United3dArtists Archive

Is there a network rendering program available, like tsnet?

I have 3 computers that could be used as a small render farm, if I had frame cueing software.

Any ideas?

There's been some work towards adding network rendering to YafaRay, but I'm not sure what would be involved in integrating that into YafaRay4tS...

Only an idea

The simplest way could be to separate your picture into 3 parts and render each parts on
one of your 3 PCs. Then put them together with a picture software.

I think that could be done automatic with a script or plugin

I made a script for that, the problem is you need to crop, copy and paste by hand to make the final image..
that's the biggest problems to use render area..

network rendering as render farm are interesting for animation. Less interesting for still image. I use 2 computers to render complex hd animation. Each pc render a part of the animation and i merge both part with another soft. On the model side, i use the archive function to transfert scene and textures from a pc to another. it is useful.

Here is what I do to get more quantity without loosing any quality.
1) I have a shared directory for my three desktops and one laptop.
2) I do all my modeling and keyframing on my laptop and save the scene files and models in the shared directory.
3) I use Remote Desktop to dial into each desktop and on each desktop I have TS installed.
4) Via remote desktop I start TS on each remote computer and set each one to render a portion of the scene. Example a 300 frame animation, each PC will render 100 frames.
5) Each of the remote computers render their portion to a central directory that I have access to from my laptop.
While this is not a true network rendering this does speed the process up and allow you to go about doing more modeling/keyframing while animation is being rendered.

It is a good way to render animation with more 2 pc. you don't need a network rendering for that. It is very simple to merge a video. and if a pc crash you don't loose the work of the other pc. It is not the case if all the pc work on the same frame of an animation. the profit of a render farm is when you have a lot of pc and many production to do.

I have used other software that does network rendering and the majority of them do it in individual image files. While this makes it easy to repair a single frame that has got damaged, it takes much more time to combine all the image files back into a movie file. Through my trial and error I have found that rendering a section of a scene on each computer gives you control and is much faster in rendering. If you do a 300 frame animation and do 100 frames on each pc and frames 100 to 200 get messed up it is easier to fix that 100 frame segment than it is to fix one frame and then have to re-combine it into a movie file. The other thing I have found out is not to use any compression until you are ready to output it in a format for the web or other as you will get a better result and will not loose any color. This does result in a large file size but you get a better quality and you can easily convert it to any compression you want when finished editing.

I NEVER compress a video render until the final work because i need to use the render in post production. uncompressed file are better to use for special effects and they don't need more ram (when you load a compressed video on a soft for post process work, the soft make an uncompressed file into ram. It is a lack of time and quality due to the codec). With a good hdd i do realtime special effect on a full hd uncompressed movie. My last movie was 90 minutes long and had 300 gigas for a dvd format (3d scenes, textures, uncompressed video, special effect, final compressed video...) on my archive. Today, the price of a HDD is less important than my work. It is less the price of one day work! I don't use a folder for a project, i use a whole HDD.
For info:
Today the full hd is 1920 x 1080 near the 2k cinema (2048 x 1080)
In 2012 the new standard will be the quad HD (3840 x2160) - near to the 4k cinema (4096 x 2160). The must today.
In 2016 the new standard will be the Ultra HD (7680 x 4320) - One second of uncompressed video is about 2.5 gigas! I think you really need a render farm for that.

I always suggest to render a animation to use TGA instead Avi or any other..

Why??

First! and the most important if you are rendering an Avi, and for some reason truespace crash?! you lost (or nearly lost if you don't find any soft to recover the good info inside the avi) the whole movie..
2) from where i need to start again??

So i HIGHLY recommend to use TGA.

Why? a lot of reasons..

1) if truespace crash, you know exactly the frame where you need to start again.. img-0050.tga (Frame 50 was the last)
2) Cos tga contain Alpha and for after effects that's a need or will help you to add another background etc..
3) Cos it has no compression and you can see the progress of any frame with any image viewer.
4) To "Fake" a render farm: if you have more than 1 pc you can set from frame 1 to 100 to one pc and from 101 to 200 to another pc.. After that copy all the images on a folder and voilá.. simple and cheap..


#Marcel:
In truespace the Render Res. will depend directly on the complexity of your scene.. Number of polygons textures etc.. Remember we have a 2gig memory limit.. i still using dvd res for most of my work.. also cos most of the people doesn't has a bluray player here.. :S but i like 720p is a nice hd res to work..

More than 1080p its insane cos is not visible difference.. maybe in a cinema, but not on a hd screen.. when i was working with plasmas i found you can see a real difference between a 720p and 1080p if you are closer than 2 meters on a 40"..

I like to render to .png since it has about a 4:1 compression but is non-destructive to image quality. Plus render huge, like in 3840x2160 (double HD) and post process using batch capability of PaintShop Pro for each frame. This allows tremendous anti-aliasing quality, image effects plus change image size to any value I want to be compile by video program.

Prodigy wrote:#Marcel:
In truespace the Render Res. will depend directly on the complexity of your scene.. Number of polygons textures etc.. Remember we have a 2gig memory limit.. i still using dvd res for most of my work.. also cos most of the people doesn't has a bluray player here.. :S but i like 720p is a nice hd res to work..

More than 1080p its insane cos is not visible difference.. maybe in a cinema, but not on a hd screen.. when i was working with plasmas i found you can see a real difference between a 720p and 1080p if you are closer than 2 meters on a 40"..

For my new movie "B.O.T." I use 720p for another reason: to do realtime special effect i need to have the movie in his real size on the screen + the interface of the soft. My 1920x1200 screen size can do that. For a full hd post process it is not enought and i need a 2560x1600 screen size. To see the difference between 720 and 1080, you need a 40" or more and the movie need to have very little details. in this case, 1080 is really better because it is the native resolution of a full hd screen and the movie have no upscaling. More than 1080p in computer is not for tomorrow. But it will be useful for "digital wall" in 3 or 4 years.

I understand the reason to use individual images, My personal preferance is to use AVI with no compression.
I have an external 200gig drive that I use for a shared directory(drive) for my objects and scenes.
Why an external, if I have to travel which I do often for work I can take the drive with me and still work on my stuff in my spare time.
As for the shared area that my animation is rendered to I have an HP NetServe LH Pro server that has 6 200 gig scsi drives in it that is where I store my rendered animation. I have a tape backup on it that I use to do a backup on when I am working on a project.
Each of the drives in the server are removable and I have 6 more drives that are 80 gig each that I can swap them with.
My wife says I have enough computer power to raise the titanic, you know what us animators say, the more toys the more fun.

I agree with Prodigy about rendering to TGA frames. It is the only format I render to, unless I'm simply doing a "playblast" or test.

One other benefit is that it does offer lossless RLE compression* when the 24-bit option is selected.





* Run Length Encoding... which works really well on computer-generated imagery because it says "This pixel value occurs X amount of times in this row." as opposed to writing out each pixel. It does decrease file size, with no loss in quality.

What software are you using to compile the individual images back into an avi type file.
I currently use Adobe Premiere for editing.

I use Adobe After Effects. I've used Premiere before as well and, if I recall (this was on an older version), it allows you to load an image file sequence.
Just be sure the files are named sequentially (ie. Frame_0001, Frame_0002, Frame_0003...).

I use Virtual Dub to compile, is fast, powerful, handy and free..

Just drag the first image000.ext from your sequence and vdub will import all the sequence.. you can also cut, add some basic effects like brightness, watermark etc..

Without doubt the easiest way to convert a sequence to Avi.

wow that is a great work around - for some reason I never thought of loading ts on multiple machines and having each to a different section. Brilliant!

Does anyone know if there is any chance to get the TSnet Plugin for freesomewhere after all this time?