FREE OCTANE RENDER FARM: For Community By Community....

[sublime]

Hello all

I have recently made a post on other forum section about how fortunate we are as octane users to have such technology that allow us to render unbiased images in such a short time. I was also wrote my thought about how we should move on to the next step, step that allow us, 3d designer from whatever fields to use this technology to the fullest extent in animation.

I am sure you agree that doing animation would set us more challenges which could improve our standard in any way. The only obstacle, if any, for doing such project is the fact that it will have thousands of frames and therefore would take ages to finish. Obviously, we could always use render farm that has Octane for a fee of course.

But what if we could do it for free within our little community?

I am talking about people chip in their resources to help other in the hope that somewhere along the line others would help his/her project in return. Now I am not talking about just a normal animation. I am talking about one animation that each frame would take 30 minutes to render in High Definition size (beyond 1366 x 766 px).

Simple math:
If one has project with above standard, and need to render in total 4000 frames where each will takes 30 minutes reaching sampling level 1024 based on 2x GTX460 like mine (giving you very nice, sharp, crisp result). He /she will finish the job in 83 days (that is more than 2 months of 24/7 workload). Octane forum has in total 6360 members and I assume at least 50% of them have license. If from that 50% (about 3000), 10% willing to chip in, that would be 300 people chip in as “farm”, the above project would finish only in 6 hours.. and its FREE…

Above is only the rough estimation, but the possibility is endless….

I have been thinking about this, and to make the ball rolling, its not that complicated at all. Here is the most likely workflow

- Register a job
- Send the Master files (ocs, max, and all textures) to file hosting
- Every “server” download the files
- Hit the render button (literally just like that, provided all relevant files are provided)
- Update the rendering status
- When finished upload the png files to file hosting
- Project owner download the result.

And for the above we would only need:
- One paid account in file hosting
- FTP software
- Set up a forum
- And of course,… your support.. !!!!

If we have enough people who are willing to participate on this, I am more than happy to facilitate all the above (with my own expenses, which is to be honest is not that expensive anyway) and to manage everything on daily basis, of course I would need help at some point.

What do you think guys..?

[colin]

certainly sounds interesting - and i'm most willing to participate - even considering my doubts it will be that easy to implement.

since network administration isn't my field, i can only come up with some sort of a "wish-list", without a clue of its feasibility.
i skip to the most important one i can think of right now:
if my comp is supposed to function as a render node, it must only do so if idle. that has to be automated as i don't think i'll manage to manually switch my machine's status every time i walk away from it (or resume working on it of course).

...but i say it again. great idea. most definitely worth working on.

[sublime]

Hi Colin

I dont think the files traffic would be complicated. We could do this in simple but effective way, no need to use complicated script etc. To answer your question, yes, obviously you would be able to chip in if you are not doing anything for your project. Ideally, if i am one of the nodes, i would just wait until i have 6 hours to spare (6 hours here is only example, i.e: after i finish work everyday and not got anything on the pipeline) so we can keep it simple. All we need is really, make a new folder, put the files there, open the max (if using 3dsmax), set the script and hit render, thats it.

[colin]

fair enough.

what about security?
again, i know very little about administering a network.
plus, i'm not entirely sure how i could be of service other than participation and moral support...

[sublime]

I dont think that this will involve any networking at all, even though one person act as a node, the work will totaly seperate to other. We could replace the technology with good work management (would work similarly to max backburner), i.e: - john does frame 1-5, smith 6-10, andrew 11-15 and so forth, once finish, john would upload the file rared or zipped with name 1-5, simple. The project owner would then need sort the files out offline (manualy). It might be hassle, but it still better off doing that rather than wait weeks to have final files..

The job assignment of each node (whos doing what frames) could also be handled systematicaly, using forum posts and threads,..

[colin]

sorry sublime,

that might sound feasible in theory - but if you can't come up with a way to automate that whole shebang, i don't think it's gonna work - at all.
i'm willing to help out - but not if its gonna cut into my everyday work-live. and i'm pretty sure i'm not the only one feeling that way.
of course i could be wrong though...

[sublime]

Of course it is just a starting idea, mine is traditional and conservative but for the good of the whole community, if someone could come up with scripting, lets go for it,..i might know someone,..i'll drag him here..

[matej]

- Send the Master files (ocs, max, and all textures) to file hosting

Would people be willing to share all their source files with everybody? (I wouldn't)

Sharing scene data in proprietary files like .max further limits the number of participants to only those that have the appropriate software. Sharing it in 'raw' formats like .obj, raises the question if the participants would want to download hundreds of MB of data per frame.

Consider this, and the 300 people would become 10 or less...

Don't get me wrong, I like when people take the initiative and help each other, but IMO this wouldn't work - not in the presently proposed form.

[necko77]

- Send the Master files (ocs, max, and all textures) to file hosting

Would people be willing to share all their source files with everybody? (I wouldn't)

Sharing scene data in proprietary files like .max further limits the number of participants to only those that have the appropriate software. Sharing it in 'raw' formats like .obj, raises the question if the participants would want to download hundreds of MB of data per frame.

Consider this, and the 300 people would become 10 or less...

Don't get me wrong, I like when people take the initiative and help each other, but IMO this wouldn't work - not in the presently proposed form.

pravi si slovenacki supak

[matej]

pravi si slovenacki supak

What is this supposed to mean? That you don't agree and you have to resort to insults?

You can answer in english.