Netrender network Proposal

[JIII]

I love the idea unfortunately I am dial up so I would never be able to recieve my files. but if this could be set up it would work. The problem is setting it up.

[modestmouse]

I think i would help out with that. It would be sweet for people who have slower comps and cant render big projects very fast

[fxgogo]

We could have a mark that notifies if you have a modem or broadband, which would mean modem users might be able to start mail eachother cdroms of renders.

Cool. we will need to do a test first. Modestmouse, what timezone are you in? Lets try and meet up at the same time to do some tests.

[modestmouse]

im in mountain time, when I posted this it was 4:11 PM
Were are you?

[JIII]

he is in london dude.

[imashination]

The big problem, which has stopped all previous attempts, is that as soon as someone adds a messed up installation, old version etc, then this client will start spitting out mangled frames. This week I've been building machines for my own farm, each is a 3gig p4 with a gig of ram in a micro atx case. This means I get 1100 CB points in the space of a single regular machine.

I think for the forseeable future, the only option is to use your own farm or rent an administrated one.

Then if you use a plugin....

[fxgogo]

I know what you are saying Mash, it can easily become a logistical nightmare. I think a small organic approach would work much better. So if a few of us started it up and ran with it for a while to sort out problems we could then expand slowly and easier. I think a page just listing all people who are keen to share their machines CPU cycles, would be enough to start. So when people need some extra power, they mail the person directly and then it is up to them to sort out their servers and clients.

What is this about a plug-in?

[fretshredder]

I would agree that it could very easily become a logistical nightmare since we are all so spread out. I love the idea though. Currently I have sort of a small farm set up with 3 machines.. the main machine of which is a dual P4 (2.4 GHZ) with 2 GB RAM.

I am up for the experiment though if anyone else would like to give it a go :thumbsup:

[imashination]

Plugins have to be present on each client. So if a scene uses better boole, all clients need it, else they render the scenes without it, hence giving incorrect frames.

By the end of next week I'll have several machine which could be added if you want to try again:

4x P4@3.06GHz - 1gig RAM
1x K7@3000+ - 1gig RAM
1x K7@2600+ - 1gig RAM
1x P4M@2.2GHz - 512megs

Mmmmmm, render-farm-a-licious

[Demonslayer]

Originally posted by fxgogo
What is this about a plug-in?

I think he means that if you used a plugin somewhere in the scene, and then the rendering person doesn't have it, well, it won't come out right in the end...

If that's not what he meant, it should still be considered. :)

[dann_stubbs]

i know someone local to me doing this with 3dmax - http://www.maxrender.com

it used to be a free - share the power thing - i am not sure about now - and i just looked and they have a new site design that seems to explain less then before - maybe it is in the new .pdf file

hey - mash - don't forget about the issue with mixing renders on different processors - as you've got the the two mixed in on your farm - unless you are keeping the farm renders to the new P4's

dann

[imashination]

Originally posted by dann_stubbs
hey - mash - don't forget about the issue with mixing renders on different processors - as you've got the the two mixed in on your farm - unless you are keeping the farm renders to the new P4's

dann

Wellll, it very much depends what it is you're rendering. Most stuff will be fine cross platform, nearly everything in fact. Its the heavilly proceedural elements with many iterations/frames (ie. stuff which depends on something else) which gives the problems.

Dynamics is a good example of something which would never work cross platform if you just hit render. However I would always bake them before hand to speed it up anyway. Particles are similar.

Position, scale and rotation animation is always safe, i've never come across a single problem with these. Pyrocluster, I doubt these could be done cross platform.

For almost everything we do here, for the clients, we just don't really get an opportunity to get that complex that it really matters

Seeing as I don't go anywhere near pyrocluster, its not a problem ;-)

[Beechdbum]

if someone was desperate for some render time, if be willing to help i got a p4 3.06 ghz with a gig of ram, unfortuantly i wont be around for the 4 weeks so i wont be able to help any time soon

[fxgogo]

Right I have been thinking about how we can do this, and this is what I have come up with. Things need to be made simple above all, with involvement only needed between the two parties concerned. So we will have a simple list that lists people who are happy to lend cpu rendering. The list will have:

Persons name
Machine details
C4D version details
Estimated time available
Email address.

So here are the rules:

1. People listed are doing out of their kind hearts, so no heavy handedness or aggression please.

2. The person who wants the rendering done should have the server running on his/her machine and be responsible for any technical issues.

3. The people who offer their computers for rendering, should only need to have the clients running.

4. Any plugins that may be needed for rendering should be the responsibilty of the person who needs the rendering done. Any legal issues should be resolved before rendering.

5. After initail contact via email, it is the responsibilities of the two parties to set everything up and get things going.



Right that is what I have so far. Any more issues that anyone can think of?

[imashination]

Originally posted by fxgogo

2. The person who wants the rendering done should have the server running on his/her machine and be responsible for any technical issues.


So every single person has to change all their net clients each time someone wants to render? That wont work.

[fxgogo]

Well it is a quick change to make. This is not a thing for commercial work remember. Do you have a better idea?

[imashination]

I know its a quick change, but what if 5 people want to render over the weekend? I need to change like 30 settings through the day.

No I dont have a better idea, thats why I said it never worked before ;-) I could suggest one single person runs the server though.

[fxgogo]

Yeah, we dont want it to become a big hassle for people. The problem with a central server is the ordering the jobs. it can become very messy quickly. A first come firt served standard would not be the best in my opinion. Any more ideas people?

[Pate]

Hi!

Sorry to be asking a stupid question, but I am currently in the process of rendering one scene of my movie project, around 200 frames and it progresses at the speed of 1 frame every 6-9 hours (on my 2.4GHz P4), so I am following this thread with interest! :)

Anyways, the question: I don't currently own C4D Net, does that mean I would not be able to take advantage of the free CPU time anyone would be willing to share (depending on the eventual solution to the logistical problems, of course)?

Thanks..

Pate

[imashination]

Originally posted by Pate
Hi!

Sorry to be asking a stupid question, but I am currently in the process of rendering one scene of my movie project, around 200 frames and it progresses at the speed of 1 frame every 6-9 hours (on my 2.4GHz P4), so I am following this thread with interest! :)

Anyways, the question: I don't currently own C4D Net, does that mean I would not be able to take advantage of the free CPU time anyone would be willing to share (depending on the eventual solution to the logistical problems, of course)?

Thanks..

Pate

9 hours x 200 frames, dude, thats 3 months render time, 24 hours a day.

You neeeed to optimise that. I generally have 10 minutes per frame as an absolute maximum. To be honest, If I took part and I saw someone rendering a 200 frame animation with half a day per frame then I would cancel the render job.

[fxgogo]

Originally posted by Pate
...speed of 1 frame every 6-9 hours (on my 2.4GHz P4), so I am following this thread with interest! :)

I agree with mash, that sounds a bit long. Can you post an image for us to see. it will help in optimising the scene.

Anyways, the question: I don't currently own C4D Net, does that mean I would not be able to take advantage of the free CPU time anyone would be willing to share (depending on the eventual solution to the logistical problems, of course)?

Well yes you could, but you would need someone who does have a licence to set the render off for you. So that would be a two step process for you. What I am proposing is to initally set up a board that lists everyones details, and then everyone could start things up on their own bat. Eventually I would like to see a on-line rendering system, but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

[Pate]

Originally posted by fxgogo
I agree with mash, that sounds a bit long. Can you post an image for us to see. it will help in optimising the scene.


Sure I can, here is frame 95 (yeah, I've been rendering for a month now :) ).

http://member.newsguy.com/~paalto/Final0095.jpg

I am faking DOF with the 25x scene motion blur technigue, and due to the snow planet reflecting on the helmet (behind the HUD and ship windscreen) I need to have ray depth of 16 (I tried with 15 but that was not enough) and reflection depth of 3.

I don't see how I could manage a frame in less than 10 minutes using 25x SMB, that would mean less than 30 seconds for a raw frame.

Naturally I have AA, Radiosity and Caustics set to NONE. I used to have one area light but that REALLY killed the render times (I was looking at 30 hours a frame) so now I only have 2 hard shadow lights and 6 soft shadow lights.

The scene has around 200.000 polygons and takes about 800MB RAM to render.

Much appriciated if you could figure out a way to markedly improve the render times! On the other hand I am not in a hurry, my current estimate for a finished movie is sometime in 2006.

Pate

[dann_stubbs]

Originally posted by imashination
9 hours x 200 frames, dude, thats 3 months render time, 24 hours a day.

You neeeed to optimise that. I generally have 10 minutes per frame as an absolute maximum. To be honest, If I took part and I saw someone rendering a 200 frame animation with half a day per frame then I would cancel the render job.

if you average the frames to 7.5 hours each x 200 frames that would take 3.6 days on my farm. not too unreasonable really - but i do agree that you probably could optimize and cut that down quite a bit with no discernable loss in image quality.

dann

[Pate]

Originally posted by dann_stubbs
if you average the frames to 7.5 hours each x 200 frames that would take 3.6 days on my farm.


Wow! This really makes me feel bad for not using your render farm!

However, the long render times are not such a big problem for me, as it takes me a lot of time to prepare a scene for rendering anyways. I only have time to work on my project during weekends, and only about 10 hours per weekend or so. That is only 40 hours per month, and it can easily take me a couple of weekends to animate a 200-frame clip. So if rendering the same clip takes less than 2 weeks, I am not render bound but animation bound! :) Perhaps I am just unbelievably slow, but this is my first ever 3D project of any kind using any 3D software, so everything is new to me.


but i do agree that you probably could optimize and cut that down quite a bit with no discernable loss in image quality.

dann

Yeah, I noticed with the new scene I am working on that I can increase the threshold level in the options and get the render speed up to 2 hours per frame. I don't want to do this for the currently rendering scene, though, as that would cause a slight visible difference between the old and new frames.

Anyways, I feel I have taken this thread to an off-topic direction quite enough for one day, perhaps we should get back to discussing the free network render stuff.

Pate

[pgp_protector]

Great idea, but how do you keep control of your files ?

Is there any security to keep the meshes out of other peoples hands ?

[imashination]

x25 blur, with a 3 month render.

Take a look at your numbers, if you paid for R8 + AR with real DOF, you might end up saving money from your electricity bill. Dan will tell you about his leccy bills in a moment ;-)

[dann_stubbs]

Originally posted by imashination
x25 blur, with a 3 month render.

Take a look at your numbers, if you paid for R8 + AR with real DOF, you might end up saving money from your electricity bill. Dan will tell you about his leccy bills in a moment ;-)

i'm not sure what a leccy bill is?

but my electric bill crossed $410 this month. $225+ estimated for just the 21 CPU's in my studio.

add in the additional commerical wiring for the racks and air conditioning changes and it gets more expensive then i expected.

dann

[Pate]

Originally posted by imashination
x25 blur, with a 3 month render.

Take a look at your numbers, if you paid for R8 + AR with real DOF, you might end up saving money from your electricity bill.


I have R8 + AR + Mocca, but the inbuilt DOF does not seem to work very well with transparent and reflective objects (which my scene is full of), since it is a post effect. By the way, the information about my scene was somewhat off above, the correct values are:
Points: 280672 (1063698)
Polygons: 290382 (930606)
Also, there are actually 6 hard shadow lights and 7 soft shadow lights.

By the way, my rent includes electricity, so the more I use electricity the cheaper my rent becomes (relatively speaking). :)
Thus, when I am not rendering my own scenes I might be able to offer some CPU cycles for others as well. It won't even cost me a thing.

Pate

[fxgogo]

Originally posted by pgp_protector
Great idea, but how do you keep control of your files ?

Is there any security to keep the meshes out of other peoples hands ?

YEah that could be a problem. I think foremost is that you have to risk things like this if you want to use the network. I hope that everyone here is a moral upstanding person, so that this wont be a worry, but you never know. I don't know about the technicalities, and maybe someone can fill us in, but when a client is rendering, can that person get access to the scene and texure files?

[handige_harrie]

Surprises me no-one has posted this topic here before, It's practically about the same thing:

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=56182

[dann_stubbs]

Originally posted by handige_harrie
Surprises me no-one has posted this topic here before, It's practically about the same thing:

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=56182

oh, yeah... now i remember that thread.

i think i thought this was a continuation of the other one you referred to - not a new one.

funny with my offer back then of anyone needing some render time for a non-commercial project - still not one person has ever emailed about it...

some things never change it appears.

dann

[handige_harrie]

Originally posted by dann_stubbs
oh, yeah... now i remember that thread.

i think i thought this was a continuation of the other one you referred to - not a new one.

funny with my offer back then of anyone needing some render time for a non-commercial project - still not one person has ever emailed about it...

some things never change it appears.

dann

I have not forgotten your offer and I will contact you when I have a need for it ;).

Well, actually you might help me out rendering a single frame at 4960x3720 using DOF (to be printed on A3+). I currently only have 256MB and that is causing the out-of-memmory prompts. I tried work-arounds but they didn't work. The image should normally be rendered in round and about 3hours.

[dann_stubbs]

if the file isn't too large stuff or zip it and email it to me - set it as you want it and i'll render it as is and send the image back.

if it is to large to email - when i get in i'll set up an ftp account for you to upload it.

(much of these "help" requests will depend on my schedule - just for future notice - the "free" help is for serious situations where it may just be the only possible way - as a friendly favor type thing)

just for curiosity - did you try the image slicing trick? i have a tutorial link on the main renderking page. i'd be suprised if this didn't work?

dann

[handige_harrie]

Hmm I know how the slicing works, I never tried because I thought the radiosity would cause color-differences and thus visible seams.

But your tutorial says that isn't a problem. So I'll try slicing up first :thumbsup:.

[dann_stubbs]

Originally posted by handige_harrie
Hmm I know how the slicing works, I never tried because I thought the radiosity would cause color-differences and thus visible seams.

But your tutorial says that isn't a problem. So I'll try slicing up first :thumbsup:.

well it didn't affect that render - but i've seen some it does... just keep it in mind. samples also change since there is differences in visible areas.

if it is radiosity there are huge variables with settings that can save time and quality - MV (from postforum) has a nice tutorial on his site about it that may help you get some speed and quality improvements. the ray depth of 3 (default i think) may not be necessary in many cases - i'm not sure how much you've tweaked but looking up that tutorial may help a little?

http://mvpny.com/RadTutMV/RadiosityTut1MV.html

dann

[handige_harrie]

Originally posted by dann_stubbs
well it didn't affect that render - but i've seen some it does... just keep it in mind. samples also change since there is differences in visible areas.

if it is radiosity there are huge variables with settings that can save time and quality - MV (from postforum) has a nice tutorial on his site about it that may help you get some speed and quality improvements. the ray depth of 3 (default i think) may not be necessary in many cases - i'm not sure how much you've tweaked but looking up that tutorial may help a little?

http://mvpny.com/RadTutMV/RadiosityTut1MV.html

dann

No luck yet, even at a quarter render gives me the out-of-memmory error. That's strange because when I render at 2480x1860 (which is exactly one quarter of the one I am aiming for) I don't get the error.
I use vertical slices in this case because that devides the DOF into fairly even parts (contrary to horizontal slices).

I am using stochastic radiosity (depth=1, samples=20-24) because it gives me a raw/grainy though very subtle touch that I cannot achieve using normal radiosity or none at all. I know all about MV's tutorial and if you read some of my older posts you'll see I did lot's of radiosity tests and am quite competent in finding good settings, but no offence taken naturaly :). I even did a radiosity-anim of my logo (the thing that started the other thread :p).

Shademaster pointed a thread out to me on the renderosity-forum that related the scale of the scene to the DOF-out-of-memmory errors. In his/her case scaling down the scene (not the output render) solved the problem. I tried this, but without any luck.

I tried blurring in PS with the use of a depth channel render, but that didn't give me the effect I wanted.

[dann_stubbs]

well how big is the scene?

any special plugins i may not have? if 10ish mb just stuff and email it to me as i mentioned before.

i wasn't putting you down about the settings etc. i havent' been on the forum much - actually that last netrender thread was my start - so i don't "know" everybody yet - it was just a helpful suggestion and you never know if others are following the thread so i figured i'd post it.

email me if you need more on this render etc.

dann

[handige_harrie]

The rc car is a couple of hundred meters long, but scaling it down to realistic sizes gave me glitches. Scaling it down to a minimum size that didn't cause glitches still gave the out-of-memmory error.

I sent you two emails. The total size was about 1.4MB with the good quality textures that I need. Because hotmail wont allow me to send files over 1MB I plit it up in two parts. One with the scene file and fake hdri probe. The second with the textures.
Please don't share these files with other.
No plug-ins used.

About the radiosity part, I know you weren't putting me down about the settings, you were only trying to be helpful. I just wanted to let you know the radiosity settings are not really an issue here :), a part from the chance of getting seems to show up when slicing.

[dann_stubbs]

Originally posted by handige_harrie
I sent you two emails. The total size was about 1.4MB with the good quality textures that I need. Because hotmail wont allow me to send files over 1MB I plit it up in two parts. One with the scene file and fake hdri probe. The second with the textures.
Please don't share these files with other.
No plug-ins used.

i got the emails this morning - the hdri you sent was a bmp but the scene file was asking for a jpg - so i just converted it in photoshop to jpg - highest quality. i started the render at 6am but leave for the day job at 6:30 so when i get in i will email you the finished render.

as far as security - i would never share models or anything users ever upload to my farm - in fact nobody but me ever sees the renders or files. so feel confident of that.

if the hdri change to jpg is incorrect the scene file asked for - then send me an updated .c4d file and i will rerender that when i get back to the studio - sorry it will be the end of the day before i can get that render back to you.

we should probably take much of this discussion off forum now - but i didn't have a chance to email before i left and wanted to give you a status update.

dann

[handige_harrie]

If the file asked for a .jpg then that must have been the low-quality version. You could have just assigned it to the .bmp. But it's fine the way you did it.

I asked for the 'security' just to make sure. This is more of a test, that you might otherwise share to someone else have a look at it. In this case that doesn't apply cause the scene is for sale at 3dvim.com. The render you can keep if you like :).

Sending the image to my email wont work, hotmail doesn't accept files that big, even my isp email wont accept that (it's nearly 60mb's).
If you have msn you could send it to me through that, if not, we have to find another solution. I do not have that amount of webspace available.

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it :beer:.

[dann_stubbs]

Originally posted by handige_harrie
If the file asked for a .jpg then that must have been the low-quality version. You could have just assigned it to the .bmp. But it's fine the way you did it.

Sending the image to my email wont work, hotmail doesn't accept files that big, even my isp email wont accept that (it's nearly 60mb's).
If you have msn you could send it to me through that, if not, we have to find another solution. I do not have that amount of webspace available.

i don't like to open and edit any user files since i never am sure if my defaults will alter anything. if i ever edit a scene file it is only after i ask the user permissions.

i will set up an FTP account for you and put the rendered image in there for you to download. i'll email your login and password when i get back to the studio.

dann

[handige_harrie]

I downloaded the file and did some touching-up in PS.

The file is ready for print, now let's hope my friend with his A3+ printer can find the time to help me out :).

Anyway thanks a lot Dann :thumbsup:.

Now I come to think of it: this is an example of distributing rendering without the use of net render. If if was an animation, more people would be given the file and told which frames they need to render. Only problem is getting the frames back, but that can be solved with a good ftp-server like Dann´s or a p2p-method like msn.

Think about it guys ;).

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