The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

RenderFred · Post by **RenderFred** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 7:47 pm

Do not forget that for 1024x1024 max renders, and if you do not need to get the .igi back, we have the Blitz! formula. It's a $10 flat fee for a 10 minutes render, and we are the only renderfarm in the world to do that kind of thing... Our price per GHz-Hour is also the lowest among big renderfarms, so I would say we try hard to make it accessible. But there are limits to what we can do of course.

BbB · Post by **BbB** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 9:08 pm

In my view, there is no equivalent to the Ranch as far as price is concerned. But the main advantage is that you know that when you're project is rendering, no other project is taking resources away from you. Try any other render farms and you'll get massively different results using the same amount of time because they treat several projects at once.

RenderFred · Post by **RenderFred** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 9:27 pm

Indeed, this is part of our philosophy, and we try to make people understand this (it's not obvious when they are used to the traditional, shared system of renderfarming - this is also why we created our RANCH Philosophy document - to explain all this).

Bertrand, maybe I should find a place somewhere on our Metapage to put your comment, as it applies to the RANCH as a whole

BbB · Post by **BbB** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 12:55 am

Feel free Fred.

Borgleader · Post by **Borgleader** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 12:56 am

BbB wrote:Feel free Fred.

BbB ---> Feel free Fred (FfF pun intended?

)

BbB · Post by **BbB** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 1:27 am

A little bit

Kram1032 · Post by **Kram1032** » Mon Jul 21, 2008 4:48 am

Russdigo · Post by **Russdigo** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 9:25 pm

Phr0stByte wrote:Tried the RANCH, and the results are undeniably fantastic! Though, my project was rendered for less than an hour to reach a max of 4000 SSP at 3264x2448 res, my price payed was $124.61 (US) - and that is minus my free 15 min! I think this service is only good for rich people...

Was the scene complex? Stats?

I'll be using Ranch for my commercial work but its important to know rough costs in order to pass them onto the client. That cost sounds reasonable to me. Having said that commercial fees vary massively. Low paid work you'd be getting $400 for an image of that rez say for low cirulation magazine or web work. So $125 is a large chunk. Its good to offer a cleint the choice though. If they are in a hurry they have to pay the excess.

Maybe Ranch would consider doing a free (for non-comercial use) day once a year or so in conjunction with an indigo/Ranch compertition for those who either don't have deep pockets or don't have clients picking up the tab.

RenderFred · Post by **RenderFred** » Fri Oct 24, 2008 9:42 pm

Hello everyone,

I am pleased to see the Indigo site back on line! Here are the latest news from the RANCH:

the guaranteed processing power per project has been increased by 25%. We now have 128 quad-nodes / 512 cores / 1536 GHz working on each project. To put things into perspective, a 3 hours render on the RANCH is equivalent to a two weeks render on a 64-bit Intel Quad-core running @ 3 GHz, or more than a full week on a high-end 8-core Mac Pro @ 3 GHz.

even more important are the new "Make Your Price!" formulas (you can see all the details on the Price info page on the RANCH site).

We believe the "Make Your Price" (MYP) concept is a real revolution in renderfarming pricing, as each user can choose the formula best suited to his/her particular needs and budget. For low-budget works, nothing will beat the Sapphire formula ($0.12 per GHz-Hour, that is ~ 9 €-cents at the current exchange rate ). The other formulas Emerald ($0.14 per GHz-Hour), Ruby ($0.16) and Diamond ($0.18 ) each have a higher priority, so you can choose one or the other depending on your deadline and your budget.

You can even change from a low-priority to a higher-priority formula as long as your project is still in the waiting list. And when you use the cost estimator, it now tells you the estimated cost with each of these new formulas.

It may seem too good to be true, but there is no trick:

- there is no sharing, as usual: the full power of the farm is always allocated to each project
- the price only determines the priority of the project in the waiting list
- these are really Pay Per Project, metered prices!

And each RANCH user now has a "virtual Safe" which works with pay per project formulas. It is initially at $0.00, and you can refill it any time you want. Using your safe is very convenient, as you do not need to go through the payment process each time you send a project.

At the other end of the spectrum, for projects where deadlines are much more important than money, we have High-Priority prepaid packs at $0.19 per GHz-Hour - those have the highest priority of all our formulas and are perfect for professionals who can't wait. And for pros who _can_ wait, our standard prepaid packs have higher discounts, up to 60% for big quantities.

The benchmarks and the PDF Renderfarm User Guide (RUG) have been updated to reflect these important changes. The RUG is now in two parts for better clarity and easier maintenance: Part I contains everything related to the RANCH general operations, and Part II is application-specific.

An Indigo-related precision: the RANCH can now render projects which include several "PACKED" (includes) .igs files. We are now hoping to see an officially declared 'stable' version of Indigo 1.1 - so that we can upgrade from the latest stable 1.0.9.

We hope you'll like all these innovations, so see you on the RANCH and happy rendering!

Fred

Russdigo · Post by **Russdigo** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 12:05 am

When will we see a higher version than 1.0.9 on Ranch? I'd like to use the higher versions but I'm constraining myself to match the Ranch as I might have need of its rendertime in the future.

RenderFred · Post by **RenderFred** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 12:15 am

Well, we would very much like to update to a new version too! The problem is, we never put betas in a production environment, for reasons you can easily imagine. But on the other hand, there is a much longer time than we expected between two officially declared 'stable' versions of Indigo, and it is indeed a bit frustrating to be left behind feature-wise for the sake of stability.

So, maybe Nicholas could tell us, each time a new version is out, if this particular version is stable 'enough' to put on the RANCH without too much problems?

Post by **OnoSendai** » Fri Nov 21, 2008 12:31 am

Well, Indigo 1.1 stable should be coming out relatively soon.
This should provide stuff like layer-blending layers in the .igi. But I need to discuss this with the Ranch computing guys first

delic · Post by **delic** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 4:46 am

Hi all,
I can read this on the RANCH site :

"On a large renderfarm, gathering and merging big IGIs from a lot of nodes can take a while. For instance, gathering and merging IGIs on the entire RANCH takes around 5 minutes with 576 MB MXIs. The individual IGI size limit that can be processed with our parallel multi-merging technique is around 2.5 GB."

Can someone here estimate what max render resolution it makes in fact ?

thx

alex22 · Post by **alex22** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 5:37 am

should be around 5000x5000 Pixels (if 96 Bit per Pixel are correct)

delic · Post by **delic** » Wed Mar 04, 2009 6:40 am

thx, my workstations are computing, so I cannot test by myself just right now.
And I couldn't find,

, the total data bit depth of the .igi files ...

5k square is really a decent res for professional work !

Nice ...

Edit: 32bits x 3, rgb, ok !

And what about layers with next stable release, does it increase the .igi size ?

The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

RANCH News

Who is online