Jeff Mottle Posted October 26, 2004 Share Posted October 26, 2004 Just thought I'd make a post about these guys as their service is truly top notch. www.respower.com I'm working on a small piece for a TV commercial and while only 5 seconds long each frame in Vray was taking about 20 min (even with a saved irradiance map). As my lowly computer was not going to cut it at 50+ hours to process all the frames, I decided to use respower. I could not be more happy! I called in to see if they supported Vray. as it's not listed clearly on their site yet, and they installed the version I needed and all the plugins I needed for the project. The submission system is fully auutomated, so you just upload your files and use the wizard to submit the file and frame you want rendered. They have 400 computers (1500Ghz) soon to be 600 computers (2700GHz) which meant I could render all my frames in under an hour. Then they have an app that automatically ZIPs or RARs them up and you download from your private FTP site. The best part of all however is the fact that I was able to call in at 11pm, 2am and 3am to get support when something went wrong with my renders. (No fault of Respower, but a glitch with Vray). I was able to get everything resolved a new DLL deployed and renderred the frames and I was able to meet my morning deadline. The cost is really good too. I only paid about $125 to render all my frames. About 140 at 20 min per frame on average. If you create an account and look at the "purchase bulk hours" section you will see the actual cost for rendering, as the prices listed on the site are a bit higher that what you actually pay. Anyway, I know this sounds like an advertisement, but when I get good service I tell everyone about it. If you need a renderfarm, or are in a crunch I HIGHLY reccomend these guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted October 26, 2004 Share Posted October 26, 2004 I know this sounds like an advertisement, but when I get good service I tell everyone about it. If you need a renderfarm, or are in a crunch I HIGHLY reccomend these guys. When we must say something does NOT work, its honest discussion, but when we praise a someone/something that is a business we are 'advertizing'. Thank you for posting your experiences with this process. It could be a very slick solution to ever-more-complex scenes and slower-but-better rendering apps. I don't own a jet to go to California, I buy time on someone else's. I may still be the poor stepchild by not using Max but C4D instead, but I will have a look at what they offer. Thanks again! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbr Posted October 26, 2004 Share Posted October 26, 2004 Jeff, Is that correct? $125? I just got an estimate for a walk through animation that was SUBSTANTIALLY higher. I know you mentioned that their fees ended up being less than the online quote, but the numbers are very different. Just wondering, as your number seems very inexpensive. Thanks for the info, either way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Posted October 26, 2004 Share Posted October 26, 2004 Hi Jeff, Are you using 1.09 or the beta for VRay? The farm I use has cautioned me not to use the beta for projects I submit to them. I'd be curious if that is the case with these guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted October 26, 2004 Share Posted October 26, 2004 Hi Jeff, Are you using 1.09 or the beta for VRay? The farm I use has cautioned me not to use the beta for projects I submit to them. I'd be curious if that is the case with these guys. hopefully it won't be beta for much longer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted October 26, 2004 Share Posted October 26, 2004 The farm I use has cautioned me not to use the beta for projects I submit to them. I'd be curious if that is the case with these guys. OK, Fran, I'll bite. What farm do you use? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Posted October 26, 2004 Share Posted October 26, 2004 OK, Fran, I'll bite. What farm do you use? EFX One. Gus is a great guy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Nichols Posted October 26, 2004 Share Posted October 26, 2004 Hmmm... sounds almost nicer then our farm... I bet they don't call you up an yell at you if your frames are taking to long too, huh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted October 26, 2004 Author Share Posted October 26, 2004 EFX One. Gus is a great guy. I beg to differ. My personal opinion of course based on the fact that Gus defaulted on an advertising contract and has taken months to even pay me back. They still owe me several hundred dollars on the advertising used and have defaulted on several thousand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted October 26, 2004 Author Share Posted October 26, 2004 Hi Jeff, Are you using 1.09 or the beta for VRay? The farm I use has cautioned me not to use the beta for projects I submit to them. I'd be curious if that is the case with these guys. Hey Fran, yeah there was a problem, but Vlado was able to send me a fix, after I ran into it. The current 1.45.70 beta has a problem when multiple computers try to access the irrandiance map at once. What happens is the frames that get locked out do not get their GI added to the frame, only direct light. The latest version, 1.50 (whenever it comes out) has this fixed (possibly some of the other less pulic betas too) and it does not happen in 1.09. Contact vray if you run into this issue with the current public beta and I suspect they can send you the file. The respower farm has this new DLL deployed and will be used when you choose the 1.45.70 vray version in the Wizard Otherwise just use 1.09, all our other Smoothe offices recently downgraded back as they found the beta to be too slow in production for glossy reflections as well as a few other animation issues that I have not yet experienced. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted October 26, 2004 Author Share Posted October 26, 2004 Jeff, Is that correct? $125? I just got an estimate for a walk through animation that was SUBSTANTIALLY higher. I know you mentioned that their fees ended up being less than the online quote, but the numbers are very different. Just wondering, as your number seems very inexpensive. Thanks for the info, either way. Depends what you are rendering in and with what renderer. I was using Vray with MAX6. The retail rate is $0.75/GHz•H but the actual price you pay is $0.675. This 140 frame job took 196 GHz•H to process. I guess that is $132. Sorry was late when I made the first post. Just for comparison purchasing bulk hours for MAX 6 with vray can range from 0.675 to 0.375 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted October 26, 2004 Author Share Posted October 26, 2004 EFX One. Gus is a great guy. Also the nicer thing about respower is that they have 24/7/365 phone support and an automated submission syste, Just so my last comment is not totallly biased, let me say that I have also used EFXone on past projects, but unless things have changed, need to be submitted and received around business hours, or close to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted October 26, 2004 Share Posted October 26, 2004 Thanks for the great referral Jeff. I have a large project using Vray that I will probably try this out on. I am only doing stills, but they will be fairly high-res, so I think the cost will be worth it. How would you rate the ease of use? I've never tried a render farm before, so I always worry about the files & directories not being set up right & having the whole thing be a disaster. Although, at a cost like this I can probably afford to experiment a little. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted October 26, 2004 Author Share Posted October 26, 2004 How would you rate the ease of use? Really easy for 3dsmax. I'll detail the general steps 1. Use their app to create a virtual Y: drive on your system 2. copy your textures etc to this Y drive and map your max file to them on the Y: drive 3. Upload the data to the private ftp site set up under your account. (You can also upload ZIP files and have them uncompressed on their server) 4. Go to the wizard and choose the max file you wish to render, enter in a few of the render parameters (same as the max render dialog), and the frames you want to render 5. Press submit. 6. They have a page where you can see the status of each node, the total frames completed etc. You can re-run jobs, abort jobs, etc etc. 7. When it's all done you can download all your files from your private FTP, have them FEDEXed to you or use the online tool to ZIP everything up so you don't have to download as many files. In any case it's very easy to use and if you do get stuck you can call them 24/7 and they will sort it out for you. They'll let you submit a few frames to test the system out as well before you start, so you really have nothing to lose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted October 26, 2004 Share Posted October 26, 2004 Sounds awesome. I can't wait to try it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
earlye Posted October 26, 2004 Share Posted October 26, 2004 I saw a few messages in this thread that I feel compelled to respond to so that they come straight from the horse's mouth The farm I use has cautioned me not to use the beta for projects I submit to them. I'd be curious if that is the case with these guys. Our system is designed to allow us to support multiple configurations of Max simultaneously. You may select the version of v-ray,brazil,insight, final render, or even standard scan-line that you want to render when you submit your job. We can add additional configurations easily enough, including new plug-in render engines when they become available. Hmmm... sounds almost nicer then our farm... I bet they don't call you up an yell at you if your frames are taking to long too, huh? We actually do not monitor your jobs at all. There's no way we would be able to and stay in business at the same time, because we would never get a chance to sleep. Some 3d artists like to work through the night, and others like to work through the day - add to that the fact that our customer base spans the globe and our render jobs are submitted at totally random times. That's why we made our system self-service. As long as you don't need technical support, our schedule doesn't have to synch up with yours. Of course, if you do need tech support, then get my lazy butt out of bed and onto your project Is that correct? $125? I just got an estimate for a walk through animation that was SUBSTANTIALLY higher. I know you mentioned that their fees ended up being less than the online quote, but the numbers are very different. Prices are entirely based upon how long your render takes. If your render takes substantially longer, it will cost substantially more. Jeff's happened to be a fairly quick job that required just a few minutes per frame. A few quick words of caution on the cost guesstimator on our site: 1) It ain't scientific. It takes the time you give us, multiplies it by the number of frames and the speed of your computer. That gives you GHz*Hrs. It then multiplies by some factors to account for network, memory, etc.. It finally multiplies by cost/GHz*Hr to give you the final guess. 2) The numbers it expects as input are for your computer's time. We have had one or two people put in "the number of computers they think they'll need", as the number of processors, and get really whacky results. I.e., it's a 1 hour-per-frame render on their 1 GHz box, but the user wanted to use all 400 of our machines and put 400 into the processors box, so the guesstimator said that each frame would be 400 GHz*Hrs instead of 1 GHz*HR! 3) You can use it as a tool to decide how much time to budget for rendering. I.e., you can say "gee, if my renders take 1 hr, then I can't possibly afford to use a render farm at the end of this project. But if I can get the renders to 3 or 4 minutes, then it's viable." I'd like to personally thank Jeff for his kind words - it's always nice to see testimonials out there. Usually when I see them, there aren't any responses that leave me compelled to jump into the conversation. The community here at CG Architect is absolutely amazing, with active responses and insightful questions. -- Early Ehlinger, CEO, http://www.respower.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pipjor Posted October 27, 2004 Share Posted October 27, 2004 I've used ResPower for the last year, about $10,000 in frames,(about 10 jobs) and love them. Jeff is right about support, I've called ResPower (Early) night, day, weekends, holidays and he has always answers his phone.. On the downside I use Brazil R/s and Respower has had some issues with Splutterfish licenses in the past, nodes crash alot, maybe Early has fixed this by now?? I would highly recomend ResPower.. -Dave Hansen Creative Media Jordan, Jones and Goulding Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omar Posted October 27, 2004 Share Posted October 27, 2004 hi jeff i know this is out of the subject but can we see the comercial cuz I just finished my first tv comercial and it was close to desaster Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
earlye Posted October 27, 2004 Share Posted October 27, 2004 On the downside I use Brazil R/s and Respower has had some issues with Splutterfish licenses in the past, nodes crash alot, maybe Early has fixed this by now?? Hi Dave! There was a bug in the splutterfish license server when dealing with lots of render nodes (like what we have); it caused the the license server to keep crashing. I'm pretty sure we've resolved this now with Splutterfish's help. As for nodes crashing - that still does happen on occasion (it always will - we are running Windows after all...), but it's much less of a nuisance now that we have 400 (soon to be 600) nodes. I.e., if a computer crashes, we've still got 599 others working on the job. -- Early Ehlinger, CEO, http://www.respower.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted October 27, 2004 Author Share Posted October 27, 2004 hi jeff i know this is out of the subject but can we see the comercial cuz I just finished my first tv comercial and it was close to desaster It's only a 4 second spot at the end, but I'll be able to show it once the commercial airs. Not sure when that is yet, but should be soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted October 27, 2004 Share Posted October 27, 2004 if a computer crashes, we've still got 599 others working on the job. How about rendering Cinema4D scenes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted October 27, 2004 Author Share Posted October 27, 2004 How about rendering Cinema4D scenes? This on their website: "ResPower has not had sufficient demand to justify incorporating CINEMA 4D rendering. " Maybe you can ask them again? Not sure how many requests they have had lately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackb602 Posted October 28, 2004 Share Posted October 28, 2004 How about rendering Cinema4D scenes? I could definitely use a reliable and powerful render farm for my Cinema4D work. I've been extremely happy with Renderking but Dann only has space for 4 subscribers per month, and 24 CPUs, so it would be great to have other options as well. Compared to other platforms I think Net Render licenses are extremely cheap, possibly as little as $400 for unlimited clients, but don't quote me on that. And from what I can tell, Net Render is quite reliable. I've never heard of any stability problems with it. What would it take to get Cinema4D support at Respower? Jack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
earlye Posted November 4, 2004 Share Posted November 4, 2004 What would it take to get Cinema4D support at Respower? Again, straight from the horse's mouth Unfortunately, Maxon's net render feature is insufficient for us for a variety of technical reasons that I won't go into for strategic reasons, so some effort is required on Maxon's part in addition to ResPower's to see C4D appear at our facility. I actually contacted Maxon on several occasions to get their assistance in integrating C4D with ResPower, but things always seem to fall through the cracks. I'm still waiting on a demo CD I asked for 6 months ago So, if you want to see C4D at ResPower, please make a concerted, organised effort to contact Maxon and push them to do whatever is necessary to add their render engine to our system. Some usefull comments to make: 1) As a paying customer, I can tell you that a service like ResPower's would be truly beneficial for your installed base. 2) I've used ResPower for my (Lightwave/3dStudio/Maya/Vue/mental ray) projects, and it was totally awesome - why don't you make sure they have C4D, because you're being left behind! 3) I can't stay in business and purchase upgrades if I do not have options when it comes time to crunch through big renders. I'll have to switch to something that ResPower supports the next time I upgrade, like 3dStudio or Lightwave. I could probably brainstorm for a few hours on ideas for getting them to work with us, but I have rendering to do and computers to add. Cheers! Early Ehlinger, CEO, ResPower - Soon-to-be-2.7 THz Render Farm. (That's right, Terahertz ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackb602 Posted November 4, 2004 Share Posted November 4, 2004 So, if you want to see C4D at ResPower, please make a concerted, organised effort to contact Maxon and push them to do whatever is necessary to add their render engine to our system. Consider it done. I just posted your reply over at the CGtalk Cinema 4D forum to see what kind of interest there is. I'm surprised you haven't heard back from Maxon. Their support is generally great, and they tend to listen carefully to user suggestions. I'd recommend contacting them again. I don't know what kind of technical problems you ran into, but Renderking is an existing render farm that is very reliable and has gotten me through several big jobs. Dann, the owner, has been very generous in the past helping others to get up to speed with Net Render, including potential competitors. You might want to try dropping him an e-mail as well. Thanks, Jack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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