Renderfarms with Blender support are starting to appear everywhere! I'm sure this is good news as people are willing to invest in Blender-related services. I got an email from Aaron Kammerer, who has set up BlenderRenders.com.
Aaron writes:
We've tested our service up through 400 rendering cores, and we have the option to expand, though initially this has not presented a problem.
Our model is fairly simple in that we allow our nodes to see your entire upload directory, so assuming you have the appropriate file structure along with relative linking in place, you should be in good shape. However there are two things that do stand out. Fluids are tricky in that they require a directory structure to be more fixed, and python scripting using the -P flag from the command line is currently not an option.
We do have an initial 50 minute per frame rule on our renders which can be waived with an email request to us. Primarily the limit is in place because our current policy is to charge for resources used, and we dont want to put our customers in a position where, for instance, someone forgot to uncheck motion blur, and then a simple 100 frame job eats up their entire budget.
Our billing model utilizes Amazon payments which also helps protect our customers by ensuring two things: 1. Customers define a maximum authorization dollar amount that cannot be exceeded. In order to render more than the current authorization balance, a customer needs to re-authorize a new amount. This ensures that they never exceed their budget, even when they need to go to bed while renders continue overnight! and 2. Amazon has all the payment info and BlenderRenders never stores credit card, or even address information. That protects our clients' privacy.
If you register with the system, you can see our FAQ, which should also help clarify how some of this works. Registering doesn't require any billing info.
Aaron has offered to help us write a review by setting up a free test account. If there's anyone up for the job (which means you need a serious scene to render and you'll need to write a proper report about the service), please get in touch with me.
6 Comments
Frist psot!
More great news. =) its great seeing the community grow.
8-core, 20GHz dedicated machines for 1 USD/hr.
8 Core / 20GHz nodes ? That's some serious machines ... Are those teh same for Blender rendering ?
(replying to myself as edit doesn't seem to work)
I guess those are Amazon High-CPU Extra Large Instance (just a guess, tho) :
High-CPU Extra Large Instance
7 GB of memory
20 EC2 Compute Units (8 virtual cores with 2.5 EC2 Compute Units each)
1690 GB of instance storage
64-bit platform
I/O Performance: High
API name: c1.xlarge
from : http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/
cool
happy blending
Like when is 2.5 comeing out?
CONGRATS BlenderRenders!!!
This looks to be a very well thought out render farm and equally so you've put a a good amount of thought into the business model and customer focused billing policy!
In future you could expand to add production asset storage and other related online services, but until you have built strong customer demand and positive feedback, stick to your staged roll-out strategy building out the rendering system with the flexible billing model you have started with. Render farms like web hosts often differentiate themselves on reliability over service range, and you appear to have started with this aim. Continue with this vision and philosophy and you will still be in business when Blender 5.0 is out - and beyond!
I really hope this succeeds as this is kind of service is becoming more needed by the community as Blender grows in use.
This is another milestone in Blender's history!
Congrat's again!!
Very happy reading this, I went to test this service since I got 6000 frames to render. At the moment of creating the authorization I was forced to pay trough Amazon which is actually competing against PayPal business and Google check. Well guys ! why don't you offer also a PayPal payment method? I do not want to submit my credit card information to a new payment BUSINESS? Also Amazonpayment.com is still in BETA ! So, paypal or you have lost one customer ! By the way I was using Respower but they do not support 2.5, I guess only 2.46. What the heck is going on with blender's farms?