What is a Chief render farm?

[CARMELHILL]

I've seen a lot of posts lately talking about the render times when using one computer compared to using their "render farm". How does this work. Are users referring to SLI with two cards, actually using a patch cord to physically connect computers, or a network connection?

I'm curious how I can get faster renders from Chief. I don't have time to learn Thea, Artlantis, ablender, maxwell, etc.....I like having everything come from one program.

[fcwilt]

The following is somewhat simplistic - a render farm is a group of networked computers running rendering software that is designed so the computational load can be spread across multiple computers.

[gawdzira]

Is chief multi-threaded? I believe it must be to take advantage of a render farm.

[fcwilt]

Depends. Often the software the runs on a render farm is a separate product from the application, in this case CA. What CA users are doing is unknown to me.

[Doug Park]

Chief doesn't currently provide a render farm, although the way things are designed it is something that we could step up to.

Chief is multithreaded. One of the most obvious places is ray tracing. It can use as many cores as are available on your system.

The way to speed up renders is to
a) Make them less complex. This is usually a matter of reducing pixels and or number of lights.
or
b) Throw hardware at the problem. Building a dual Xeon system that has 6 or more cores per CPU is one way. It can get expensive to do this. 12 core xeon processors are, I think, the next step.

What we need to do is start looking at how to leverage other things to speed things up. For example it is theoretically possible to leverage the GPU to gain more performance. Spreading the work out over many different systems, a render farm, is another thing we should do, and then there are other hardware options, such as supporting add-in cards. If you want us to support these options ask our sales and support teams for them so they know how much of a demand there is for them.

[jcaffee]

Then there is ray trace/render as a service. While Chief's ray tracer is integral to their product, many renderers are standalone and available as a third-party service. To date, I am unaware of any vendor offering Chief/Phoebe-native ray trace as a service. Typically, these services are used by motion CG artists, and they are not cheap.

http://rentrender.com/all-render-farms-list/ (I am not endorsing this service; it's an example)

Of course, you can just setup a machine in your office to grind away while you're doing "real" work. Hey, here's an idea, why doesn't CA sell a render/ray trace only license for current/full license holders w/SSA?

jon

[Levis]

Hey, here's an idea, why doesn't CA sell a render/ray trace only license for current/full license holders w/SSA?

jon

Hmmm... interesting idea Jon! After having to let my computer sit for days doing raytraces earlier this summer, I would gladly spend the extra money for an additional raytrace licence. If I could keep working on another machine at the same time, that license would pay for itself in no time (in case you're wondering why I had to let the computer sit... they were large renderings for fence signs with very high pixel counts. The raytrace process slowed my computer so bad that I couldn't even use it for anything else while it was running!)

[ARCHIJEF2000]

I think the best Reindeer farms are to be found in Finland.



it maybe be brass monkeys, but you get to wear these right natty duds.

[johnnyprc]

Chief should add this to SSA and render on a cloud based system. I'd pay extra for this personally.

[jcaffee]

I doubt they could add this to SSA. But you would need SSA to be eligible for a $1000 - $1400 render license. So, as long as your SSA is current, then that heavily discounted (and validated) add-on license would run. Something for those fine guys and girls at the home office to consider, for sure. Yes, I know it's more complex than this (getting a Phoebe specific EnFuzion plugin would be a biggie for multi-user offices), but it is achievable.

As for CA hosting a "free w/SSA" cloud render farm. What's in it for them? Who here uses the iRay, Artlantis, Blender farms from their respective vendors? Who wants to go into the queue behind a hundred college students and wait for... for... for... "Aw cheese-o-Pete Ed, just render it on your machine."

jon

[johnnyprc]

I guess I didn't see it as "free". I was thinking if you had SSA, then you could pay Chief some amount for rendering options. I personally think SSA needs to be expanded "if" Chief isn't going to release a new version yearly. For experienced users not needing their videos - why have SSA?