If you're looking for a good, reliable rendering farm that doesn't take all day to get working, check out this great service!
Our volunteer computing network gives 3D artists access to near limitless free rendering power from anywhere, anytime. We enable people to create higher quality 3D art and encourage them to share it. By volunteering your computer today, you can be a part of the revolution and help make the next Sintel, Shrek or Toy Story
For more information head over the website!
46 Comments
Sounds great, I'll check it immediately :)
Free distributed rendering over the Internet, what a great idea.
My question is very important, not for me, but for the others too, I think: if I am working on a commercial project can I use renderfarm and if so, does renderfarm protects my rendered material, or everyone can see it once it is rendered? In this case, is there a limit of amount of minutes that Ican render with it? And, can I protect my characters and animation, so that noone can use it wihout my permission? Please, answer me, because for people that are not naive english speakers the info of the site (written in the official english for lawyers) is not easy to understand! Seems like I must hire a translator to translate it for me:)
@Peter, that is what F.A.Q.s are for, so please see the site FAQ
I'm definitely down to share some computing power for the next blender open movie if they choose to go this route.
@PETER:
http://www.renderfarm.fi/faq#q11
"Renderfarm.fi is inherently open by design. If safety to you means inhibiting people from seeing what they are rendering, it is not possible." etcetera
Amazing and brilliant idea! I love it!
I'm happy to donate my computing power but Peter above do have a point regarding security issues.
I'll look forward to your answer for his question.
Similar to that facebook app that was reviewed a while ago. Both very good services and will both be up for consideration when I'm working on my animated series over the summer ^_^
Peter: If you want to do a commercial project, I'd highly suggest using a commercial renderfarm, too.
Renderfarm.fi fortunately is open by design :)
"Please note that because of a bug that was discovered and fixed in Python, you will currently need to download our build of Blender, open your scene and upload from there. As this bug was duly fixed by the gracious Python devs and has been released in the latest 3.2 branch of Python, we hope that before Blender 2.6 comes out it will have disappeared. In short, for now, use our build of Blender for uploading. Thank you!"
Is this bug now gone?
Comment editing not working....
Just read through the site a bit and one thing that people need to be aware of about this site is;
YOU ARE SIGNING OVER DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS OF EVERYTHING YOU RENDER ON RENDERFARM.FI
Output rendered on the site can be freely distributed by those who were involved in the rendering process. While you can still take the footage, add sound and edit it together into a small film you cannot stop people from distributing the render output themselves. Personally, that's a deal breaker. The most protected license they offer is:
"CC By Nc Nd"
The community may share the output but not modify it or sell it
Granted them not being able to modify your output is a big deal and makes it pretty much useless to them but it's still not something I'd be comfortable with for a serious project. If I'm doing a series it means that people would have the right to distribute a silent base render of the ending when I was half way through showing it. I do still think it's a great initiative and I can see myself using it for smaller, personal renders but I just thought it was important to draw attention to this since the article doesn't.
Hey guys. First of all thank you for all the feedback (both positive and negative)! Just to clear up some things on copyrights and licensing (@PETER and @rorkimaru):
A) Even if you render on Renderfarm.fi, you remain the sole copyright holder. We nor the people who help you render get any copyrights to the materials that you created. Taken of course, that you yourself own the copyright to the material that you're about to render. In order to keep all the copyrights (apart from the license to participate for people and the license for us to use your materials for "marketing" = meaning to show it on the website), you can choose "copyright" for both the input and output licensing.
Directly from our terms of use (http://www.renderfarm.fi/terms-of-use):
"The Service is built in a way that requires sharing of 3D models and other copyrighted material to the members. The Service provider and the members are granted a royalty free, irrevocable, global license to reproduce the work only for the project purposes and for marketing purposes of the Service including but not limited to the use of still images and under 30 second video clips on the Service Web site and on rendering software screensaver. The rendering of the frames does not constitute a creative work. Members don’t get copyright to rendered frames. The copyrights to all copyrighted material including but not limited to 3D models, rendered frames and textures remain with the rights owner. All rights not expressly granted by the rights owner are reserved. Animator may define that upon completion the resulting animation or elements used in it are distributed with a certain license."
Please keep in mind, however, that this does not mean that people would not be able to abuse the license (or your copyright should you not want to license the material at all) that you distribute your work under. It merely states that should they abuse that license (for example use commercially something that they have not been granted the license to do), you have the legal grounds to go after them.
B) All of the volunteer computing based distributed rendering services currently available are inherently open by design. This is simply because until so far, no-one has been able to create such a technology. Now whether or not we want to actually create such a service is needed, at least for us at Renderfarm.fi, remains a question mark. You may ask yourself one simple question: Would you want to volunteer your computer to a project that does in no way give you feedback or the possibility to actually see what your computer is doing?
THE BOTTOM LINE: Renderfarm.fi is an open environment that enables people to help other people render their animations whether for commercial or non-commercial use. We nor the clients do not get *any* copyright to your creative work. However, when you use the service you have to understand that we (nor any other service currently available - regardless of what they may state) cannot protect your .blend file simply because in order for a rendering client to participate they need to have access to all the relevant data. We only maintain the rights to display your work for our own marketing purposes and hold an online session gallery for the enjoyment of everybody (including the ones who helped to render the session).
@ArMan: As far as I know Python 3.2 has now been implemented in to the main release of Blender (at least in the Windows builds), meaning the uploader should work straight out of the box if you download RC2 and enable the add-on. If it doesn't, please post on our forum and we'll get it fixed by the official 2.6 release.
For those who volunteer, but do not receive any work: we're working on a fix to this. If you've attached, the fix won't require any additional work from your guys, but might take us a while to get up. Sorry for the inconvenience!
@ArMan: Indeed, Blender 2.57 (release imminent) will be built against Python 3.2. Stronger even, without a set of patches you can't build current Blender sources against Python 3.1.
i tried to use render farm it but the BOINC client couldn't register me to the project. it was few month back. is it taking new registrations or not!
@Yudhir You should be able to join by first creating your account on the site and then attaching your client.
Wow, people, I do not understand a complex english, Ive red the FaQ and licensing stuff from the site, as well as the comments bellow, but still it is hard to me to understand all these complex sentences with many words that I do not know! So, my question is: if I make some animation that I want to sell and I render It with renderfarm, can I protect my work from unwanted distribution before date that is specified by me? I have no problem to share my blend files and renders after that for all types of purposes! please, just a simple answer: yes or no?
@PETER: Sorry for not being clear enough before. The answer is a definite no.
In case you want to be completely certain that your files are not available to anybody else before a certain date, you will need to either render the images on your own cluster of trusted computers, or trust a closed rendering service enough to use their services.
Volunteer computing based services will not work for such cases as currently (at least as far as I know) no-one has been able to create a system that could guarantee confidentiality.
Issue with new clients should be fixed. The farm is open for business for everybody now - sorry for the inconvenience. Anybody who joined could now press the "update" button in their BOINC client to get new Work Units. For those who don't, the system will automatically try again in a while. Thanks for sharing peeps!
Looking in the gallery most animations is rendered in "on part per frame" - Would not that solve all problems with sss and compositing? A one minute animation is 1500 frames so it should be enough for load balancing anyway. Can we control this when uploading jobs?
I have no problem with the openness but it would be nice to be able to set a release date at least 30 days in the future so it won't be shown on the gallery before and the chosen cc-license don't take effect before. Then the rest is up to trust.
It's still nice to be first to release Your stuff :-)
GPL would be a nice option, it actually make sens - .blend, .xcf. videoeditor files vs rendered files is a good source code / binary analogy. I also have one smaller but important issue with cc.
Anyway - Nice stuff - is there any reciprocating built in. So abundant recourses are shared free and fare but if theres scarcity the ones who have contributed get priority, possibly with a option to donate part of Your excess share ratio to project You like. This tends to make systems performance much more robust over time.
@PETER: Hollywood can't despise there own render farms. Unplug from internet and let *nobody* near might work.
It would be nice to be able to ask nicely and not end up in the gallery before - but protection is a blue dream. A secret shared by more then two people are not a secret anymore - some say two people is to much.
@LaH: Indeed rendering everything with only one part does solve many issues (though not all) related to distributed computing. Still while two things prevail: A) Blender does not support save state (meaning we cannot save progress on a current render to hard drive if the client exits) and B) we want to offer the fastest possible return of the frames to the client (meaning the creator of the work), it makes sense to support multi-part renders.
Yours and PETER's ideas about the 30 day release date is a good idea and we'll take that into consideration as a possible model for the future. In fact I think I'll write a post about it on the forum asking for people's opinions.
Reciprocity is indeed inbuilt into the system, but not yet taken into use. The fact remains that there are still many more volunteers than actual work units, so there hasn't been a real need for this yet. However as we add support for HDR imaging and some other stuff (higher memory support etc.), we might well apply some sort of a system that takes into account the amount of points that you've donated. At least in that you must have donated a certain amount of points before you are given full access.
Thanks for the input and the supporting comments. Really appreciate it.
@Julius. One question remains: Can we choose between one part or multi-part render or do the system choose?
@LaH
Only one way to find out!
besides: it's "does it choose?" and not "do it choose?"
Cedal: Thanks, but I'm uneducatable dyslectic by birth :-)
Hmm... right - try it...
Just added my quadcore 6gig of ram machine to the list :)
So, I'm curious, how do you go about seeing what your machine is currently rendering?
The video is very cute. :)
I'll see if I can get some CPUs online...
@LaH: We currently try to see what's the best cocktail for each session. For sessions with SSS and such, we obviously only have one option. In the future I hope we can offer an automatic system that will be less prone to human error.
@Blendiac: Unfortunately currently we don't have an actual screensaver for you to watch the rendering being done. However, it's been long on the to-do list and we've created a working prototype of it also. I think it shouldn't prove to be too much of a hassle to include a window to what you're currently rendering, while most of the screensaver would probably be showing off images from the most highest rated renders done on the service. You can recognize which session your Work Units belong to by looking at the session id on the WU. Armed with this information you can then go to see the gallery and check which session you've been rendering.
It's actually possible for us to also create lists of aliases who have participated in each session. This could later be used to also enable film makers to credit people who have helped in the making of their movie.
Wow, that's sounds great, gonna check it out for sure.
Only rather disturbing thought is the one of Co2-production... If people let their computers stay on longer to render images, the energy consumption will increase dramatically. I wonder if this farm has thought of that and is thinking of compensating that energy.
I almost always install something that demands my computer to be on all the time. It not so much about wasting more power then making sure that the one wasted comes to good use.
In the long run this excess computer power when it is needed can get people to buy more low-power computers - saving power in the grand picture.
In any case - cooperative cluster is probably better then dedicated servers - the computers in the co-operative cluster wold be on anyway at least most of the time.
Julius, where is that "Update" in BOINC? I can't understand about this problem with "no tasks". Please add a thread in the forum when it will be fixed.
Just added 12 core (24 thread) 16GB RAM monster to the cause. Hope it helps. I'll try to get my other computers on line later today. Can't wait to try it out.
Ha! Cool. The rabbit can talk.
@Sander: That's a very good question. In case you are interested, the International Desktop Grid Federation (http://desktopgridfederation.org/) will be producing a study on the "green" aspects of desktop grid computing during 2011. Here's a very interesting excerpt from their roadmap slides (available from their site):
"For volunteer desktop grids, important factors are the ambient conditions, and the type and efficiency of applications. When you are in a part of the world that is hot, and you need air conditioning to extract the heat from the room in which the volunteer computer is located, it takes about two times the energy to extract the heat from the room, that the energy needed to do the computing. In cold areas, on the other hand, less energy is needed to heat the room, because the waste heat from the computer heats up the room too."
"The scientific application and the way it is implemented, also can make a big difference in energy consumption. Preferably an application should use the processing power as efficiently as possible and not use other components of the system too much. Also there should be a right balance between the duration of the work on the volunteer computer and the mean time
between shutdown. It can also be necessary to advice, for instance lap top owners, to only let the Desktop grid use part of the computer capacity, to avoid the computer to start fans to extract surplus heat."
The question that we face is whether we actually create more work by enabling people to have access to cloud rendering, or whether that work would be done anyway in some other, less green way. I'm guessing it's both. However, as a service such as Renderfarm.fi potentially has some cultural implications (what ever they may be), it would be over simplifying things if we were to just approach the issue from one stand point. Would be interesting to see some research on this topic - perhaps a good master's thesis for someone? :)
@Moolah: The button should be located in the advanced side of your BOINC client under the projects tab (activate Renderfarm.fi and you should be presented with some possibilities on the left side menu).
I would share my PC power for a closed project.... if that gives me the opportunity to have my closed projects rendered too, I don't see why not.
@Dim: I'm sure you're not alone. Perhaps as encryption technologies that make genuine closed rendering on a network of non-trusted computers become available we can provide this option for users that want it.
sounds pretty neat, but why the #!@$ do we have to register ?
I hate registering to websites.
I don't understand why I should give my name, or invent a fake one, just to provide computing power.
This sounds like a really cool thing. I will be trying to get my computer on later today but I have one question.
Is it only for rendering images? Or are you able to render animation as well?
Anyway a really great idea can't wait to try it out!
@Dillbobaggins: You can render animations!
It's too bad that they don't release the server side of this and let people set up their own private distributed render farms. Between friends, I'd not be worried about any models being stolen. However, on renderfarm.fi there could be some dude in China that sits there grabbing every .blend that passes by.
Suppose I'll go back to FarmerJoe over Hamachi or manually walking people through rendering a series of frames. Anything I'd need renderfarm.fi for would be good enough to get me money. So far all of my crud so far hasn't been worth selling and hasn't taken my system more than 20 minutes to render.
I installed it the sunday and it seems like it will only come in handy with huge projects that will take more than weeks to render on 1 pc.
Not so good for me.
In all honesty, I am not 100% comfortable with this. The legal agreement needs serious work for the open source community. Otherwise it is a good concept for Blender.
I have 20 years of and on in the commerical sector. I am a registered houdini, xsi, lightwave and 3ds user. Thats right I have legitamate copies with manuals.
Renderfarm.fi is a brilliant concept. The legal agreement needs to change to represent blender users.
Blender is not the ultimate 3d program, but it is the 3D program that gives the poorest and those with the least resources a level playing field with those with a chance to put there work to all on a level playing field. I respect it for that and support it for that reason. I wish the guys from Renderfarm.fi to change there legal agreement to reflect that.
Afterall the Renderfarm.fi people come from the same country as the people who make starwreck.com and are making ironsky.net They have the ability to recognise early talent and support it like I wish I could. Something to maybe think about. I bought the Starwreck Imperial edition on the strength of the download. How many films can we say that about?
Renderfarm.fi has the potential to make every blender user a serious competitor.
I hope people produce more open-movies and animations I'm tired of the commercial ones and the copyright issues that comes with them.
Is there a way to donate computer time only to CC Commons renders or other liberal licenses?
I don't want to contribute to commercial renders, I don't feel they deserve anything for free, since they give little to nothing in return.
"Hello, my name is Big Buck Bunny, you may know me from such films as... "Big Buck Bunny".
Lol! XD
Awesome ad! Congratulations! Nice campaign. BTW Very clever the way Renderfarm.fi found to give credit for BF along the video. :)
@Wolvenmoon: The back-end is totally open source. You can download it from the BURP repository. The server is not a very simple thing to set up though. Perhaps in the future we'll be able to provide a all-in-one virtual box release of the software.
@Nemesis: What do you think is the problem with the current license terms?
Will it be possible to use the GPUs as well? Maybe at a later date? (any idea when?)
according to their site they will add GPU rendering once OpenCL has been fixed in cycles :) cant wait for that.