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Hi this ,or similar, is likely the situation for most of us here.. you are not alone Kyoto kid.
For me the only way I have been able to keep producing is to have 2 machines.
I do set up one one and render constantly on the other
All of my Character animation is now created on my "Newer" windows 7 machine where I have Iclone Pro, Daz studio. Newtek Lightwave 2015 , and Endorphin and the rarely used poser pro 2014. plus the latest build of Blender for windows
All of my Other Software is Mac based and quite "old"
Maxon C4D R11.5, MODO401 Adobe CS3 After EffectsCS3Autodesk Combustion 2009 Final Cut pro, Nextlimit Realflow4.
To upgrade any of the Mac programs would require Buying a whole new Mac from Apple as well.
This is Not an option for me at this point in my Life as a 53 year old Self Employed, Divorced father of two
( Adults not living with me though)
Besides Maxon will not get another thin dime from me as their pricing is now equivalent to Autodesk
but they are far..FAR behind Autodesk in features
Particularly Character animation options.
And Apple abandoned the serious 3D Professional market years ago in favor of the hipster consumption Device market.
So I am making do with what I have
until I can make major upgrades in 2017 and go Full Windows and leave the MAC OS behind for good.
Isn't there a thing called Moores Law. that states every 18 months computer technology quadruples . so I would say that is a pretty tough hill to climb if your trying to keep up with it. that is properly why Cloud computing is become ing more acceptable & mainstream, even big production companies are using cloud to keep overhead down and the main reason why i was researching at cloud rendering. but at this point its just very expensive to invest in yourself really who can afford to build there own mega system every 2 years
I'm kind of like everyone else and hope by the end of 2017 prices have gone down and competition has come up for better deals as it is 1080 cards are cheaper than titan x card, So maybe the future of cloud rendering will go down in price as well
You're going into Business territory.
The internet connection speed problem is easily solved if you lease an additionnal Storage/ Asset / Application / Licence server.
The main traffic will be between that server and the rendering server(s) and you will just have to download the final images The only problem is DAZ Eula which could prevent from storing the assets online (should be cleared with DAZ. The server is mine for the time I lease it but...)
The home rendering Farm is okay if you don't have time limits.
Let's make a little math ; let's say you have a home server that can manage to produce 1 Frame in 5 min
If you need to render 15 min movie at 30 fps, you will need 15 x 60 x 30 x 5 = 135000 s = 93 days of rendering time
Let's add 3 Weeks of work before submitting the job and one more for Post Prod the movie
So you'll deliver the movie in 4 Month if you're good and if your client is okay with the delay
Beyond the 3 month render time, there is an other problem : you can't use the render farm for other project during that time. Which will limit you to 4 x 15 min movie projects per year
And you'll do non movie Projects the rest of the time. If that is how you planned it, it's ok
You don't have a lot of flexibility with a home server if you're going on animation projects.
With cloud Rendering, you could add additionnal render nodes on demand to get the job done faster (good if you're in a hurry)
Because in Business, time is money, I'd rather have a beefy workstation for working, buy the needed licences and send the render job to the cloud and charge the cost to the client if he's ok with that
I didn't try cloud rendering, but for a hobby use for still images, if the cost is under 10$ per image, I'd find that acceptable.
Yep I'm another looking into the cloud too(Amazon Web Services so far) -mainly because I cant afford even a half decent pc and gpu in one go. My pc is likely to crash if trying to do anything else on it while rendering so even the upcoming Elastic Gpu's would be fine for me if there was a way.
hmm ..Maybe Daz will release their own Amazon Machine Image
Cloud rendering at this point is geared twards large production business model so that is all the information at this time I can go by. comparing business users to hobby user is apples to oranges .
No offence, But If you think paying $500 for 100 - 4k keysframes to be rendered is acceptable for a Hobby ( which is what rendercore is offering). , than more power to you, I don't have that kind of resources for a hobby myself.
I'm not offended
I paid my Guitar and other music tools / instruments more than 3K and that is just a hobby.
I have other hobbies I'm sure I also invested a lot more than 2K just to have the pleasure to be happy
I'm pretty sure you also paid your computers and 3D related ressource an amount that is more than 500 $
For Cloud rendering, here is how I see it :
If I was motivated and creative enough to render 1 image per Week and each of them cost me 10 $, I would have spent about 500$ a year. Which make it 1500 $ in three years
That is the price of a Titan amortized over three years. But instead of a Titan I rendered on a way more powerfull renderfarm
Knowing that in three years, the hardware will change and I won't have lost a lot of money investing in costly hardware like some people have done in this Forum. I'm pretty sure a lot went way beyong the 500 $ in hardware upgrade among DAZ hobbyists
The Rendercore Offer is half the price I'd agree to pay. So if you look at it that is pretty cheap. But remember I'm talking about Still images.
If you're a hobbyist and you wan't to render a movie, sure, you'll end up paying +10K and you may think that is a lot for a hobby. But seriously, we're talking about a movie.
Just for clarification: RIB files *can* embed the mesh and associated data into the file. This mitigates the need to transfer the DAZ content to the server to be rendered. The files will be huge(er) and take a while to transfer but no EULAs will have been breached.
Kendall
This is the one aspect of this entire conversation that
still has me a bit puzzled.
why are non-animators & non-movie makers even looking at render farms?
If you are a "hobbyists" why exactly do you need a "10,000 pixel museum quality" image from Iray?
Certainly not for a web gallery.
The latter part of my previous 20+ year Career in print design in the greater Washington DC market, was in Large format.
If indeed you do have a paid commsion for a billboard sized single image there will naturally be something called "viewing distance" which will preclude the need for ultra high Dpi images.
...the difference is I am on a fixed income (which is lower than evne minimum wage where I am). There is no way for me to sock away money for a second system.
Most likely If I could afford it, the second machine would be a dedicated render system - in a sense a one machine "renderfarm" using a dual socket LGA 2011 board, Sandy Bridge 8 core Xeons and 128 GB of quad channel DDR3. This way CPU rendering wouldn't be as much an issue with regard to working on other projects, and I wouldn't' have to be concerned about the seemingly rapid "obsolesce" of GPU cards (late last month, Nvidia announced the release of the next generation Volta architecture cards somewhere around the third quarter of next year).
I would still also update the memory in the current system and get maybe a 1060 just to support he dual displays and be able to use the Iray view setting in the viewport. It wouldn't give the near "realtime" refresh rate that Mec4D's triple Titan-X system does, but, wouldn't be as prone to crashing as it currently is either.
If I was still working I would probably have the current system already updated and be saving for the render box. Instead, I either need to win a lotto or have a yet unknown wealthy relative die and leave me a moderate inheritance.
For software disappointments, mine was Modo. I "test drove" Modo 302 back in '08 and in spite of the cost then (about 800$) really liked it. I figured someday, like when I got a big tax return, I'd get it. Now it too is priced pretty much out of reach as well.
Yes thats just it I create cartoon animation, so far I have over 70 of them. and your right it would cost me 10's of thousands of dollars to render animation with a cloud render farm at this time. . So not worth it for silly Youtube animations from a hobby animator stand point. . if i was a commercial company in need of an animation with a 100 plus frame animation. that had to be done with in a week Plus then I could past the render & development cost on too the customer. then of coarse I i would use a render farm. But I also would not be using Daz Studio to accomplish it... As it now i can render all day , night & even when i am asleep with a five hundred fifty dollar graphic card. thought the two graphic cards I have are a btt more than $550..
Also I do know what you mean about music equipment. I have tons of money invested in my guitar and keyboards amps recording equipment, etc. the thing is with this investment I can walk into my studio at any time to use them and never pay another fee , and if I want too I can even go play out and make a little cash and still not have to pay a continued fee,, unless i need some strings or something rented like Pa & Speakers.. Grandma can rock a electric :)
I wasn't sure of what is possible and even with RIB I think you can break the EULA. So I read it again and here is what I found
For me that means that if I copy some contents on a Virtual machine that I control in the cloud, I don't break the EULA
'Because I can' is the first thing that comes to my mind
Because I'm curious
Because I'm an IT so every IT technologies have an interrest for me
Because it's good to know if you have other options
Because I may want to render a movie one day in the future
Have a look at https://www.zyncrender.com/
It's Google cloud rendering and their cost estimator gives me 55$ for 100 frames at 10 min per frame, if using Maya for PrMan plugin
If you want to do some hobby animations without spending 10K, I think the best option is to look an Game engines. I made a little test few month ago with unreal engine and Matinee. I could see some potential as the quality of real time rendering is very good nowadays
I'm also waiting for filmengine which could be interresting for filmmaking
I agree. I didn't play music for more than a year but everything is still there so I could play any time I want. However I don't think that is the same with IT equipment. Softwares and hardwares evolve continuously together. Nowadays you need more RAM, Storage, CPU for a software than 5 years ago, so if you want to use them, you must upgrade. Cloud computing wasn't accessible few years ago. Many applications are now accessible from the Cloud and I think that is a trend that will develop further. And instead of buying a new monster every 3-5 years wouldn't it be better to just have thin client that would connect to the needed ressouces and could be used anywhere ?
...why, beacuse of the level of hardware requred to render an image of a large enough pixel size to print at say 16" x 20" at a gallery quality resolution to be printed on a high quality large format printer, so that doesn't take a week to complete.
Yes I am looking at pixel sizes in the tens of thousands.
The main reason isn't so much making a "living" from selling at art shows & such (being a digitally produced work, by nature it cannot be considered an "original" so I would have to sell it as an unlimited photo print) as it is more a means of getting my work before an audience in a more tangible format than just viewing on a computer screen, and maybe wrangling a few commissions.
Yeah looks good I think you should go with those plans. :)
[snip]
Setting up a DS environment + content costs both storage and CPU/Access time. It is much more efficient to create the data in a format that encompasses everything necessary to perform the render with the least overhead necessary. RIB was invented for this purpose.
Before going with the interpretation you have, I would recommend that you discuss it with either an Attorney and/or DAZ. Just because you rented the time/space DOES NOT necessarily mean that you have exclusive control of the environment. Read the fine print on the agreement. If they suspect that "illegal activity" is occurring they reserve the right to take whatever measures they deem appropriate; including seizure of all data, processes, memory contents, etc. What defines "illegal" may change from site to site and uploading "copyrighted" content or installing "non-approved extra-license" software may very well put you in violation. I.E. Installing an extra copy of Acrobat Pro to a cloud VM to run OCR when your licenses are all allocated to personal machines is a violation that can lead to such actions. There are other ways to end up in violation that many don't consider. For instance, many pieces of software are licensed only for Desktop use forbid the installation on machines accessed by network only (network server). EDIT: For software/render engines that stipulate "non-commercial or educational use", the mere act of using a Cloud Service may imply commercial intent/use since rental of commercial equipment is involved.
Kendall
...and this is why I have no desire to set up a professional studio. Too much of a legal headache with EULAs and IPRs.
Well when the open source ATI ProRenderer gets integrated into Blender you have to consider the render farms then Blender users use will be the cost and usage gage to use for anyone considering such a render farm as a business. I don't think a render farm could render DAZ scenes without a special license from DAZ.
At any rate, I think GPU and CPU parallalization on consumer desktop & mobile devices will continue to improve enough such that one can make animations without out resorting to render farms. They won't be quite as accurate or extensive with regards to light behavior and one might guess things like cloth & hair dynamics and fat & muscle dynamics will be less accurate but they'll be better than anything available to consumers today.
Richard Haseltine posted what was allowed in the EULA regarding render farms in this thread from a couple months ago:
http://direct.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/122006/using-amazon-aws-to-render
"We checked this with Daz - as long as the content is uploaded to the render service only for as long as it is needed to do the render, and as long as it is not during that period available to others (a private, temporary, copy) then the use of remote render services is permitted under the EULA."
Thank you, that's very useful!
I don't know if $5-$10 a render is going to be worth it for most users (a rough quote from one of the services I looked at) but it is a very reasonable overhead for a published artist. I would be very willing to spend $50 a product to get all the renders done in an afternoon and be able to use multiple figures and big sets in a few. I own sets that I can't really use because the render load is too heavy (Aslan Court's Iray version with full mesh lighting is one).
I think the more difficult thing is going to be finding a service that will render Iray scenes from Daz Studio, or has that already been discussed? My search seems to find a lot of services that say they support "Iray renders," but then they don't accept .duf scenes? Is that why RIB is relevant?
Hi SicklYield. All render farm companies I have found don't no accept .DUF or any other daz studio file format for GPU or Iray. all the gpu rendering offers I have seen require Autodesk software like 3ds or Maya & few other companies offer rendering services for Blender and C4D & Architectural .cad files. Most Unity files formats are for Game Engines, and I seen cry-engine offers rendering farm services per core hour unit as well.. . So i think in order for these render farms to accept daz studio . The Daz-tec guys will have to come up with some kind of bridge or some kind of FTP port. like poser does with poser fusion. Or a direct FTP panel like autodesk has. because most of the render farms require FTP capabilities to access their farm if you read their system requirements., . The Renderman Site says they take Rib files for 3DL by API script. but i have not seen anywhere on their site about gpu .RIB files being accepted. , Does daz even have RIB for IRAY?
Maybe Daz has plans for the future to offer their own brand of rendering cloud service., But at this point that is just speculation. because no official word about it from daz has been even mentioned.
Umm...there is an export option to export to a Mental Images Scene file under File > Export. For Iray that shouldn't that serve the same function as rendering to RIB for 3Delight does?
I wonder if what I have been Reading on Grid-based Computer Animation Rendering . According to this article, .Mi files & Mental Images Scene file as you called it are the same?. Because if it is then its really a .Mi compression for Metal-Ray or GPU compression Where as RIB is a design compression for 3LD by renderman for 3Delight cpu core rendering. I think their kind of the same but different formats. one for GPU for Metal ray and the other for is for Renderman 3LD CPU rendering
.mi files are more related to DUF than RIB in that they are scene definition files. However, .mi files can be used as a render intermediary file format in the same manner as .obj is used for meshes.
Kendall
I apologize if this is a dumb question, or if I did not understand you correctly.
Does this mean that if I send a .mi file to a service that normally accepts Mental Ray they'll be able to render it in Iray and it doesn't matter where it came from? Because several services do 1. accept Mental Ray and 2. render in Iray.
Then would that not again be a issue with Daz ELUA , about porting .OBJ mesh to other servers. I know you can port the mesh to a .cad file for 3d printing for personal use as long at there no access to the mesh by third parties. does that cover porting it into a third party render farm as well, ? or it maybe be part of what is covered by what Kevin posted
Nominally. Materials may not match if they use Mental Ray vs Iray. They are different engines.
Kendall
Sounds like I better invest in that new 1080 after all, lol.
Based on Richard's quote above, I'd have to say there likely isn't a EULA issue, especially if the geometry is embedded into the .mi file instead of imported from external files.
Kendall
Contact me in email or PM. I have both Mental Ray as well as Iray (and others) and we may be able to get some tests)
Kendall
So now we may need metal ray materials for daz content if you want to use a GPU render farm?..Good grief ..lol
I'd be intersted in those results myself if you guys do some testing