Was thinking of opening up my render server to those in the AM community. Server is 10 server array, dual 3.0ghz Xeon proccessors, 3gig ram. Server will operate with netrender (maybe SVN, will have to look more into). Will charge somewhere around $200 per hour of render time utillizing entire array. Is the community in need of a service like this? Please let me know click here

Just added poll to gauge what a reasonable fee might be for such a service. Remember folks, if I can't at least break even with costs for such a service then I cannot offer it! Please participate in poll if such a service could benefit you

Bungalowbill,

That kinda service can be a life saver for lengthy productions of such as mine. Also, they are helpful for Hi quality renders of short films. Keep up the service. I'll opt for one. Though I can't spend on the higher side.

Satyajit

this has come up before I don't think it ever really hit with any true excitment.
I don't think that there are a lot of big productions out there in the A:M community.

I would think that you would need to have it 'be worth it' to yourself primarily (for your own renders) and offer it as a service secondarily. I voted YES, it could save me in a pinch.

This is going to be a private server for the production company I'm starting, just wondering if it could be of use before my company is up and running

Hey Bungalow Bill (what did you kill... sorry),

What sort of return would we get on something like this? If I had a five minute short film that needed rendering, how fast would the farm be? (Understanding of course, that there are many variables in render speeds, but just guessing at an average.)

Once I get the server up and running netrender, I'll ask someone in the community to borrow a short clip (5 mins. or something) with all sciences involved (ray traced shadows, reflectivity, ect...) that they have rendered on their machine, I will then render on my server and post the results. Results will reflect their render times vs. my render times. Also I have my personal box (dual 3.2ghz Xeon processors, 2gig ram) that I might also render a copy and post those results as well.

As for how it would work, I'm thinkin you would email me a .zip file that would contain your project files, a folder with model pertaining to render, folder with textures, ect..., and a notepad document with your contact info (will probably use paypal, so your paypal id too). I will render footage and use actual render times (I'm sure netrender has time elapsed per render project, so I will use that), I will then send you an email detailling such and bill your paypal account, you can then except price and pay, I will then send you back .zip file with all your provided files plus rendered sequences, or not pay and I will just send you back your original .zip file.

Would most likely round time to the nearest 15mins. ($35.00 per). Still working out all the details. If anyone has any other ideas, feel free to post them. My production company will not eat up all that bandwidth for some time to come, so would be nice to aid community in freeing up there cpus for creation instead of rendering

At the current exchange rate, I would use your service for render overflow. But in all honesty that doesn't happen often, Our own studio machines are usually enough. I'd say we hire servers for rendering once a year on average.

Have you thought of contacting Martin at all about this? Perhaps do some TWO rendering for free in return for credits in the movie and DVD? It would also give users of the community some idea of render times on your farm as well as getting the name of your company out in the world.

Just a thought.....
Al

I have sending several pleas for renderfarm in the past. But a month ago I had to purchased my own (small) farm. But even if you would propose wour service sooner, I probablly wouldn't use it, since it is far too pricey.

Let's say that one would work on a short movie which would render 1 month on your renderfarm. With 140$ per hour that would cost aprox. 95.000$(!!!) for a month of rendering. Now you could build a similar renderfarm for around 10.000$, so do the math...

Tralfaz that's a good idea, I might just contact Martin and see what's up. And Kiki, the whole idea behind having such a large render farm is you don't have to render for a month, take your month render time and spread it across 20 cpus running a stripped down version of winXP, so none of the overhead bogging your cpu down. So a month should equal a day or two, maybe. Plus this service would more be aimed at people doing money jobs with deadlines (unless you got some extra cash for your hobby film), so most likely your client would eat the cost!

Maybe it is just me, but I can't grasp spending $140 / hour to rent rendering time. If someone is in a place that they need a farm, wouldn't you have to out way the price of just building a render farm? I mean, computers are extremely cheap, and if you are building a farm, you don't even need a whole machine, just a P/S, MB, Proc, and RAM. I built a 3 node cluster in a cardboard box when I was learning to setup clustering.

Now that I think about it.. I should see what happens if I run A:M on a vmware image of XP on a Linux cluster. Would setting the threads allow it to span the entire cluster? Hmm..