Pre-purchase questions...

[redclawkefar]

I came across Octane in my search for a GPU render plugin or software that I can dump my 3ds Max 2009 animations to. I was curious to know if Octane is capable of using a Network Farm to render animation sequences. The majority of the systems that I'd e able to network to have nVidia 8800's or higher. A new test system was bought and arrives this week with the specs listed below. When it comes in I'll be testing the demo and I assume it will be a quick test and then I'll try some other 3ds max animation setups I have. I'm just hoping Octane has network farm capability since that will just cut my render times to itty bits.


Case - CoolerMaster HAF 922
CPU - Intel® Core™ i7 980X
RAM - 24 GB DDR3-1333
GPU's - 2x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480
Motherboard - Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7
PSU - CoolerMaster Silent Pro 1000W
HDD's - 2x 640 GB HARD DRIVE
DVD's - 2x 24X Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW
OS - MS Windows 7 Ultimate

[radiance]

octane will run pretty sweet on that system, that's a whole render farm in one box right there.
we're supplying 3ds max animation plugins with the upcoming 2.2 release, which will be released in a few days...

Radiance

[redclawkefar]

well right now the main rig in the office has the specs below, obviously the new rig will kick it around a little. using CPU rendering, i have an animation that is churning away at 18-22min frame. that's where i abuse the office network farm and steal cpu power from everyone else. helps having 10pc's each doing 1 frame every 20min to speed things up but if the gpu's can be used and on a farm i'll be done with my work before lunch the same day, not tomorrow by lunch like it is now.

CPU - 2x Quad-core AMD OPTERON 2356
RAM - 16 GB DDR2
GPU's - 2x NVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX
Motherboard - TYAN S2915A2NRF
PSU - Enermax Infiniti 720
HDD's - 2x 320 GB HARD DRIVE RAID-1 OS
DVD's - 16X Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW
OS - MS Windows Vista x64 Ultimate

[erik]

Hi,

Another thing to keep in mind when putting together machines for rendering is that you can now get motherboards with quite a few PCI-e slots. For example the ASUS "supercomputer" X58 board which I think has 7 PCI-e slots. That means you don't have to have all the overhead of the rest of the computer to have the grunt all you need is more graphics cards. Save money, power, space, network traffic, etc etc. Also other companies are coming out with proprietary renderbox solutions, such as Cubix I believe.

Just some stuff to think about.

[GeoPappas]

I was curious to know if Octane is capable of using a Network Farm to render animation sequences.

No, Octane is not capable of using multiple computers in a typical render farm setup.

But my understanding is that it will be capable of using multiple GPUs on the same computer, which is very similar.

[radiance]

I was curious to know if Octane is capable of using a Network Farm to render animation sequences.

No, Octane is not capable of using multiple computers in a typical render farm setup.

But my understanding is that it will be capable of using multiple GPUs on the same computer, which is very similar.

That's not true, you can batch octane to render animations on a farm as big as you want.
You can use a tool like drqueue or another network render queue/farm manager and use octane completely automated with a renderfarm to render animation frames.

Radiance

[GeoPappas]

I was curious to know if Octane is capable of using a Network Farm to render animation sequences.

No, Octane is not capable of using multiple computers in a typical render farm setup.

But my understanding is that it will be capable of using multiple GPUs on the same computer, which is very similar.

That's not true, you can batch octane to render animations on a farm as big as you want.
You can use a tool like drqueue or another network render queue/farm manager and use octane completely automated with a renderfarm to render animation frames.

Radiance

Thanks for the clarification.

But I still believe that my reply is accurate and true. The question was whether "Octane is capable of using a Network Farm". My understanding is that Octane itself is not capable of using a render farm. You would need a third party application to do what you are talking about.

Also, some images can take a long time to render (up to days or even weeks) and many people think of a render farm as having the capability of splitting up a single image into multiple slices / buckets and then sending the slices out to "the farm". My understanding is that Octane does not have this capability yet (nor is it planned at this time).

While I understand your response, which states that a third party tool can take separate images and disperse them to "the farm", it is different from my understanding of the original question.

[radiance]

No, Octane is not capable of using multiple computers in a typical render farm setup.

But my understanding is that it will be capable of using multiple GPUs on the same computer, which is very similar.

That's not true, you can batch octane to render animations on a farm as big as you want.
You can use a tool like drqueue or another network render queue/farm manager and use octane completely automated with a renderfarm to render animation frames.

Radiance

Thanks for the clarification.

But I still believe that my reply is accurate and true. The question was whether "Octane is capable of using a Network Farm". My understanding is that Octane itself is not capable of using a render farm. You would need a third party application to do what you are talking about.

Also, some images can take a long time to render (up to days or even weeks) and many people think of a render farm as having the capability of splitting up a single image into multiple slices / buckets and then sending the slices out to "the farm". My understanding is that Octane does not have this capability yet (nor is it planned at this time).

While I understand your response, which states that a third party tool can take separate images and disperse them to "the farm", it is different from my understanding of the original question.

The question was : 'I was curious to know if Octane is capable of using a Network Farm to render animation sequences.'

You responded that it could not, which is incorrect, so i responded with the right answer.

If you're talking about single frame network rendering, like many traditional CPU engines do, octane does'nt support it no,
i don't think there's really a need to.
With a GTX480 GPU, you can render a very difficult interior with current octane versions in less than an hour.
Add another and it's 30 minutes.

I've never heard of anyone doing a render with octane for days or weeks.

Radiance

[redclawkefar]

Hi,

Another thing to keep in mind when putting together machines for rendering is that you can now get motherboards with quite a few PCI-e slots. For example the ASUS "supercomputer" X58 board which I think has 7 PCI-e slots. That means you don't have to have all the overhead of the rest of the computer to have the grunt all you need is more graphics cards. Save money, power, space, network traffic, etc etc. Also other companies are coming out with proprietary renderbox solutions, such as Cubix I believe.

Just some stuff to think about.

i'm well aware of using the extra PCI-e slots in systems... and you do make a valid point about dumping more cards into existing rigs. when the company has the urge to upgrade i will press for that. most rigs have two or three open pci-e slots.

thanks for reminding me.

[redclawkefar]

No, Octane is not capable of using multiple computers in a typical render farm setup.

But my understanding is that it will be capable of using multiple GPUs on the same computer, which is very similar.

That's not true, you can batch octane to render animations on a farm as big as you want.
You can use a tool like drqueue or another network render queue/farm manager and use octane completely automated with a renderfarm to render animation frames.

Radiance

Thanks for the clarification.

But I still believe that my reply is accurate and true. The question was whether "Octane is capable of using a Network Farm". My understanding is that Octane itself is not capable of using a render farm. You would need a third party application to do what you are talking about.

Also, some images can take a long time to render (up to days or even weeks) and many people think of a render farm as having the capability of splitting up a single image into multiple slices / buckets and then sending the slices out to "the farm". My understanding is that Octane does not have this capability yet (nor is it planned at this time).

While I understand your response, which states that a third party tool can take separate images and disperse them to "the farm", it is different from my understanding of the original question.

The question was : 'I was curious to know if Octane is capable of using a Network Farm to render animation sequences.'

You responded that it could not, which is incorrect, so i responded with the right answer.

If you're talking about single frame network rendering, like many traditional CPU engines do, octane does'nt support it no,
i don't think there's really a need to.
With a GTX480 GPU, you can render a very difficult interior with current octane versions in less than an hour.
Add another and it's 30 minutes.

I've never heard of anyone doing a render with octane for days or weeks.

Radiance

ok here's to the quoting of the quoted quoting quote...

so, just to make sure i understand everything... octane won't dump directly to a farm; i.e. octane is not a farm manager (thats fine). BUT octane can (batch) dump to a manager like drqueue or something which then farms out the work (even better).

as to single images... i don't slice. 1 frame per system (in my current setup) until its done then it pings the manager for the next piece of the puzzle. basically, i render all frames to TGA's then compile the video into whatever form is required.

its interesting, i did a test render of a simple scene with minimal shadows and a few trees on my home rig (see specs below) which is being replaced by the rig in the first post. that frame took 2hrs 33min to complete... the 'old' rig would be killer to upgrade the gpu's and psu and have it just be a render node chewing away at everything. the board has well spaced pci-e slots for expansion as needed.

CPU - Quad-core AMD phenom 9850
RAM - 8 GB DDR2
GPU's - 2x NVIDIA GeForce 7900GT 256mb
Motherboard - MSI K9A2 Platinum
PSU - PC Power & Cooling 650W
HDD's - 500 GB HARD
DVD's - 2x 16X Dual Format/Double Layer DVD±R/±RW
OS - MS Windows Windows 7 x64 Ultimate