Cloud Rendering

[Professor]

Has anybody had any success with using the Cloud for rendering? I've been experimenting with Amazon Cloud service the last few weeks, but have had problems getting a VPN established to the VPC. If anyone has had success setting this up, I'd love to hear from them.

 

In general, I am just curious if rendering through the Cloud is a worthwhile pursuit? Any input on how it compares to traditional local hardware render farms would be appreciated, such as production and cost. At first glance using the Cloud seems like a no-brainer, as renting an 8 core computer over the web for about $1.00/hour seems way more cost effective than buying a $3000 8 core render server. But maybe I am missing something. Hence, the thread to hopefully solicit some feedback on this issue.

[Brodie Geers]

I would look into Felix. http://www.felixrender.com/

 

I've never used it but I've been a distant admirer since before it came out. It uses Maxwell, which is an unbiased renderer. I've seen a lot of really amazing stuff from felix. I just don't care for the pay as you go system as it doesn't work well with the company I work for.

 

-brodie

 

edit: I don't mean that Felix is necessarily your answer, but it may provide a good model to look at as they seem to be a company that's using it and doing it well.

[Professor]

Thanks for the input. I'll check it out. Currently I'm using Mental Ray and Backburner, so would like to stay with that if possible. But I do appreciate the tip and will look into it.

[luckymutt]

I started checking out this: http://www.stratusfarm.com/

Its a plug-in for 3ds Max and you use your own Amazon account. The rendered frames stream back to you as they render too.

[Tommy L]

I would look into it if I wasnt so busy. I have a concern about hitches slowing things down. Sure, a render farm is a big (ish) investment, but Ive spent more on other hardware like cameras etc. If using an online service takes time to set up and maintain etc then its not 1$ an hour. You have to figure your own time into the equation. Maybe its just as slick as using a farm sittng next to you, I dont know.

[Professor]

Michael, Thanks for the tip on the Stratus plug-in, it looks very simple and slick. The few downsides I see are 1) right now only supports 2011 version, I'm using 2012, 2) If you use other plug-ins (vegetation, etc...) then that won't work and 3) the cost is quite abit higher (about 4 times) than setting up your own machine on Amazon AWS. I'm running the 20 ECU (8 core) / 7GB memory machine for $0.50/hr. The Stratus website lists this machine at $2.20/hr.

 

Tom, your'e right about needing to consider other time for set-up and maintenance, although an in-house farm has some of that too. Another advantage to a Cloud Farm is you don't have to worry about space, heat, and electric costs.

 

I finally did get the Amazon Cloud Service to work for my render farm, but it took about a month of playing around and tweaking to work correctly. I felt like I was trailblazing the process as finding resources to set this up are slim to none. With the proper instructions, I think a Cloud render farm could be set up in about 2-3 days, and then the only maintenance would be loading plug-ins and new versions of software, which also needs to be done on an in-house farm. So far, I'm liking my Cloud Render Farm. I now have access to unlimited machines that I can launch in about 5 minutes to render my scenes. It costs me $0.50/hr for an 8 core machine. The whole thing works fairly smooth now. The only weak link is the upload speed from my home connection, at 1 MB/sec it takes some time to send the job from Backburner to the remote Manager. Once the job gets there, the rendering occurs just as fast as an in-house farm. Hopefully upgrading my internet connection to either a 5 or 10 Mb/sec upload speed will alleviate this issue.

[Stratus Farm]

Hello, Professor. And thanks for taking a look!

 

As I'm sure you've gathered, we've only just recently launched. The downsides you mention are certainly valid, but let me try and clear things up a bit...

The few downsides I see are 1) right now only supports 2011 version, I'm using 2012,

Yes, currently we are only supporting 3ds Max 2011 (and only x64!)

However, we will be releasing a version for 2012 (and 32 bit) within the next few weeks.

 

2) If you use other plug-ins (vegetation, etc...) then that won't work

Yes, there is currently no support for 3rd party plug-ins.

We will be adding support for various plug-ins. There are some common scripted plug-ins that we intend to add, as well as others, as they are requested. How quickly they are added will depend on various factors, but if there are specific ones, please let us know and we will add support as quickly as possible.

 

and 3) the cost is quite abit higher (about 4 times) than setting up your own machine on Amazon AWS. I'm running the 20 ECU (8 core) / 7GB memory machine for $0.50/hr. The Stratus website lists this machine at $2.20/hr.

You will find that our pricing is about 2 times a base Windows machine on AWS.

The Windows version of the "High-CPU Extra-Large" instance (20 ECU (8 core) / 7GB memory machine) is currently priced by Amazon at $1.16 per hour.

We believe that our current pricing is very competitive with traditional render farms.

 

Another advantage to a Cloud Farm is you don't have to worry about space, heat, and electric costs.

Indeed.

 

We are only just getting this off the ground. We have quite a surprising list of features planned for the next version, in addition to requests made by our beta testers (features beyond just plug-in support.)

 

Happy rendering!

-Tom

Edited July 15, 2011 by Stratus Farm

[Professor]

Thanks for the reply and clarifications Tom. I am using Spot Instances, so that is why the price is alot cheaper. Your right that the standard instance for that machine is $1.16/hr, while a spot instance for that machine runs around $0.50/hr. I really do like the simplicity of the Stratus setup as a plug-in, great job! I basically set up my Amazon machines as part of my network which was really difficult to get working, but now works like a charm. I'm assuming that the Stratus plugin has the same bottleneck at the internet connection upload speed? So far that is my main issue with cloud rendering.

[Stratus Farm]

I'm assuming that the Stratus plugin has the same bottleneck at the internet connection upload speed? So far that is my main issue with cloud rendering.

It is.

The upload speed is the "weakest link" in using any render farm.

 

However, we are working on tools help reduce this issue...

(ssshhhhhhhh!!!!!...quite, Tom!!!)

 

-Tom

Edited July 16, 2011 by Stratus Farm

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I have occasionally used my firms remote farm in St. Louis. I duped my asset library onto their server. Then when I went to render I would click the use alternate path file, and point at those assets. This saved a lot of time transferring the scene their since all that had to go was the Max file, and any locally calculated light files.

 

Then I used a piece of mirroring/syncing freeware on my local machine that would monitor the directory on the remote server that the frames were being written to. The utility would then copy the frame to my local server directory when it was written to the remote server directory.

 

The goal was that all of the frames would be copied over and waiting for me when I arrived in the office in the morning.

 

It worked, but ultimately I did not have the ability to remote into those machines to check what was actually being rendered at any given time. I find that being able to check what a frame is looking like in middle of a rendering is an important part of my work process.

[ajbmorris]

Well I signed up to Stratus today and should be testing over the next month or so. Since I'm using finalRender I expect to have some fun and games along the way but will revert to Mental Ray for the initial tests I think - this'll also help with some Iray tests that I want to do anyway.

[Stratus Farm]

Hi.

Just a quick note, we have released an updated version for 3ds Max 2012 (as well as the Design flavors for 2011 and 2012) and there is now support for V-Ray 2.0 as well as 1.5

http://www.stratusfarm.com

[layip]

you can have a try on www.rebusfarm.net, www.foxrenderfarm.com, and www.renderrocket.com, all of them provide cloud render service and

support sotfwares like Maya, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, lightwave, I think nowadays, cloud render is a new trend and will develop better in the future.

[bradleyrobert]

Has anybody had any success with using the Cloud for rendering? I've been experimenting with Amazon Cloud service the last few weeks, but have had problems getting a VPN established to the VPC. If anyone has had success setting this up, I'd love to hear from them.

 

In general, I am just curious if rendering through the Cloud is a worthwhile pursuit? Any input on how it compares to traditional local hardware render farms would be appreciated, such as production and cost. At first glance using the Cloud seems like a no-brainer, as renting an 8 core computer over the web for about $1.00/hour seems way more cost effective than buying a $3000 8 core render server. But maybe I am missing something. Hence, the thread to hopefully solicit some feedback on this issue.

 

Cloud rendering is always a good idea. I tried from ultra render. It is a a hardware independent cloud rendering solution. It works on desktops, laptops or even tiny netbooks. There is no need to buy expensive rendering servers or pay for the maintenance again – you can enjoy the computing power you need as long as it is necessary.

[angiliaduan1]

you can try fox render,based on cloud computing,rendering your works at fastest speed wherever you are,submit task via WEB.

http://www.foxrenderfarm.com/

[dande]

I have used commercial cloud rendering firms and found them quite expensive for animations. The calculators usually work on the cheapest frame cost. Some frames could cost 2.5 cent others could cost 6cent. For the price of a render you could buy 2 or 3 machines.

 

It's also a cost that is very hard to quantify when you are pricing a job. That's why I've moved away from cloud rendering to my own render farm

[angiliaduan1]

but for large rendering projects,it's too complex,and sometimes more expensive to build their own render farms,an online render farm based on cloud computing is a better choice for them.that's why more and more render farm services are coming out!

[dande]

Personally I have found it less complex and cheaper to have an in-house render farm. Render farms don't always have the plug-ins you need. So you have to spend a lot of time setting up your scene for the render farms. If you render and notice a mistake or something you want to change you have to re-render (More money).

 

I looked at a number of renderfarms but the best I've come across and used are render nation and rebusfram. I found them great to work with I would say Render nation in the UK was definitley the best service.

 

I have just found render farms too expensive to use. Especially when you take in the price of the render and the preperation time to send it to the farm.

 

That has just been my experience.

[BVI]

Rebusfarm.net is the only way to go. Rebus is a little more expensive but they have 24 hour support and the gather plugin for max is brilliant.

What we do these days is offset the cost directly to the client, so if an animation costs 1000 Euro, we state it as a line item on the quote. Im even happy to send the Rebus invoice to the client if need be. The client is also then aware of the re-render fee. We can render 3 minutes of animation at HD in a few hours on Rebus which would take weeks in-house.

[Scott Schroeder]

I don't know if Rebus, or similar, is a long term solution in terms of cost. You'd have to figure out the cost of building, running and maintaining your own farm versus the cost to go online each time. There is bound to be a limit.

 

However. If you are like where I work where our primary output is short animations and mostly high resolution stills, then Rebus is the way to go. Having a full farm isn't feasible when it sits idle most of the time. Yet, when you do get your animation requirements you have a nice massive and effective farm at your fingertips with the online solution.

 

The only downside is you have to be perfect when you submit or else you are wasting your money. User errors, like forgetting to turn things on or off, are costly.

[Tommy L]

I don't know if Rebus, or similar, is a long term solution in terms of cost. You'd have to figure out the cost of building, running and maintaining your own farm versus the cost to go online each time. There is bound to be a limit.

 

However. If you are like where I work where our primary output is short animations and mostly high resolution stills, then Rebus is the way to go. Having a full farm isn't feasible when it sits idle most of the time. Yet, when you do get your animation requirements you have a nice massive and effective farm at your fingertips with the online solution.

 

The only downside is you have to be perfect when you submit or else you are wasting your money. User errors, like forgetting to turn things on or off, are costly.

 

Even if youre just doing stills then your farm is never idle. DR harnesses that power just fine. DR is a reason to buy an entire farm and streamline your workflow. Anyone that sits watching test renders is wasting their time.

[Scott Schroeder]

True, but at what point does DR become pointless? A farm of 20 boxes for DR is complete overkill. A small farm for stills (say 2-6 dedicated boxes) is pretty much a standard for any large scale operation.

 

I was more talking about an animation level farm, 10 plus dedicated machines.

[angiliaduan1]

personally think render farms are really more convenient for large render projects,especially for small and medium-sized companies.and re-render in fox render farm is free,you don't need to pay more cost!

[dande]

You say re-render is free. Whats your definition of re-render?

[angiliaduan1]

Sometimes the frame would be failed if it is stuck in the process of render. However, the system will NOT charge if it is failed. To finish rendering failed frame, please click "retry" so that the system can render failed frame again. Those frames which have been rendered will NOT be rendered and charged again.

The system will start calculating the cost since the start of render, but the charge will Not be taken until a frame finishes rendering successfully. If there is any frame failing to render out, the system will Not charge from your account.