The essential hardware of render farm: iray

There are lots of hardware that can be used in render farms, some kinds of them are popular, which could be used by lots of people, and others may be used by a small group, that some render farms can’t support them. NVIDIA has done more than almost any other company to promote GPU rendering and its uses in a wide range of entertainment applications. Iray, from NVIDIA, which is the essential hardware of render farm, is offered as both a GPU renderer and a cloud render farm solution, distributed solution. iray targets interactive design, versus mental ray, which is focused on feature film and TV production.

Gary M Davis, Autodesk Senior Technical Specialist, Media & Entertainment, says: “iray is mostly known as a photoreal renderer for design viz but I’ve been challenged to show it in more entertainment uses and like it more every day. I just got set up with a Boxx workstation running NVIDIA’s Maximus GPU board(s) setup and it’s amazing what one PC can do.”

It is one of render farm hardware accelerated by Cuda but if not present still works on CPU and it is designed for physically-based photorealism.

Davis expands further: “Technically NVIDIA Maximus is the pairing of a Quadro 6000 and a Tesla 2075 in one machine. Other combinations of cards can be done but these two have been branded “Maximus” for marketing purposes. Each offer 6gb of memory and that’s huge. 3ds Max can intelligently work with multiple GPU cards in user defined ways. For example, test renders can use a feature called Activeshade on one card that’s constantly rendering while the other maintains smooth viewport interaction for the user experience while modeling and lighting. Then when you’re ready to do a final production render you can enable all the Cuda cores on all GPU boards present.”

For example, unlike what would clearly happen with a CPU renderer in any render farm, “Adding motion blur and/or depth of field using iRay doesn’t add render time. That’s pretty amazing and cool.” Iray has beed asked many times, so render farm servicers should support it anyway, or they will lose lots of clients.

3D rendering software Artlantis 4.1 has been released

Architectures would be very happy these days, because Abvent announced on June 11 that Artlantis 4.1, powered by the Maxwell Render engine from Next Limit Technologies has been released. With the development of 3D, there appeared more and more software which could support some aspects of 3D, some of them can be plug-ins of render farms, including Artlantis 4.1. As the fastest stand-alone 3D rendering application developed especially for architects and designers, Artlantis 4.1 takes architectural visualization to new heights.

ISO / Shutter Speed of new Artlantis 4.1 could offer better color quality and more realistic results, which is quite similar with the purpose of render farms.

HDRi Background makes HDR images valuable for scenes that contain reflective surfaces.  With the special lighting channel included in HDR images, the illumination and shadow casting will result in amazingly realistic renderings.

Artlantis is the fastest 3D rendering application available today for architects, designers and render farm, while Maxwell Render is considered to be the most physically accurate rendering engine on the market.  Abvent and Next Limit Technologies have teamed up to offer Maxwell Render as an optional rendering engine within Artlantis 4.1.  Complete with specific shaders and postcards, Maxwell Render is incredibly easy to use.  Simply set up the scene in Artlantis as usual, and click on the Maxwell Render engine button to launch the calculation.  With Artlantis 4.1, users get the best of both worlds:  speed and physical accuracy.

This year they changed Snow White and The Seven Dwarves

When I was a child, my father borrowed a DVD for me, which is named Snow White and The Seven Dwarves. Based on the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, it is the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full color, the first to be produced by Walt Disney Productions, and the first in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, as well as the first Disney cartoon film that I have seen as I remembered. The Seven Dwarves are cute and funny, and Snow White is so beautiful and elegant. There is no CG and render farm, it is just made in 2D which is simply, nothing of its technology is as stronger as today’s.

But this year, there come out two films which are based on the story of Snow White and The Seven Dwarves, one is called Mirror mirror, while the other is called Snow White and the Huntsman. Both of the two new films are full of CG elements and rendering results from render farm. There is a special mirror man that caught our eyes a lot in Snow White and the Huntsman. The Mill's forty shots spanned over two major sequences for the the Mill. These were pretty much full screen, ‘nowhere to hide’ kind of shots as well. The birth of the Mirror Man is where the Charlize Theron’s character Queen Ravenna is talking to the Mirror and the fluid-effects begin. The Mirror Man is a full CG character but the sequences are dialogues with Queen Ravenna. Because the sequences are not action sequences and there are multiple close ups, there is nowhere for the CG to hide.

The Snow White project was a ten month job for The Mill and another five months was just for R&D on the Mirror Man alone. There were many props for the shoot that had to be specially designed and constructed. One particular construction was required to collect the full reflection of the room surrounds.  CG and render farms are amazing technology for the original version of

Snow White and The Seven Dwarves, for me, even though they have made lots of improvements, the original one is the most impressive and classical, because it is full of our memory. 

Three managing software of render farms

Today, let’s talk about three managing software of render farm.

Axceleon Enfuzion

AE is a new-typed cluster technology, which is the earliest managing software that set up cluster rendering. Enfuzion is suitable for both small and large production company. So, render farms are generally have it.

Advantages:

1. Enfuzion has no limit for platforms, it supports almost all the versions of Windows, Osx, Linux, including 64 bites operating system. It can achieve the biggest hardware quality for newest 64 bites operating system.

2. Enfuzion could supports tile rendering, dividing a high resolution frame onto several sections for rendering. And also set the width of fusion edges, which is especially effective for complex computing and film rendering. But this function is limited by render engine, it can only supports Mental ray, Scan line render engine of Maya, and Renderman.

3. Enfuzion is also the excellent supporter for Mental ray.

4. Image browser and thumbnail browser are convenient for monitoring the rendering result of the online render farm, which is the unique function of Enfuzion that most people like.

PipelineFX Qube

PipelineFX Qube had got the most attention because of its noble birth and the experience of legendary. Early at 2001, square USA constructed a render farm system of 1500 CPU, and they also developed SQB managing tool for the rendering tasks of Final Fantasy and Hacker Empire. After that SQB released the commercial version, which is known as Qube now.

Advantages:

1. There has a Multi-threaded administrator technology in Qube.

2. Qube has fully integrated other software, such as Maya, 3dmax, softimage IXSI After Effrct shake and Light wave3d, etc.

Virtual Vertex Muster

Muster is one of the software which own graphical interface for managing tasks.

Advantages:

1. Support multi-platform, but should use Windows NT/XP as renderer, Linux and Mac OSX is also good.

2. Support Maya, 3dmax, softimage IXSI , After Effrct, shake, mental ray and so on. The price is also cheap.

10 Top Tips To Become a Better Artist

Yesterday I saw this article on the Internet which I feel good personally, even though it has little relates with render farms, but as a part of artist field, it is also useful for us. The author have listed ten top tips to become a better artist, to become a better artist takes years of dedication, passion, energy and time. There are no short cuts but here are some art tips to send you in the right direction.

Tip 1: Learn the Importance of the Sketch

Tip 2: Draw, Draw and Draw Some More!

Tip 3: Build a Reference Library

Tip 4: Explore Different Mediums

Tip 5: Learn Some Colour Theory (At Least)

Tip 6: Play With Perspective

Tip 7: Hunt Down Your Artistic Weaknesses & Destroy Them!

Tip 8: Ask For Help & Critiques

Tip 9: Develop an Original Style

Tip 10: Learn to Accept Failure as a Positive Thing.

In my opinion, these tips are useful for the new learners, who don’t know where to start if they want to be a good artist. In fact, any fields are needed some tips to learning effectively, including visual effects and render farm. Prime Focus provides visual effects and stereo 3D conversion services to major studios around the world. Its visual effects artists have created work for films such as Avatar, Tron: Legacy, and the Harry Potter, Twilight and X-Men franchises, and its stereo 3D conversions including Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

With the development of 3D, both in film, game and other high technology, render farms are trying their best to improve the levels of rendering work. To be a good “artist” is important for them too.