- Fri Aug 03, 2007 12:55 pm
#239745
UPDATE October 23, 2007:
The RANCH V2 is now online!
More details on page 5 of this thread.
Fred
==============================================
UPDATE August 27, 2007:
The RANCH for Maxwell is now officially in production!
Thanks to all who participated to the public beta-test phase.
==============================================
Hi everyone,
I am Frederic Louguet, co-creator and developer of the RANCH Renderfarm (www.ranchcomputing.com). I am pleased to announce that, from September 2007 onward (the exact day is not yet known but it will be in the first half of the month), we will be offering an efficient and easy to use commercial rendering service for cooperative Maxwell Render projects.
We are a very focused renderfarm, our main goal is not to support a lot of 3D applications, but to support the ones we like very well! As of now, we are Vue Infinite specialists, and we are now very happy to extend our activity by supporting the wonderful renderer that is Maxwell Render.
Our rather unique approach to renderfarming allows us to do rather unique things For instance, our system is entirely automated: from the submission of your project directly on the RANCH web site, to the download of your MXI and bitmap files on our secure ftp server, there is no human intervention (except for customer support of course). You can send projects 24/24, they will automatically enter the queue and be processed without you having to wait for a human operator. We also have an automatic filtering phase at the end of the project - at no extra cost - which will help to remove some of the digital noise from the final picture (don't expect miracles though . At the end of the project you will get the merged MXI, a final TIF image of the project and its filtered version, plus the bitmap layers you checked, like IDmaterial, alpha, etc.
We will begin our Maxwell activity by dedicating à 160 GHz guaranteed rendering power to each Maxwell project (all our nodes are Core 2 Quad / Extreme computers). If the demand is high, we will increase this capacity accordingly. Here are some benchmarks, so you'll have a better idea of the performance you can expect. The following times represent the total time for the project, including network overhead and gathering / merging of the MXIs.
- BENCHWELL scene, 960 x 768, SL = 20.4, done in 15 mn 32 s
- 8BALL scene, 1024 x 576, SL = 20.4, done in 25 mn 09 s
- CUPS SKYDOME scene, 1024 x 768, SL = 20.4, done in 55 mn 27 s
Plus, I have good news for the Maxwell community: in the second half of August, before entering production, we will conduct a public beta testing phase. During this - possibly two weeks - period, every registered Maxwell User will be able to try the RANCH for free, with the following limitations: each project will have a time limit of half an hour for the render phase, and the resolution will be capped to 1600 pixels (height and/or width), to let as many users as possible try the system in this time frame.
I will notify you in this thread when we are able to accept Maxwell users registrations (probably around August 15th). At this time, you will be able to download our comprehensive RUG (Renderfarm User Guide) for Maxwell in PDF format, which will answer many questions in details.
Our regular price will be $0.50 per GHz per Hour (~0.36 euro per GHz per hour) for Maxwell projects, with 10 to 30% discounts for pre-paid subscriptions. $0.50 translates to $80 per hour (~58 euros) with our current 160 GHz model.
One last thing: we have a 100 mbits/s Fiber Optics internet symmetrical bandwidth. It means you will be able to send and download your files at very high speed if you have yourself a fast internet connection (useful for those heavy multilight MXIs .
Thank you for your attention, and we hope to see you soon on the RANCH!
Fred
RANCH Computing
The RANCH V2 is now online!
More details on page 5 of this thread.
Fred
==============================================
UPDATE August 27, 2007:
The RANCH for Maxwell is now officially in production!
Thanks to all who participated to the public beta-test phase.
==============================================
Hi everyone,
I am Frederic Louguet, co-creator and developer of the RANCH Renderfarm (www.ranchcomputing.com). I am pleased to announce that, from September 2007 onward (the exact day is not yet known but it will be in the first half of the month), we will be offering an efficient and easy to use commercial rendering service for cooperative Maxwell Render projects.
We are a very focused renderfarm, our main goal is not to support a lot of 3D applications, but to support the ones we like very well! As of now, we are Vue Infinite specialists, and we are now very happy to extend our activity by supporting the wonderful renderer that is Maxwell Render.
Our rather unique approach to renderfarming allows us to do rather unique things For instance, our system is entirely automated: from the submission of your project directly on the RANCH web site, to the download of your MXI and bitmap files on our secure ftp server, there is no human intervention (except for customer support of course). You can send projects 24/24, they will automatically enter the queue and be processed without you having to wait for a human operator. We also have an automatic filtering phase at the end of the project - at no extra cost - which will help to remove some of the digital noise from the final picture (don't expect miracles though . At the end of the project you will get the merged MXI, a final TIF image of the project and its filtered version, plus the bitmap layers you checked, like IDmaterial, alpha, etc.
We will begin our Maxwell activity by dedicating à 160 GHz guaranteed rendering power to each Maxwell project (all our nodes are Core 2 Quad / Extreme computers). If the demand is high, we will increase this capacity accordingly. Here are some benchmarks, so you'll have a better idea of the performance you can expect. The following times represent the total time for the project, including network overhead and gathering / merging of the MXIs.
- BENCHWELL scene, 960 x 768, SL = 20.4, done in 15 mn 32 s
- 8BALL scene, 1024 x 576, SL = 20.4, done in 25 mn 09 s
- CUPS SKYDOME scene, 1024 x 768, SL = 20.4, done in 55 mn 27 s
Plus, I have good news for the Maxwell community: in the second half of August, before entering production, we will conduct a public beta testing phase. During this - possibly two weeks - period, every registered Maxwell User will be able to try the RANCH for free, with the following limitations: each project will have a time limit of half an hour for the render phase, and the resolution will be capped to 1600 pixels (height and/or width), to let as many users as possible try the system in this time frame.
I will notify you in this thread when we are able to accept Maxwell users registrations (probably around August 15th). At this time, you will be able to download our comprehensive RUG (Renderfarm User Guide) for Maxwell in PDF format, which will answer many questions in details.
Our regular price will be $0.50 per GHz per Hour (~0.36 euro per GHz per hour) for Maxwell projects, with 10 to 30% discounts for pre-paid subscriptions. $0.50 translates to $80 per hour (~58 euros) with our current 160 GHz model.
One last thing: we have a 100 mbits/s Fiber Optics internet symmetrical bandwidth. It means you will be able to send and download your files at very high speed if you have yourself a fast internet connection (useful for those heavy multilight MXIs .
Thank you for your attention, and we hope to see you soon on the RANCH!
Fred
RANCH Computing
Last edited by RenderFred on Tue Oct 23, 2007 1:08 pm, edited 4 times in total.