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--- render [2015/06/01 20:14]
slackermedia
+++ render [2021/06/03 19:48] (current)
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-[[{arrowp.png|border:0;background:none;width:0;display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;left:0;}slackbuilds|]]
-[[{arrown.png|border:0;background:none;width:0;display:inline-block;position:absolute;top:0;margin-left:2.5em;}jack|]]
-====== Render Farms ======
+====== Render Farming ======
-Rendering can take a long time, but building your own render farm is easy as long as you have a few computers and a good render farm manager.
+Rendering in Blender can take a long time, depending on resolution and complexity. With the rise in popularity of homebrewed and small studio 3d art, there are countless Internet-based render services available, and depending on your requirements, that might make sense for you. As always, it makes sense to support services that support open source, and one of the best supporters of open source rendering is [[http://render.st|Render Street]], with Blender Cycles, LuxRender, and Yafaray services available. They are sponsors of Blender, and also help fund various open movie projects.
+Render Street operates on a sliding scale, so pricing is relative to your needs.
-==== No Farm ====
+There is an entirely no-cost option at [[https://www.sheepit-renderfarm.com/]], although in order to "pay" for your renders, you must also contribute computer time to other people's renders.
-Dirt simple renderfarm. no scripts needed.
+You do not have to submit your renders to the Internet just to speed up your export. Building your own render farm is easy as long as you have a few computers to spare.
-Hey, recently I added some small features for peach that have an impact on small home renderfarms.
-Auto-Threads, This option is in the output panel and is enabled by default. It makes the threads setting use the number of cores/cpu's your system has. This is nice if your rendering with various systems, some multicore.
+==== Afanasy (Cg Toolkit) ====
-On the command line give the argument -t 0
+Afanasy is part of the [[http://cgru.info|CGRU Cg Toolkit]], and it includes software to drive the render farm, to manage the render queue, scripts to produce dailies, and more.
+Set up is fairly simple; install the server on a "master" machine, and install and activate the Blender plugin (so that jobs can be submitted) on the client machines.
+One installed, jobs are submitted through the ''Render'' panel in Blender.
+{{ afanasy_properties.png }}
+Currently there are no SlackBuild packages for Afanasy, so you will have to build and install from the project website.
+==== No Farm ====
-Buttons in the output panel -
+If any kind of render management system is overkill, you can create an ad-hoc render farm in Blender itself. This is the duct-tape version of a render farm, but if you just need two or three computers working on a render to speed things along a bit, this could be a good solution for you.
-  *"No Overwrite" - never overwrites existing image files
-  *"Touch" - Create an image file before rendering.
-With these options, you can point each blender instance to the same network filesystem, and hit render and render on each. and they will all render frames until there is none left.
+In order for there to be multiple machines working on the same render, you //must// render to an image sequence rather than to a movie file. The reason for this is simple: each computer (node) will take one image to render.
-You cant be 100% sure 2 PC's wont render the same frame, however the likelyhood is low enough in a fast network, its not really worth worrying about too much, though we can use semaphore locks at some point.
+Before you render, go to the **Properties** panel and click the **Render** tab. In the **Output** section:
-Thought users might like to know this since its really a no brainier to setup.
+  *Overwrite: Turn this **off** so that no node in your ad hoc farm overwrites the work of another.
+  *Placeholder: Turn **on** so that each node create an image file immediately upon claiming the frame to render. This prevents two nodes from working on the same frame.
+  *File Format: Render to image files, not to movie files.
-So you could render from the commandline like this...
+With these options activated, you can point each Blender instance on each computer to the same network filesystem, (you can use **fish** or **samba** in KDE) and open the scene you need to render. Each computer will render frames until there are no frames left to render.
-    blender /network/drive/foo.blend -o /network/drive/out -t 0 -a
+You can run Blender in the background:
-Be sure to have -f # or -a last since rendering will run and evaluate the other args later.
+<code>
+$ blender /path/to/networked/file.blend \
+--render-output //relative/path/to/output/dir \
+--background --render-anim -E CYCLES \
+--threads 8
+</code>
+Which means:
-==== Farmer Joe ====
+  *blender: invokes blender.
+  */path/to/networked/file.blend: the path to the file that you want to render; store it on a networked file system so that other computers on your network can reach it.
+  *--render-output: this is the path to the directory where you want you output files stored. Note the special syntax of preceding the path with //two// slashes (''<nowiki>//</nowiki>''), which in blender-terms means "path relative to the .blend file being rendered".
+  *--background: run in the background rather than launching the GUI interface.
+  *--render-anim: render the animation in the .blend file (you could also render the scene).
+  *--E: which render engine to use (use ''-E help'' to see a list of available engines)
+  *--threads: how many threads to use while rendering (''0'' tells blender to decide on its own).
-http://blender.formworks.co.nz/farmerjoe/README.html
+Blender is very strict about syntax. The options themselves must come //after// the file paths, and you cannot combine flags (so the traditional combining of options ''-b -a'' into ''-ba'' cannot occur), nor can you omit spaces between flags and arguments (no ''-ECYCLES'' when you mean ''-E CYCLES'').
+For further details on options that you can use in the shell, run
-==== CGRU ====
+<code>
+blender --help
+</code>
-[[http://cgru.info]]
+<WRAP centeralign>
+<wrap fa>[[qtractor|R]]</wrap> <wrap fa>[[start|S]]</wrap> <wrap fa>[[rosegarden|Q]]</wrap>
+</WRAP>
-[[{arrown.png|border:0;background:none;width:0;display:inline-block;float:right;}jack|]][[{arrowp.png|border:0;background:none;width:0;float:right;}slackbuilds|]]