[RenderFred]

1.1 THz or 600 Ghz ?
$0.19 or $0.20 ?

Well, it seems the guy in charge of the web site has messed up things badly... I will correct this as soon as possible, thanks for letting us know. Heads will fall

[RenderFred]

Things are back to normal



Much better isn't it?

[mrcz]

RenderFred you are so fast .

Much better for plain rendering cost. Worst for cost of merging large mxi files.
It looks like you decrease rendering cost to 75% and encrease merging cost to circa 200-240% ( doubling nodes = encrease/doubling merging time + encrease hour rate by 1.2 factor)

[RenderFred]

RenderFred you are so fast .

Much better for plain rendering cost. Worst for cost of merging large mxi files.
It looks like you decrease rendering cost to 75% and encrease merging cost to circa 200-240% ( doubling nodes = encrease/doubling merging time + encrease hour rate by 1.2 factor)

Oh, no no no this is not true.

Before, we were at 25 mn for a 1 GB merging.
Now we are at 30 min for a 1 GB merging.

In fact we have _reduced_ the merging time overall by almost a factor of two, by using very sophisticated methods (you could call that parallel multi-merging), just to ensure that the customer would not pay a lot more for the merging. We have almost doubled the number of nodes and processing power, but the merging time has increased only about 15/20%. If we had done nothing the cost would indeed have been multiplied by two, but using our new techniques it has really been minimized, and all this is reflected in the cost estimator.

In any case, the customer wins!

[mrcz]

Thanks to clarify this.
It is nice to hear it.

Martin

[KurtS]

The Ranch works fine, and has helped me out more than once, especially when I have to create a number of renderings in almost no time at all. I do a LOT of arch. competions, and recently had to make 13 renderings in one night. It would not have been possible without the Ranch.

About the costs:
- the merging process is a very big part of the total costs, and I think it is important to make this clear. I know this is described in the user manual, but it takes some time (and tests) to really understand this.

Example:
Let's say I make a multilight exterior rendering, and using the Ranch I reach the desired SL in 5 minutes (in some cases the Ranch can be this fast!)

Let's say that the mxi in this case could be 1 GB, which I think is normal for a multilight scene(?)
If I have a 3-hour subscription the render cost will be $17,42 for 5 minutes.
the MERGING however takes about 30 minutes, and adds a cost of 105$ to the final bill.

[RenderFred]

Indeed merging a lot of big MXIs takes a while, and we had to develop special techniques to keep this time to a minimum. With the traditional way and so many nodes it would literally take hours to do even simple mergings... Also when I talk about "merging" it is really "gathering+merging" because as each node contributes to the final result, a tremendous amount of data has to move across the network. This is something that many users are not aware of, because on one or two machines merging is not a big deal. Now multiply this by 50 or 100 and suddenly

The merging phase always appears strange to new Maxwell Users, who are not used to this with traditional renderers, but it is an integral part of the Maxwell Render process, as essential as the rendering itself. We all hope that with time, new compression and optimization algorithms will be developed by Next Limit to reduce the time taken by this process, which is extremely stressful for both the network and hard disks.

This is why we have included a special section in the user guide about it. And the cost estimator also shows this clearly, you can do reasonably accurate simulations with it (you can try 1 mn render time and just change the MXI sizes for instance). Finally, we insist on being cautious with Multilight. This is of course a great feature, but it has a price, so if you do not absolutely need it, don't check the option as the size of the MXI can easily be multiplied by 4.

[KurtS]

Finally, we insist on being cautious with Multilight. This is of course a great feature, but it has a price, so if you do not absolutely need it, don't check the option as the size of the MXI can easily be multiplied by 4.

I agree, an additional problem by using the multilight feature is that you have to transfer the huge mxi file using your FTP-app. Transfering 1 gig might be free of charge if using normal broadband connection, but it still takes a lot of time!

It would be great if I could access the multilight mxi file remotely at the Ranch - and just transfer my desired outputs as jpg's after making my selections... maybe an idea for a future upgrade of the Ranch?

[RenderFred]

It would be great if I could access the multilight mxi file remotely at the Ranch - and just transfer my desired outputs as jpg's after making my selections... maybe an idea for a future upgrade of the Ranch?

This is something we had thought about, but manipulating from remote is slow... Plus if you want to change your settings a week or a month after to get a new effect you hadn't thought of at first, the data will not be available anymore and you will not have the MXI on your system to do it. As a user I think it is safer to have the original data at hand rather than rely on online storage.

What I could do is to auto-compress the final MXI with 7-Zip, before it is transfered to the project ftp account. That way the size of the MXI to download would be reduced. However some MXIs do not compress well, and compressing a big MXI takes time as well...

[Tim Ellis]

Just wanted to say a few words about working with Ranch and Julien.

Firstly, what a fantastic service.

The upload methods are painless, as is the retrival of rendered files once the job is complete.

Andre gave me a concise and competitve quote for an urgent job I had to render, allowing me to meet an insane deadline, which would have been impossible on our own render farm.

I was slightly worried about the full automation of the system, but it works really well and means that once the files are uploaded, you can go get some sleep, safe in the knowledge that your render has joined the queue and will commence when the current job has finished.

Email notification of when the project commenced, when it finished and the details on how to retrieve your files, is a great help.

Also using the login system on the Ranch website, you can check SL level and progress of your rendering project. (No image preview is available though.)

All in all, one of the best render farm compaines I have worked with.

Many thanks to Julien for being patient with my constant phone calls to him, regarding my many questions.

5*'s from me.

Tim.

[RenderFred]

Thanks Tim,

but I believe you talk to Julien, as there is no Andre in the RANCH team

Fred

[Tim Ellis]

Hi Fred, yes sorry, Monday morning syndrome. I have ammended my post.


Apologies to Julien too.

Tim.

[RenderFred]

Hi everyone,

I thought you would be interested to know of a new performance enhancement on the RANCH regarding MXI fusion. In our endless struggle to keep the merging monster at bay, we have managed to squeeze more speed out of the gathering+merging process. It is particularly neat with big MXIs (>= 1 GB). For instance, we are now around 30% faster with 1 GB MXIs merging, and 40% faster with 2 GB MXIs! The size limit of the individual MXIs we can process with this technique is 2.40 GB, which should be enough for 99.9% of the projects.

And of course, a faster fusion means that you pay less for the whole project, without doing any compromise on the speed of the render time itself!

Fred

EDIT (03/23) : post edited to reflect that we're now down to 20 minutes for 1 GB MXIs and 40 minutes for 2 GB MXIs. It's quite impossible to do better now, we have reached physical limits

[RenderFred]

Very good news in fact

Now on the RANCH, if the render time of your project is >= 60 minutes, the MXI merging is FREE!

If your project runs for one hour or more (something that you can easily control with Maxwell), you will not pay a cent for the gathering+merging phase. It can make a big difference!

Also, the total processing power of the RANCH has again been increased, this time by another 11%. We are now totalizing 102 nodes and 408 cores @ 3 GHz for a total of 1224 GHz. And as the full power is allocated to each project, in one hour you can get high quality renders with most high resolution projects.

Cheers

Fred

[RenderFred]

There are two improvements on the RANCH which may interest you:

1) The final merged MXI of a cooperative project is now also downloadable as a multi-parts archive (if the MXI > 100 MB), to optimize download times (simultaneous download threads) and improve security.

2) And this is a big one, as it was quite complicated to do on a fully automated system. You can now upload a project once and render several views of the same scene! To do this, simply include a text file named 'cameras.txt' in your project, in which you will have written the names of the cameras to render. If you are interested, all the practical details are in the Renderfarm User Guide 4.11, in the new appendix C.

Cheers

Fred