseller I spoke suggested there was a significant problem with rendering speeds on the g5 platform even going so far as to suggest that a single proc Xeon will outperform a dual proc mac when using mental ray.

I have never seen a production company use g5's for the renderfarm, (there must be some out there I just have never experienced it) Nearly all the large production companies I have come into contact with use linux or windows on intel for the render farm.

At the company where I am currently working there are in excess of 800 cpu's on the farm and guess how many of these are macintosh ????

noneI just finished working for a fairly medium sized fx company in Hollywood that used 95% macs and everything worked just fine (used to be centropolis before the parent company went kaput). They have around 30-50 artists depending the job. The rendering speeds were actually pretty nice. Shake renders at very similar speed as a dual 3ghz xeon, same with maya. They maya renderer was really slow on mac pre maya 6 before alias rewrote it for Mach.o but not anymore. Mental Ray runs just fine.

Aneks: You dissapoint me. Please don't quote information from resellers. Every reseller I have talked to is blowing smoke out their ass. They are like used car salesmen and will sell you whatever makes them the most money, not what is best for your situtation. They make very little on macs, so they would rather sell you something else. I have never talked to a reseller that I could trust and every time they spout incorrect information. Resellers don't know dick and they are not looking out for your best interests. I call them and tell them what I need to order so I don't have to deal with multiple vendors but in the end I never listen to their advise (I have worked with many of them across the country so this is not an isolated incedent).

The G4 sucked ass for rendering and other stuff, the G5 is only a little over a year old, so it's going to take some time before companies start adopting it. Actually the G5 Xserve is only 6 months old. People don't adopt technology that fast. As I said in the other thread about this subject, without a fulltime sysadmin who knows linux the TCO is going to be cheaper with a mac.

[TomD]

I hate to complicate things a little more. Mac is not the ideal platform for rendering / 3D work for the following reasons.
In 3D World magazine there was an article in issue 58 about PCI-Express, a verry fast connection for graphics cards. Keep also in mind that nVidia created Gelato, now stil with limited capabilities but the future possibilities will expand. In fact the GPU could act as a co-processor to dramatically speed up rendertimes.

You might wonder, why not do this with a G5? Not so, Apple's phylosophy is to keep it simple as possible and in order to keep it simple they make it impossible to insert widly spread, relatively low cost PC based cards. There for manufacturers have to make a special Mac edition which increases price. (How many highend 3D graphics cards can you choose for a Mac??)
Simplicity comes with a pricetag, and oh another thing even though the slowest Mac (the 1.8Ghz) specs states that it has Three open full-length 33MHz, 64-bit PCI slots. That would be nice for backward compatibility, I thought... WRONG :argh: Apple changed the voltage of the PCI slot making old PCI cards useles. (They still don't mention it in the Technical Specifications)This just proves that Apple doesn't mind toying with customers.

All the bits and pieces are against Mac / Pro PC. For example the lack of highend 3D cards for Mac, Mac is a rather closed platform even though their glossy website states otherwise, hardware accelerated renderers on PC platforms, PCI-Express.
It all ads up to an educated 'gues-timate' that in the next year or 2 renderfarms will be different and it will not be an Apple platform.

TomD

[beaker]

I hate to complicate things a little more. Mac is not the ideal platform for rendering / 3D work for the following reasons.
In 3D World magazine there was an article in issue 58 about PCI-Express, a verry fast connection for graphics cards. Keep also in mind that nVidia created Gelato, now stil with limited capabilities but the future possibilities will expand. In fact the GPU could act as a co-processor to dramatically speed up rendertimes.Your talking all about "future possiblilities" not here and now stuff. You do know that AMD hasn't even shipped a chipset that supports PCI express yet and the nforce 4 isn't out yet. VIA has but I wouldn't touch a VIA chipset with a 10 foot pole. By the time there is a viable renderer that is hardware supported it will be time to replace your renderfarm. At the moment Gelato is the only one and it is still missing many features to make it production worthy and it is expensive(3,500 for the renderer and another 1,000-1,500 for a card to run it on). For a complete renderer I would pay that but not for one missing so many features. I give it another year or two.

Apple will probably have PCI-Express in their machines by January(the same time AMD will be shipping thiers). It is a waste putting it in machines right now when they can't even offer comparable cards for it(6800 for PCI express hasn't shipped either). You have to get rid of the AGP slot in order to have PCI-Express. So your saying they should put PCI-express in their machines right now and then only offer a 5900 or a quadro 3400 which costs $1500 and get rid of the 6800 which is actually faster than the 3400 and costs 1/3 the price? Yea, thats sound business sense.

You might wonder, why not do this with a G5? Not so, Apple's phylosophy is to keep it simple as possible and in order to keep it simple they make it impossible to insert widly spread, relatively low cost PC based cards. There for manufacturers have to make a special Mac edition which increases price. (How many highend 3D graphics cards can you choose for a Mac??)No they do not make it impossible. Any of the card manufacturers can make their card run on the mac, but they have chosen not to. This is not an Apple issue but a 3rd party issue. In fact there have been a few 3rd party nvidia card makers in the past(geforce 2 and 3). There just probably isn't much money in it. In fact you can flash the rom on any 5200 or 6800 card and run it with the apple drivers. Also lack of quadro cards is not that big of an issue. The 6800 is very similar to a quadro 4000(same chip family). Apple just needs to give us the ability to tune the drivers to specific apps and we will be all set. Generically tuned drivers just don't do it. We don't really need the quadro cards.

It all ads up to an educated 'gues-timate' that in the next year or 2 renderfarms will be different and it will not be an Apple platform.

TomDIn two years we will all be buying new renderfarms, so lets worry about pci-express when it is actaully usefull. Otherwise it is a waste of money to invest in something like that at the moment. Things do not change overnight. We will see a renderer with this ability comming from a mile away.

[beaker]

Another thing I totally forgot to mention, you can't even buy a rackmount box with pci-express, so your whole point is moot.

[TomD]

Another thing I totally forgot to mention, you can't even buy a rackmount box with pci-express, so your whole point is moot.
Yeah you'r right. I shouldn't make recommandations against Apple and stop looking into the future.

[Tocpe]

Hey you two, don't make me stop this car! I'll turn it around and we'll all go back home! If you can't get along we just won't go to Wally World!! ;)

Seriously though, I'd like to hear all opinions (in a civil manner, please) I'm interested in finding the bestoption, no matter what it is. :)

[beaker]

Yeah you'r right. I shouldn't make recommandations against Apple and stop looking into the future.No I never said that(the recomendation against apple part). You should, just make sure they are legitimate ones. Stuff that actually makes sense to concern yourself about right now, not pie in the sky two years from now. There is no point on worrying yourself over hardware rendering at the moment, it is not a reality right now. It is a possibility, but paying for possibilities is a waste of money untill it becomes a reality. You can't purchase equipment with that mindset and you will go poor because of it.

I think you misunderstanding my opinion. I never said an opteron or p4 farm is a bad idea. Actually I would suggest it over a G5 in a second because you get more bang for the buck but not everyone is seeing the whole picture on this thing. IF and a this is a big IF, tocpe's company had full time sysadmin that could properly setup a linux farm I would go with a rackmount boxx machines in a second. But from the way tocpe's describing it this is a small company and they do all the sysadmin work themselves, or the boss does it. In that case getting a G5 is much more practical. It is something they could actually get up and going themselves. The cost of a linux farm of opteron or p4 machines is going to double if they have to go out and hire someone to set it up or even worse if they have to figure it out themselves. I have been using linux and sgi for years, you can't figure out all the little idiosyncracies overnight. It is by no way plug and play. There are a million settings in 1000 different text files and frankly it can be a pain in the ass(I don't mind it but it is a pain).

I have seen this situation play out many times and it can only go bad. Boss tries to save money, first mistake he builds all the boxes himself or has his employees do it. Then tries to install linux on it because all his friends say it's easy even though he has zero experience doing it (tech l33t people tend to forget that just because it was easy for you to pick up doesn't mean everyone else can). Something doesn't configure right or doesn't setup out of the box with hotplug and here comes a month or two journey of the boss pounding his head against the wall trying to figure it out. The boss spends 10-20k over the next couple weeks for a contactor to come in and fix everything who your going to have to call everytime something goes wrong which is going to burn a hole in your pocket over the next couple years. There goes your $400-$800 per machine savings over a g5 farm you could have setup and maintain yourself with little effort.

[Blur1]

FYI I know of one small post house with about 15 dual G5's that is planning to run the Renderman for Maya plug-in, which should run very competitively since Pixar seem to dig the G5 (I wonder why?). Although one will have to pay for two licenses to run on a dual proc machine. It's still not bad, less than 2 grand US for each machine.
From what these guys said, mentalray was too slow on a Mac. They were using the Maya renderer and wrote their own render farm software. Also, Turtle looks nice and is OS X.

I would have to agree that the advantage of not needing a sysadmin is a pretty compelling reason to go with a Mac setup, especially if you are a small boutique startup.

[DangerAhead]

We're a cross-platform house.

I'm having different issues with the one dual-G5 in our farm. I can't get Maya on Mac OSX to accept some of the render flags! It seems ridiculous, I know, but I have a case open with Alias right now.

This concerns you in the following way, your UNIX command won't accept the following flags:

-imageWidth
-imageHeight
-mayaExtension

Those are pretty basic and needed flags. so if you're using some software, like Butterfly Net Render or something, it's going to fail over and over.
I've spent more time dealing with Render issues on the one Mac than 30 PCs.

my baldness doesn't need to become your problem.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.