Nik,
Thanks for mentioning Deadline. I took a look at some of the screen shots for it, and it looks to be a very feature-rich solution. When things get slow at work I like to download evaluation versions of network rendering software I haven't tried yet and give it a go. I think I'll do that with Deadline next time things slow down here. All that said, it seems to be relatively expensive as they charge on a per-node basis with a sliding price scale based on the size of your farm. At $130 per node, that's $1300 USD if you have 10 nodes. And they charge extra for support. Ouch. I wonder if their pricing scheme considers a "node" to be a computer or a CPU. If you have a quad core machine on your farm, would you have to pay $520 to utilize all four cores in Deadline? Again, the screen shots look extremely impressive though.
Stephen,
Regarding Mule, I first attempted to evaluate it back in June (2007). Unfortunately I wasn't able to do so because we were already using LightWave 9.2, and Mule 1.0 (the only version out at the time) did not yet support LightWave 9.2. Then, early in July, I received the following message in a newsletter from Epicsoft: [i]"[/i][i]epicsoft and MULE are sad to announce to the LightWave community that due to the exponential evolution of technologies & high costs, MULE 2.0 development and launch have been put on hold indefinitely for restructuring and re-evaluation."[/i] Then, a little less than a month later, when I was at Siggraph, I heard the announcement that LightWave 9.3 was being released. Things were not looking good for Mule; it didn't look like they were able to keep up with the changes and challenges they were faced with. Reading the Mule forums, I could see that Mule users were lamenting that Mule 2.0 had be so long overdue. None of these events gave me a particularly warm and fuzzy feeling about the idea of commiting my render pipeline to Mule. Then in September, Epicsoft released Mule 1.5. I recently got a little free time at work and I evaluated it. My impression was that it had a lot going for it. Mule has a very nice GUI, it's very easy to set up and use, Epicsoft provides a set up tutorial video to help you get started, and at $125 USD for unlimited nodes you can't beat the price. One of my lesser concerns with the current version of Mule (1.5) is that it only has camera options for classic cameras. They claim that Mule supports all camera types from LightWave, but you cannot make last minute adjustments to, say, a perspective camera. This may change if and when they release version 2.0, who knows. I'm also not particularly impressed that Mule is only for LightWave. It's not all together uncommon to see render controllers which will facilitate a pipeline that includes multiple software packages (3ds max, LightWave, Maya, XSI, etc). If you work at a medium or large company, odds are you're not just using one animation package. I also wasn't too keen on the fact that Mule doesn't include any monitoring software so you can keep an eye on your renders from your workstation. But, far and away, my largest concern with Mule is their spotty record with releasing updates. When you choose a network rendering solution, that's an investment in both time and money. There's likely doing to be some bugs to work out during the transitional period when you first install the software on your farm. This can hold up projects and effect deadlines if things aren't done properly. I don't think anyone in a professional environment wants to gamble on a software that may or may not continue to have the resources and/or desire to release timely updates as changes in animation software and the industry take effect.
I’m actually a little surprised that ButterflyNetRender is so popular. I come from a 3ds max background, so I’m used to Backburner coming with my animation software. Backburner is far from perfect, but it supports scan line, Mental Ray and third party renderers, it’s easy to set up, and it has pretty much every feature I need. So going from that to ScreamerNet was a bit of a culture shock. Honestly I’ve never even used vanilla LWSN. I read about it in the docs, read about people’s impressions of it in forums, and that was enough to tell me I should find another solution. BNR is the first one we’ve really committed to. I found the learning curve rather steep for getting it set up and getting all the kinks worked out. It could do it blindfolded now, but it took me a while to get to this point. Liquid Dreams is very good about releasing regular point releases, and they are currently on version 4.01 of BNR. Butterfly allows for full control of all camera types, output, scene priority, and loads of other things. It supports 3ds max, LightWave, VRay, Maya RenderMan, and XSI.
Basically Mule is simple, but that simplicity comes at a cost - you’re sacrificing some fatures that you could otherwise get in another solution. ButterflyNetRender is fairly feature rich and, therefor, more complicated. I honestly don’t feel that one is “better” than the other, they simply appeal to two different consumer basis. For the freelancer who is using only LightWave to create 3D content, Mule would be a fantastic solution. If your needs go beyond that, I would keep looking.
As an interesting side note, about a year ago I called Zoic Studios, arguably one of the most widely known LightWave houses, and asked them what they use. One of their producers informed me that they use Rush.
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