RenderDrive, Renderfarms, VRAY, Brazil, FinalRender, Mental Ray ???

[luckytohaveher]

Some general questions:

 

Those of you who actually own and use RenderDrive technology, what is your feedback on these systems and do they work for you?

 

Those of you, who don't own RenderDrive technology, is the operations and maintenance of a generic cpu renderfarm painful?

 

How does VRay, Brazil, FinalRender, and Mental ray work for you compared to generic renderfarming and what about the rendering times for stills and animations?

 

Is GI super time consuming with the generic GI tools?

 

Are you able to effectively use the systems without much constraint?

 

Are you finding the blazing speed of RenderDrive technology a differential benefit?

 

Is the lack of overhead and maintenance with RD tech. of great benefit?

 

Are there other significant issues?

 

Thanks,

 

Ted

[Fernando Lino]

I use finalrender....there is just one good thing about RD...the render time, but the quality is not good for me... I prefer fR, Brazil, Vray or MR... because, I didn't see good renderings with this system....if Cebas, Chaos group or splutterfish release something like RD...for sure I’ll buy it

[graphix]

I operate my own renderfarm, currently at 15 machines, I only use VIZ and its built in renderer and renderfarm manager.

 

I personally do not have any problems with it at all, however I am a computer geek sort of guy so when something goes wrong I can usually pinpoint and correct it quickly.

 

If I were to build a farm from scratch, my current machines are a hodge podge of machines I have built over the years, would be to purchase several identical machines, install windows and whatever server/rendering client you use then make an image of the drive so that when(not if) your HD becomes corrupt or explodes you can quickly get the maching back up and running.

 

My only beef is that I can't find a LINUX based renderer for VIZ 4.

 

Oh well

 

MY problem with the ART renderdrives is that they are very expensive, you can buy ALOT of 2ghz or better systems for the same price, I cant speek from experience on performance differences though, I just never have had that much cash at once to buy one.

 

graphix

[3dp]

well not wishing to bragg

we run 3 renderdrives and have 30+ cpu's for renderfarm when needed

pro's and cons

 

for large print format photoreal it's renderdrive everytime..............they now support distributed rendering ie 3 machines on one image have a hybrid gi soloution (although it's too slow we find for production) and they now support true hdri although they have had renderman shaders that use ibl for a couple of years and they support ies lights via renderman

basicallically if you do lighting old school ie source bounce and fill's you'd be shocked at how fast you get results

 

down side

we found them too slow for animation at tv broadcsat res hence the pc renderfarm in our case using scanline

this used to be even more of a problem because renderdrives would reload a scene via network on each frame which would time to each frame render so that the speed benefits would be negated they now caches scenes on board but even then it's a case of sledgehammer cracking a nut ie 5 mins a frame albeit beautiful renders against 10 pc's firing out a scanline in 2 mins each

with us we offer various services hi qual hi res stills being 1 but with animation unless a client is prepared to pay for quality (usually they are not) then it's scanline with maybe radiosity in there

 

hassles with a renderfarm

our pc's are various specs and we made the mistake of having material files on one server so when you get 6 or 7 pc's rendering on a 100bt lan we find missing maps or bad frames rendered

if you run 1000bt lan or fibre channel that does not seem to be a problem yet

very shortly we are shutting up shop for a while to specifically clone the renderfarm boxes so they all path materials from their own drives now that hd's are cheap

 

so what am i saying

if you're work is high res stills and lots of them i'd say look at renderives

one box or card(pure) no hassles with pc's crashing etc networks HEAT!!!

this office is hell in summer so we're getting aircon this time round

 

if you're doing a lot of animation work and you need frames fast then it's pc's with the fun of setting up x number of them with x number of extra render licences if you go down fr/mr/brazil route

having used vray a couple of times late last year we got decent results but as soons as you go high res

 

whatever you do it will cost in time and money there is no magic wand unless you're a lottery winner with access to sgi/cray/dell cluster supercomputers for paralel processing renders

 

so finally to say where we are going is 2u 2cpu racks with opterons ready foe win xp64bit a slight gamble but it worked when we bought into renderdrive back in '99

 

cheers

3dp

[Iain Denby]

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ;-)

[garethace]

I operate my own renderfarm, currently at 15 machines, I only use VIZ and its built in renderer and renderfarm manager.

 

I personally do not have any problems with it at all, however I am a computer geek sort of guy so when something goes wrong I can usually pinpoint and correct it quickly.

 

If I were to build a farm from scratch, my current machines are a hodge podge of machines I have built over the years, would be to purchase several identical machines, install windows and whatever server/rendering client you use then make an image of the drive so that when(not if) your HD becomes corrupt or explodes you can quickly get the maching back up and running.

 

My only beef is that I can't find a LINUX based renderer for VIZ 4.

 

Oh well

 

MY problem with the ART renderdrives is that they are very expensive, you can buy ALOT of 2ghz or better systems for the same price, I cant speek from experience on performance differences though, I just never have had that much cash at once to buy one.

 

graphix

 

 

 

Ever try to use Ghost?

 

Combined with a 10 box set of motherboards, even if the chips/hard disk drives etc, memory were not 100% the same..... it should still work.

 

A box of 10 motherboards costs around €1,000.00.... or roughly the same price as a good desktop system.

[garethace]

so finally to say where we are going is 2u 2cpu racks with opterons ready foe win xp64bit a slight gamble but it worked when we bought into renderdrive back in '99

 

cheers

3dp

 

 

http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=65000288

 

Enjoy.

[luckytohaveher]

I didn't see good renderings with this system

 

What do yo mean by 'good renderings'. What was the deficientcy(s) in your use? I have typically received great visual results, although the network speed has been a major issue of the RenderDrive boxes (100MB-halfduplex). I have amazing speed results with my PUREs in a Gigabit NIC configuration.

[luckytohaveher]

MY problem with the ART renderdrives is that they are very expensive, you can buy ALOT of 2ghz or better systems for the same price, I cant speek from experience on performance differences though, I just never have had that much cash at once to buy one.

 

graphix

 

What about a mixed configuration with PUREs? A rack of 4 dual cpu systems (8 cpus) with PUREs in each. That way you can render like crazy with the eight, or go to 35x with the pures?

 

The pricing IS currently high, however I am hoping at some point they rip a new chip with MUCH higher speed and more capability (GI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)... Moore's law is rather unrelenting!