Re: [MLUG] Render Farms?

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Nathan Odle wrote:
> Does anyone on the list have any experience with internet/VPN 
> accessible render farms?  I've been working on some renderings for a 
> couple upcoming developments of ours and for at least one we plan to 
> do a video flythrough of the site along with a walkthrough of the 
> units themselves.  Judging by how long it takes a still to render on 
> my workstation (a 3.2 GHz P4 w/ 2GB RAM) I'm thinking that I'm going 
> to be into some significant render time even if I add the other 
> workstations in our office into the fray.
>
> I know that there are companies putting farms online and allowing 
> connectivity through Autodesk's renderfarm manager product Backburner, 
> but I wanted to find out if anyone has actually used such a thing...
>
> Oh, and for the curious, here's a frame to look at.  The modelling 
> isn't complete yet, and all the materials are placeholders (I've got 
> better looking shingles, brick, stone, et cetera) but you should get 
> the idea.  This particular building is a 6-plex townhome that we're 
> pretty excited about.
>
> If viewing in Firefox, click the picture to zoom to full size.   
> http://www.trittenbach.com/townhome.jpg
I was toying with the idea of using my OpenMouth network for jobs like 
rendering since it could use all the people connected to my website to 
get the job done in their spare CPU cycles. Maybe you could create a 
simple Java applet that would download files as needed, render the 
frames, and send the frames back to your server. With something like 
that you could get people to help you out just by giving them your web 
address. Write the software and opensource it and post it on Freshmeat 
and everyone that comes to look at what you have will be donating cycles 
to you as they demo the software. Heck, a lot of people would be 
interested just to see the pictures being rendered that they'd probably 
sit there and watch if you'd let them see the output of their own computer.

--
Michael McGlothlin, tech monkey
Tub Monkey
http://www.tubmonkey.com/


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