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RenderWeb now supports Blender 2.58

29

Last time we covered social rendering platform RenderWeb, it had only just launched. A few months on they've rendered over half a million frames, almost 2000 animations and are averaging 500 users per month. Now they are are announcing support for blender 2.58 to keep the platform up to date with the latest release. All you need to get rendering for free is a Facebook account and you can head over to the RenderWeb Facebook App and get started.

RenderWeb on Facebook

29 Comments

  1. Chrome Monkey on

    I believe there are public facing Facebook pages that can be viewed without a login. Could this one be set up that way?

  2. A potential problem with facebook accounts (not a huge one) is that work done/material posted within facebook is apparently considered to be the property of facebook (very small text). Although I'm doubtful if to date that domain has been exercised.

    Just a thought. Although the concept is really, really great.

  3. hey guys,

    i am the designer for the RenderWeb App. thanks for all the comments!

    we know that Facebook is not that most popular resource out there for connecting with people, but it is a way for us to easily tap into unused Rendering Resources. The App is designed in such a way, that there is no installations & no difficult scripting or commands to follow. If you have a Facebook Account, then when you post your Animation to render, you can recommend to all of your friends and family to help out. They simply click a button, and are quickly rendering a frame of your animation.

    One of the biggest requests we have had over the four short months since our launch is a stand alone applet (independent of Facebook). We have added that feature onto our Roadmap, but it is quite a way away from us launching it.

    As for ownership of data/images/animations: only data that is piped through the Facebook servers becomes their property. Our App is based off of an iFrame Facebook App, which means all of the data remains on the RenderWeb servers, and we are merely passing links to data through the Facebook servers. you can see how this works by clicking on APP on our website http://www.RenderWeb.org

    anyways, thanks again for all the comments! happy rendering!

    if you have more, post them! i will do my best to answer them...

    Nathan Moyer
    RenderWeb | Designer

  4. It won't let me use the app if I have Facebook set up to use HTTPS as I do.

    Thought you guys might want a quick heads up!

  5. Hi Nathan,

    I do not want a facebook account either HOWEVER most people do, so don't worry: you stumbled on all of the 8 earthlings who don't want one - and we all decided to tell you nay.
    Never mind: of course facebook IS the MOST popular resource today. So good luck to you, have much success with your very cool idea and Happy 4th of July if you celebrate it!

    Cheers,

    Arnaud

  6. @Ammusionist | we ran into the https errors recently. we added that to the list for the next few rounds of updates. originally, we only thought FB used https at login, but have since realized https can be utilized constantly. but, thanks for the heads up! we always appreciate hearing about volunteer/user issues.

    @Arnaud | yeah, FB is huge, but when we launched we quickly learned that much of the world (outside of the US) is fairly polarized on the topic of FB. that is when we decided to start mapping out a way to function outside of FB, with linking in to find rendering resources. Thanks again! and we will definitely announce if/when the standalone gets released!

    @FloridaJo | thanks for the "amazing" & happy rendering!

  7. Instead of Facebook and "your friends" community how about using the Blendernation.com and the vast Blender community? It can also be setup as a volunteer basis of course.

    Don't get me wrong, it's a great idea. It's amazing how much difference it makes with a couple extra computers. I have setup a render farm with three old computers and DrQueue and it was a vast improvement.

  8. @DHDDirect | glad to hear you had success, and saw what a private farm can do for rendering times and computational power! that is great!

    our intent with RenderWeb is similar, only add the ability to gain previously untapped resources. you can go into the App, upload a project, and set it to Private. then, move to each of your computers and click a button on your FB Wall to begin rendering your project. so, without linking your computers, installing apps on each, and running all of the tests to guarantee proper communication; you simply click the Recommend Link posted on your wall (optional).

    Also, i wanted to test out the accessibility of RenderWeb, so i got my 70+ year old relatives to donate their computers to my project. they, not even able to post an Update properly at times, were flying through an animation i uploaded. in the end, i had about 8 family members Volunteer to render a project.

    now, that was obviously done via much guilting on my part (haha), but i didn't instruct them how to do it. they already had a FB account, and simply clicked a button.

    so imagine you set up all of your personal computers, and you guilt your family/friends to help... you have now unlocked new computational resources. you have an even larger render farm...

    ...that was our goal. not to compete with other existing renderfarms, but to allow someone to tap into new power, for free & with ease.

    anyways, as always, happy blendering & happy rendering!

  9. I think RenderWeb is a great idea. And I think there are solutions available for those who don't want a Facebook account.

    You're right, Nathan--my family and friends can help me with RenderWeb, with ease of use for them. In fact, many of them are interested in my 3D work, so they'd find it neat to be able to help out in the process of creating rendered work. It's a simple, clever way to use Facebook technology as a render farm to produce some nice results.

    And now that you're supporting Blender 2.58, it'll be even more useful. I wish you success with integrating other 3D packages with RenderWeb as well. I think the more people uses this app, the better it'll push this unique initiative of "social rendering." Thanks to you all, Nathan and the rest of the RenderWeb crew!

    For those of you who don't want a Facebook account:

    Might I suggest Renderfarm.fi? Problem solved. I think the RenderWeb option's a little easier management-wise. Alternatively, you could just start a Facebook page, and invite only members of the BlenderNation community as Friends, and set up options on Facebook to where you're using Facebook ONLY for this purpose of RenderWeb--that's another solution.

    But if you still don't want a Facebook page, you may want to consider Renderfarm.fi for your needs. You'll find many Blender users of the BlenderNation community there. (As for me, I just use both! I like RenderWeb a smidgen more for its social aspect! I can Like people's posted work and even make a new friend or two!)

  10. For those who don't like facebook - what's stopping you from setting up an anonymous account and using it simply for renderweb? That would be exactly like having an account on renderfarm.fi or vswarm or anything else. Facebook's terms and conditions do not say that you have to have any friends or anything like that, so you could use your account simply for renderweb.

    And speaking of terms and conditions, if anyone can find that little text that says "A potential problem with facebook accounts (not a huge one) is that work done/material posted within facebook is apparently considered to be the property of facebook (very small text)." then tell me. It's all made up from paranoid net users. Get over yourselves :P

  11. I think actually that RW is a great resource to social rendering. A great concept. So, keep it up guys! It a great work!
    If someone doesn't like FB or "social media", always can render in its own machine. It's another fair option.

  12. donald watkins on

    The worst thing about all the people complaining Is that All they need is a facebook account They don't need to be socially interacting with any body. and there whining like they have to do everything on facebook. you don't even have to put your picture on there. all the stupid things people do on facebook are totally optional none of them have to take that option so why are they complaining. they can have a facebook account and be as antisocial as they like! they don't even have to tell people they have one. they should use their bashing for something more constructive..... politics maybe! ;-u

  13. Hi everyone. I am the founder of RenderWeb and just wanted to say hi to everyone at Blender Nation, and give a few brief comments.

    First, we love the response of the Blender community. When this project started a few years ago, I was always wondering if the community would even use it. The many hours of late nights programming was well worth it, and I am glad to see that the concept is being embraced.

    In the region of the USA that I am from, Facebook is everywhere. And, it was not until we released RW that we realized that FB was not as well received in other regions and within other communities.

    We choose FB as our deployment platform because it provides animators easy access to friends who will be willing to render your animations. While most RW projects are rendered by blender users, our hope is that volunteering will soon branch out towards the friends of Blender users. One feature to facilitate this is that when you submit a project, you can "recommend" the project to your friends. When you do this, a link is added to you FB wall. By simply clicking on that link, your friends (regardless of their knowledge of blender) can help render your animation. Once features like this start to take off, then rendering will be truly social.

    And as many of the posts have recognized, RW is not the only player in Internet rendering. In particular, renderfarm.fi is a great service. There is plenty need for computation to go around, so I think it is great that there are two emerging alternatives. Someone once asked me what the difference is between RenderWeb and renderfarm.fi. While it might be an over simplification, RenderFarm.fi's primary target for potential volunteers is within the open-source and BOINC communities, while RenderWeb is primarily seeking out users within the social network communities. Clearly, these communities are not mutually exclusive, but they are diverse enough to warrant two large scale projects for internet based rendering.

  14. Good lord... I have to get a Facebook account to use RenderWeb and NO OTHER MEANS OF CREATING AN ACCOUNT IS ALLOWED? I use Blender instead of Autocad because I don't like to hand the keys to my creativity and existence to proprietary closed entities. I certainly admire Facebook for what it has done for my friends. I have a 75 year old acquaintance who has had his life revolutionized by suddenly being able to get in touch with his old friends. I am not wanting a Facebook account as I am faintly disturbed by the invasive nature of the technology. So it is extremely disturbing that RenderWeb requires a Facebook account, and I certainly will be looking for another service. I suppose that RenderWeb might dismiss my concerns on the basis that nearly everyone has Facebook, but I'd like to ask them to consider who is among the small minority that don't. I know numerous legends of computer science, active and brilliant members of the the community and of the 3D viz world, who still use their original college emails and don't have Facebook accounts. They have similar reservations as I about our own relationship to Facebook. The web is not Facebook. The Facebook craze will pass, and other options will appear. At that point, a decision like this on the part of RenderWeb will look a little different. I will use and advocate RenderWeb when they offer more than one means of signing up.

  15. Chrome Monkey on

    There is a difference between User Content on Facebook (content that is stored on their system), and a Facebook APP. RenderWeb is the latter of these two.

    As an App, RenderWeb is not part of, nor does it create, "Facebook User Content". RenderWeb is hosted on its own server and communicates (at times) with the Facebook servers via the Facebook API.

    At no time are RenderWeb's Blender files, images videos, etc stored on Facebook's server. Stills and animations are uploaded to RenderWeb's server, and if someone "likes" or "recommends" any of these, it is done so as a Link to external content, not Facebook User Content. Moreso, if Facebook were to go into their own database, they have /no/ idea at all that a computer was volunteered, or that a project was uploaded.

    Simply put, this is much ado about a tempest in a Newell Utah teapot.

  16. Chrome Monkey...You nailed it.
    I really must say I don't understand this anti-establishment trend that keeps popping up with Blender users.
    These are all just tools, people.
    I don't use Facebook, I only recently signed up, and I almost never look at it.
    But it is free, and voluntary..not much to complain about.

    I recently tested RenderWeb and I must say I'm impressed.
    It is very easy to use, and with only about 20 to 25 cores at work on my scene it rendered out 300 frames of a complicated scene in only 11.9 hours. That would have taken my quad-core 3.2 ghz machine 78 hours to do the same. Wow!

    Now, imagine if we all got on board so we had an average of 100 computers donating a couple of cores each. Most of the time, no one with a quad-core would miss those 2 cores running in the background. That would give us 200 cores running. And with that, my scene would have cranked out in about 1.6 hours. I really think more people should get on board. This is a great service.

  17. Chrome Monkey on

    Well, the whole anti-establishment sentiment is just part of the natural built-in human prejudices, and the human race has had those forever... "These kids today with the fire and the wheel, it's getting out of control I tells ya. They have a new fad too, they cook the food and it gets all dry, like it's been sitting out in the sun too long."

    Anyways, I hear there's this new thing under development called Google Plus, just to confuse things even more.

  18. Patrick, we are not dismissing your concerns, and we realize that not everyone loves facebook. Quite simply, the RenderWeb team is comprised of two people. Myself, who is the sole developer, and Nathan who does design work and PR stuff.

    With such a small group of volunteers (we both have other full time jobs and we use our own money to pay for the servers), we do not have the resources to deploy renderweb on a multitude of platforms. Yes, it would be nice to have alternative ways of submitting projects to RenderWeb (and that is on our road map), but currently we have not had the chance to implement it. By having RenderWeb integrated into the Facebook platform, it provides a consistent manner for handling users logins and such (and a fairly secure one at that). In the future, we hope to branch the system so that users with multiple ways of logins can all work together. But, those things do not happen over night. It takes time and planning, especially if we are creating a secure system. Note that you can always volunteer outside of FB (by just going to http://www.renderweb.org), but you do currently need a FB account to upload.

    Our selection of Facebook as our deployment platform has nothing to do with politics, but simply the desire to allow Blender users to share resources and animation videos with each other. Is FB the best for this, maybe or maybe not. Will RenderWeb continue to evolve to best accomplish the goals of shared resources? I certainly hope so.

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