The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

General News and accouncements regarding the Indigo render engine
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RenderFred
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Re: The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

Post by RenderFred » Tue Nov 13, 2012 8:42 pm

Hi everyone,

we are now running with Indigo latest version (3.4.16 - Stable).

We are also happy to announce that we offer free rendering credits to new purchasers of Indigo Renderer, for details please see here: http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... =1&t=11983

Cheers,

Fred

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cotty
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Re: The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

Post by cotty » Sat Nov 17, 2012 2:45 am

I noticed that the links in the first posts are out of date:

old (not working): http://www.ranchcomputing.com/I_index.php
should be: http://www.ranchcomputing.com/indigo-ho ... it.en.html
little gallery... http://unverzagt.biz/cottysgallery/

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cotty
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Re: The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

Post by cotty » Sun Nov 18, 2012 10:18 pm

The caterpillar_5 testscene for esitmating the delta uses SSS. Since I use Indigo RT, I am only able to render the scene without SSS, which seems to be much faster and doesn't permit an accurate estimation. Is there a way to determine the delta without SSS?
Thank you!
little gallery... http://unverzagt.biz/cottysgallery/

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RenderFred
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Re: The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

Post by RenderFred » Mon Nov 19, 2012 6:29 am

cotty wrote:The caterpillar_5 testscene for esitmating the delta uses SSS. Since I use Indigo RT, I am only able to render the scene without SSS, which seems to be much faster and doesn't permit an accurate estimation. Is there a way to determine the delta without SSS?
Thank you!
Hi cotty,

I have edited the first post of this thread with the good link. About the caterpillar_5 testscene at the moment you cannot determine the delta without SSS. Anyway we use only Indigo Renderer on the RANCH and not Indigo RT so... In the near future we will probably redo the benchmark test with the latest Indigo version, and maybe change the benchmark scene.

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Bosseye
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Re: The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

Post by Bosseye » Fri May 03, 2013 8:48 pm

I'd also say that the caterpillar test scene only gives a very rough estimation of cost, the actual cost is distorted a little bit by various factors, so I wouldn't rely on the caterpillar too much for accuracy.

As a point of interest, when I ran the caterpillar and got the delta value etc etc to get my cost estimates, it actually worked out higher than the price I eventually paid for the image, so don't necessarily let a higher price put you off using the ranch.

The Ranch is good value though I've found and works very well (swift!) with excellent support as and when you need it.

StompinTom
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Re: The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

Post by StompinTom » Sat May 04, 2013 1:28 am

Hey, wondering which version of Indigo Ranch is running currently?

Would really love to see the latest beta on Ranch, as support for shadow-catcher materials and alpha rendering would be great for rendering animations!

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RenderFred
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Re: The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

Post by RenderFred » Sat May 04, 2013 1:57 am

Hi,

thanks for the kind words. We are currently running with 3.4.16 which is the last "stable" (official) version. We tend to install only stable versions as it is less simple to install the software on 176 nodes than on a few computers, as you can imagine. It would be a nightmare to go back to an older version if the current beta had problems. Also Indigo has many public betas between two stable versions so it's kind of hard to follow for us :) When 3.6 is stable we will upgrade.

About the Caterpillar scene, we use it since the beginning and although it was a good benchmark at the time, it is probably not good enough now as Indigo has considerably evolved since then (and so have we). We will consider another scene to make the estimation more meaningful. If you have suggestions about a representative scene that the community has created and that we could use as a benchmark, it would be great. A relatively complex architectural rendering would be great!

Also, about the merging, please note that we have to merge 176 .IGI files (don't try this at home :). As a simple rule of thumb, the merging takes about 5 minutes with 1 GB .igi files. With 3 GB .igi files it's around 12-15 minutes (that is more than 500 GB to merge on the whole RANCH!, so our system is quite fast actually...). You can easily check the size of your .igi beforehand by running the scene at full res for a few minutes on your system.

Cheers

Fred

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Bosseye
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Re: The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

Post by Bosseye » Sat May 04, 2013 2:48 am

That matches my experience - the IGI for one of my jobs was just over 1Gb and it was pretty much an additional 5 minutes to merge them and complete the render.

Not complaining about the price at all, for my level it only adds an additional £10 or so, but its something to factor in when you're pricing rendertime, especially if you're paying a higher price for the higher priorities.

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RenderFred
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Now 48 GB per server on the RANCH renderfarm

Post by RenderFred » Wed Sep 25, 2013 3:35 am

Hello everyone,

I am glad to announce that all our rendering servers are now equipped with 48 GB RAM. It can come in handy for heavy projects...

Cheers,

Fred

The RANCH renderfarm

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RenderFred
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Re: The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

Post by RenderFred » Mon Nov 25, 2013 9:02 pm

Hi,

I am glad to announce that we officially run with Indigo 3.6.26 from now on. I have also updated our Cost Estimator page for Indigo Cooperative projects with 3.6 values.

Cheers,

Fred

The RANCH renderfarm

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RenderFred
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The new RANCH is online!

Post by RenderFred » Thu Jun 12, 2014 9:01 pm

Hello everyone,

I am glad to announce that the new RANCH is now up and running!

- the RANCH Runner is now 2 to 3 times as fast with at least 450 render nodes per project
- a brand new web site, better-looking, more modern and easier to navigate
- no more time limits, and as always the full power behind each project
- last but not least, very affordable prices!

And we still offer 50 euros render credits to new users...

Cheers,

Fred

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Bosseye
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Re: The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

Post by Bosseye » Thu Jun 26, 2014 4:04 am

I've tried the new Ranch and its very good - easier to navigate than the old one with a greater depth of clarity and information. And, assuming you're not stuck in a queue waiting for higher priority users to clear (of course you can pay to jump the queue), then its lightning fast. I typically specify a render phase time limit of 6 minutes/ 10000 spp on my little still images (usually 2500x1600 give or take) and the results are always perfectly smooth and grain free. On a recent render it took me 120 hours rendering on my machine to get to 6000spp and the image was still unacceptably grainy, so the Ranch blitzed that in 6 minutes.

From upload to final image can be as little as 10 minutes for me which is a spectacular turnaround.

And worth saying again, any time I've had a problem or a query, the support guys have been right there on the email and resolved really quickly.

So yeah, great service all round.

StompinTom
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Re: The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

Post by StompinTom » Thu Jun 26, 2014 4:16 am

Have to chip in as well and say that when we ran into some difficulties rendering an animation on a tight deadline a while ago, the technical team and Glare were right on it and helped to quickly sort it out. Very helpful, so thanks for that!

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Jay-ko
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Re: The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

Post by Jay-ko » Mon Sep 29, 2014 8:57 pm

Where is the "like" button?

RanchComputing are the best for me.

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RenderFred
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RANCH Special Offer!

Post by RenderFred » Fri Oct 03, 2014 3:07 am

Hi everyone,

I am glad to announce that from October 1 to October 31, the RANCH is even more affordable!

Prices have been dropped from 1.5 cent to 0.9 cent per GHz-H (-40%!) on the Sapphire formula! Higher priority formulas like Emerald (from 2.0 to 1.4 cent, -30%) and Ruby (2.5 to 1.9 cent, -24%) are also cheaper in october... don't miss this opportunity!

If you never rendered Indigo projects on a 1000-Xeon cpu system, now seems like a good time to try...

Fred

PS: and Jay-ko thanks for the kind words!

Fred

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