Render Farm

[cache]

Anyone here use a render farm for more photo real renders? If so, did you build your own?

[spencerdesign]

Chief does not support network rendering as far as I know. But Thea does and I believe it is working well from what I have read.

[cache]

Sorry, I wasn't clear on that. I realize that CA doesn't support network rendering. By suggesting photo real renders, I meant to imply the use of Thea, or similar, as you can see from my sig. I use Thea/Blender/Crazybumps. IMO, CA raytrace is good for renders that I would rank at about a 4 or 5 on a 1-10 scale for how realistic they look. In other words, I don't consider something photo real when everyone can immediately tell it's not a photo. CA does a great job of providing "good enough" renders without requiring any additional effort after getting the plan right. But for those of us who want to really impress, the really good stuff is well outside the realm of CA raytrace and materials. To do this you really need to take the diffuse texture and create a normal map, specularity map, occlusion map, and displacement map, then combine them all for something that finally looks right. Once you've learned to do this you immediately start thinking about render farms because now your renders are starting to take a while.

[spencerdesign]

Oh I see. Yes, I agree with everything you said. I also use a Chief to Thea workflow. The only thing I would add is that the Chief Models are triangulated and not subdivided quads. So I don’t think displacement maps are going to work very well generally. Or, have you found a solution for this in either Thea or Blender?

As to your renderfarm question I have not. There may be someone here that has. Hopefully they will chime in.

You must also be aware of the new GPU/multi GPU rendering engines in Thea but not everything is supported at this point.

[cache]

Oh I see. Yes, I agree with everything you said. I also use a Chief to Thea workflow. The only thing I would add is that the Chief Models are triangulated and not subdivided quads. So I don’t think displacement maps are going to work very well generally. Or, have you found a solution for this in either Thea or Blender?

As to your renderfarm question I have not. There may be someone here that has. Hopefully they will chime in.

You must also be aware of the new GPU/multi GPU rendering engines in Thea but not everything is supported at this point.

Yeah, should be much faster once Multi-GPU rendering is fully supported. For other work I do that requires high volume data computation we are now switching over to GPU processing for statistical analysis and it is amazing how fast it is for parallel processes. It seems odd to many people that even with 32Gb the RAM is still the bottleneck and results in process crashes due to the intense memory loads. To prevent crashes we had to start pushing more data into the SSD, but of course that slowed things down quite a bit. The only way to get where we need to be from here is either a large server with MUCH more RAM and many more cores or switch to GPU computing.

Re: triangular tessellation...

All the better that CA chose game optimized meshes. Triangulated meshes are less resource intensive so if I don't want a photo real render, I can use the internal tools to get one that is good enough in a short time frame. I think most users appreciate that about CA and there are only a relative few who are willing to put in the time for photo-realism. But for those who are, yes there is a solution in Blender now that is easier than ever. Export your model as simply as you can, turning off all unnecessary objects. I only mention that because I forget sometimes and it makes the following process much harder. Anyway, if you have X6, export your model in COLLADA format. This format works TONS better than the older workaround of trying to export in 3DS and VRML and go through sketchup and stuff (although sometimes I still do go through sketchup for various reasons which makes the fact that we can export COLLADA now all the more awesome). Anyway, Blender can import directly in .dae so the process is easier now, and my imports look much better than they used to going the 3DS, VRML, DXF route. Once imported your model might have two versions of the model, a faced mesh and an edge/vertices mesh. If the latter exists, you need to get rid of it by either moving it to a different layer or deleting it. From there you have 1-3 steps depending on how much time you want to spend.

1--Select all faces (or only the ones you need) and use Blender's auto convert tool. mesh >> faces >> convert triangles to quads This will convert from triangles to polygons which makes the displacement map better for sure, but doesn't allow very good editing of the model if you need to. But if that gets you there in one step, all the better.

2--Square up the polygons. Even though you already have polygons instead of triangles, editing and maps are better with squares than with trapezoids. Select edges where necessary and subdivide them, adding additional vertices at right angles to other vertices allowing you to create squares and rectangles after you've relocated the edges again.

3--If you want to go even further you can simplify the new square quads even further by eliminating unnecessary ones and cleaning things up a bit.

Once you've got the workflow down, it goes pretty quick. You can now use Crazybump to its full potential. Blender is great for puting together an exterior and landscape but you should use Thea as a render engine and Crazybump for maps.

[joverberg]

Export to 3ds
Open 3ds max
Open Export file
3ds Max has "mental ray" incorporated into it
"mental ray" is a top of the line renderer
"mental ray" is now owned by nvidia
"mental ray" is optimized to run on multiple nvidia GPUs and "render farms" if you mean these farms are multiple 2P Xeon servers linked together with high speed interconnects and slots for multiple GPUs
"mental ray" will use as many GPUs and linked Xeons that you can throw at it
This is pretty much state-of-the-art
Definitely not cheap
Many papers can be found explaining the details

Jeff

[cache]

Export to 3ds
Open 3ds max
Open Export file
3ds Max has "mental ray" incorporated into it
"mental ray" is a top of the line renderer
"mental ray" is now owned by nvidia
"mental ray" is optimized to run on multiple nvidia GPUs and "render farms" if you mean these farms are multiple 2P Xeon servers linked together with high speed interconnects and slots for multiple GPUs
"mental ray" will use as many GPUs and linked Xeons that you can throw at it
This is pretty much state-of-the-art
Definitely not cheap
Many papers can be found explaining the details

Jeff

Yeah, $3675 for 3DS MAX. Not for still shots. Maybe if I were doing high res animations. Was thinking maybe building 2 nodes similar in composition to my current desktop.

[joverberg]

2 nodes are possible but why not just get a dual processor board?
2 x Xeons 8 core, will give you 16 threads x 2 = 32 threads
2 x Xeons 12 core will give you 24 threads x 2 = 48 threads
versus 1 Xeon 8 core = 16 threads
have you checked out POV-Ray 3.7
it uses multiple processors, is free, would also work on multiple nodes and Chief has POV-Ray export

Jeff

[cache]

2 nodes are possible but why not just get a dual processor board?
2 x Xeons 8 core, will give you 16 threads x 2 = 32 threads
2 x Xeons 12 core will give you 24 threads x 2 = 48 threads
versus 1 Xeon 8 core = 16 threads
have you checked out POV-Ray 3.7
it uses multiple processors, is free, would also work on multiple nodes and Chief has POV-Ray export

Jeff

Thanks for the tip on POV-ray. Not really sure that I'm wanting to switch to a different render engine. I like Thea for several reasons.

What I'm not familiar with is setting up a farm. Wanted some input on building economical nodes that would work well with my existing desktop processor.

[joverberg]

Check out Thea's web site it has free beta software, if your into that kind of thing, that runs on "Render Farms".
They also have info on setting up "Render Farms".
This is a commercial product but still good info.
Setting up a render farm is easy. Take 2 computers and link them through an Ethernet switch using gigabit Ethernet.
These computers need only memory, a CPU, Ethernet connection, power supply and case. Specs would be Intel i7/i5 CPU, 8 gigabytes of ddr3 and m-atx mother board with built in Ethernet. A small boot drive would be nice but not necessary. These could be put together for less than $500 each.
If your software recognizes the hardware your off to the races.
I have no experience with using Thea so I can not comment on that aspect.

Jeff

[cache]

Check out Thea's web site it has free beta software, if your into that kind of thing, that runs on "Render Farms".
They also have info on setting up "Render Farms".
This is a commercial product but still good info.
Setting up a render farm is easy. Take 2 computers and link them through an Ethernet switch using gigabit Ethernet.
These computers need only memory, a CPU, Ethernet connection, power supply and case. Specs would be Intel i7/i5 CPU, 8 gigabytes of ddr3 and m-atx mother board with built in Ethernet. A small boot drive would be nice but not necessary. These could be put together for less than $500 each.
If your software recognizes the hardware your off to the races.
I have no experience with using Thea so I can not comment on that aspect.

Jeff

Thanks for the input. I wondered if it was that simple.

[rcole]

Cache

Thanks for the info on how you are dealing with Blender and DAE files. I have been toying with this myself recently, and I am very pleased with X6's new export option. I have also been shopping recently for the equipment needed to produce high quality renders, and potentially animations and walkthroughs.

I can see why you would want to stay with Thea since it appears you have familiarity with it. I have been following the developement of Octane Render for a while now, and I am finally ready, now that CA exports to DAE, to make a more concerted effort to using Blender and Octane together.

Just thought I would let you know that OTOY, the developers of Octane Render, are also involved in the developement of a Cloud based Render Farm option for the professional as well as consumer market. For my part, I still have a lot to learn about using Blender, and Octane for that matter, but everything seems to be finally falling into place for me to make a move toward having my own capabilities with Octane. Render Farms are probably a ways down the road for me, at least as I see it now.

[spencerdesign]

I wondered if it was that simple.

I think it can be that simple.