Archive for November, 2011

If you’re going to have a render farm you’ll need some sort of render management software, or sometimes called “render managers” if you want to step it up from basic network rendering. Render management apps are applications that are similar to a print spooler on steroids. They help you manage your renders on render farms or network rendering setups. Sometimes this is done with local machines and sometimes it is done with remote render nodes. A render node is simply a machine somewhere attached that can produce a render. You can make render farm nodes be anywhere they can connect to the internet. I’ll give more info later. For now I’m doing basic lists.

Typically if you want to be a part of a render farm you’ll need only the basics as discussed in “List of renderers that support distributed rendering” here. Render management with built in network/distributed rendering is often enough but it can always be more efficient so we’ve got a list of some render management software that you can use in place of the built in functionality in many software packages both 3d and 2d.

List of render management software: (Note: If your software is not listed check the site. Many of these companies are adding support quickly.)

RenderPal – http://www.renderpal.com/ – RenderPal supports Maya, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Nuke, After Effects, Softimage/XSI and more.

Royal Render – http://www.royalrender.de/cms/ – Supports just about every major 3d and 2d app at the pro level and more.

Deadline – http://www.thinkboxsoftware.com/deadline/ Thinkbox Software is another great render management system. They support Max, Maya, After Effects.. most of the big ones.. check out the site for more info.

Qube – http://pipelinefx.com/ - Qube is another one that supports all the major 3d and 2d apps for building a render farm.

EnFuzion 3D http://www.enfuzion3d.com/tech_specs.html - Check this page for all it supports.. lots.. They call it cluster computing software but I think its the same thing

Holomatix Rendition – http://www.holomatix.com/rendition/using-rendition/renderfarm/ This is also supported to work with many of the other render management stuff on here as an enhancement.

Uberware Smedge – http://www.uberware.net/smedge3/ – Smedge appears to be for small clusters that want to have that big farm feel. For more info check the site.

SquidNet – http://www.squidnetsoftware.com/ – Another one that supports quite a few of the 2d and 3d render engines. Lots of screenshots of how it all works.

Refamo – http://www.ixor3d.com/refamo.htm – I don’t know a lot about this one. It was built specifically for this vfx company but you can acquire it from them.

I’m sure there are a couple more floating around out there that I didn’t get on my list. If so shoot me an email bstone@bradleystone.com and I’ll put it on.

Now keep in mind these packages are not “needed” for your average 3d hobbiest. Usually stuff like this is for people who have large rendering tasks looming over them that they want to do in house or as a collaborate thing. A lot of small animation/video groups get together and share computers downtime for rendering each others projects. It’s a nice way to share within a trusted group and makes efficient use of resources. If you’re just using a couple of computers you can surely try these apps. They will make life more fun for the rendering part of your workday but if you don’t do a lot of rendering personally then you obviously won’t be spending much time with the software anyway. Anyway, just thought I’d note that. It’s not uncommon for small networks with limited renders but it isn’t really necessary unless you’re simply doing it to learn more. Enjoy!

P.S. Thanks to the guys at LinkedIn – “3D Studio Max” group for sparking a discussion about this topic and inspiring me to write this article!

You hear all these terms.. Network Rendering, Distributed Rendering, Render Farm, Cloud Rendering… etc. But, if you boil it all down what you are doing is distributing the computer power needed to render a frame or set of frames to multiple computers. Some will argue that each have difference. Distributed rendering is where the job of rendering a single frame is distributed across a set of computers. Network Rendering is where each computer gets it’s own frame. A Render Farm is the set of computers used to do either of these jobs. I’m not too hip on cloud rendering but I’m guessing it’s like p2p. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

Though that’s also sort of my point here.. all these names still refer to the same thing.. Rendering with multiple computers. In other words “distributing” your render (single or multiple frames). Call it what you wish but at the end of the day it’s just semantics. All this confuses the heck out of people so hopefully this clears it up at least a little bit.. It’s all “basically” the same… it’s Distributed Rendering.  In the future all of these software packages will render single frames on multiple computers.. they could be on any network.. you may know or not know about all the computers on the network, but the task at hand is always going to be distributing rendering across computers. So, throughout this site you will most likely hear me call some of these other things “distributed rendering” because that is the most literal way to describe what is actually happening with our renders in any case.