The RANCH renderfarm now supports Indigo!

[pixie]

Well... it runs on stable version, I guess you are using 1.1.5, it crashes me on it too...

What value should I put on estimated cost btw?

[Zom-B]

***EDIT***

My fault by exidently resuming renderings with each upload and messing up the result... -.-

[RenderFred]

ZomB, you have tried to resume several times a project which had a problem at first, so each time -> same problem. My colleague will call you to explain.

I want to thank all of you for your participation, the response is quite overwhelming It is 11 PM now here in France, so I would kindly ask you not to send any project now, to avoid potential crashes on the farm during the night here in France.

During the beta-test it would be great if you sent project only between 9 AM and 10:30 PM (09:00 - 22:30 GMT+1).

See you tomorrow!

Fred

Ah, also, do not send projects with the name PACKED.VUI (the default name). As some of you already did this, the server will want to resume, but won't be able to because it will detect that projects of the same name have been sent by different users.

Finally, make sure there are no more than one .igs file in your archive, as it can lead to crashes, thanks.

[Zom-B]

ZomB, you have tried to resume several times a project which had a problem at first, so each time -> same problem. My colleague will call you to explain.

Lol... I exidently always started a resume on your farm by keeping upload names the same!!!

[joegiampaoli]

What if we already have a started render and see that it's taking a long time to clear out, can we also resume them on this renderfarm?

[Zom-B]

I don't think so because you are uploading (renamed) pigs files only.

This service does a job in 15min that my system would need 2.5 to 3 day for... O.o

[RenderFred]

What if we already have a started render and see that it's taking a long time to clear out, can we also resume them on this renderfarm?

@joegiampaoli,

No it is not possible, because to resume a project the RANCH needs to have stored the contribution of every individual node on the network. Anyway, you would not save a lot of time, as you could get much faster to the SPP you are currently with the RANCH. It would be interesting to start from scratch, and see how much RANCH time you need to reach the point where you are now.

Fred

[RenderFred]

A few general remarks:

- we will always run with the latest stable version of Indigo, at the moment it's 1.0.9. As soon as a 1.1.x version is declared stable we will install it, test it, and if all goes well use it. For now many old scenes are not read anymore by the 1.1.x versions, which is more restrictive on the scene format.

However we also use a 64-bit 1.1.3 Indigo but only for the tonemapping operation (as this function was not implemented in 1.0). Make sure that the tonemapping parameters stored in your scene are correct, as they will be used for the automated tonemapping. That being said, the merged final IGI we output is compatible with Violet, so you can use the interactive tonemapper to get the exact final bitmap you want.

- as a sugestion to Nick, I believe that it would be better if Indigo packed the project by default with the name of the .igs scene, instead of using the generic "packed" name. If you are lazy and send a "packed.vui" file to the RANCH, there is a good chance that it will want to resume the project (because another lazy user has already sent a "packed.vui" before ). Obviously it will detect that the two projects are different and will discard the project. Using the scene name for the packed archive would prevent this.

- The RANCH tries to resume a project if it detects a project of the same name and with the same settings (same owner, same resolution, etc.) in its cache, which lasts five days. If it finds that the settings are not the same, the project is automatically discarded. So if you don't want to resume anything, make sure you give an original name to your project.

Fred

[ikodn]

RenderFred: Will there be support for indigo animation renders at your farm?

[RenderFred]

If you take a look at the RANCH for Indigo site, you'll see that on the top left corner of each page (except the HomePage), there is a small rectangular image (238x74 pix). At the moment they are placeholders, but it would be better if the images were created by all of you! So here is what I propose: you can send us one or several images you have done in Indigo. We will do a selection, and the best ones will be put on the RANCH site, with of course the credit (you can see examples of this on our Maxwell Render site).

If you are interested, you must respect the following rules:

- the submissions must be sent by e-mail at our contact address
- you can send a maximum of two images per user
- each image must be exactly 238 x 74 pixels, in JPG format (of course you can resize and crop existing images)
- in the e-mail, precise the credit you want in the case you are selected, e.g. "by John Smith - www <dot> mysite < dot > com"
- the images need not be rendered on the farm, you can send images you already did. We want by this way show glimpses of what Indigo can do.

There are around 10-12 images to fill, so good luck!

Fred

[RenderFred]

RenderFred: Will there be support for indigo animation renders at your farm?

At the beginning we will concentrate on still images cooperative renders. However when all this works as well as we want, we will certainly be interested to see how we can render animations. For this we will need the help of the Indigo community: by which method can you render animations with Indigo currently? Does the file format supports moving objects / cameras natively, etc?

Fred

[Zom-B]

by which method can you render animations with Indigo currently? Does the file format supports moving objects / cameras natively, etc?

Atm for each frame a own igs gets generated with information about position, scale and rotation of camera and meshes. For such animations the meshes get exported only once.

Some Exporters (cindigo for example) should recognize if a mesh get some none scale/move/rotate modification, but polygonal change and will export accordingly new meshes for each frame that needs to.

atm such animations get rendered via batch + halttime.

[palawat]

Fred ;

I'm sure lots of people have said it before but well, I'm gonna say it anyway.

"Just tested it and it's freakin' awesome!"

ps. I missed the thread ZomB made;

So guys, if you BetaTest use Reinhard or Linear

and send a file with Camera Tonemapping. Anyway, I'm still impressed with the speed.

[RenderFred]

Some Exporters (cindigo for example) should recognize if a mesh get some none scale/move/rotate modification, but polygonal change and will export accordingly new meshes for each frame that needs to.
atm such animations get rendered via batch + halttime.

Can someone send us by e-mail a simple animation project? Say, 2 or 3 simple objects / primitives moving across a dozen frames and packed in a standard Indigo project? So I will be able to study it and see what can be done.

Fred

[CTZn]

on a theorical note again:

If it finds that the settings are not the same, the project is automatically discarded.

Is it true for all tags within <renderer_settings> ? It is sometimes usefull to resume with a different MLT setting, although the process power you seem to offer may render this note obsolete... nevermind.