And they call us Brycers crazy for waiting for long rendering;

(These facts came in the form of an article in the recent "Computer Graphics" magazine I just got).

Blue Sky Studios who recently made Ice Age 2, upgraded their systems. They built a renderfarm that has a thousand (1,000) 2.4 Ghz cpu's. The average rendertime for a single raytraced frame?

13 hours.

Now, this must be the time that a single cpu takes to render a single frame, as Blue Sky had only 4 months to render the entire movie out. And, that is possible, if you have 1,000 cpu's!

The magazine did not quote the dimensions of the render, but films are usually made at either 2k or 4k (the width equals either 2048 or 4096 pixels). But, what size they did render out to though, I do not know for sure.

Additionally, as stated before, Blue Skies program (CGI Studio) is a raytracer and they do render out volumetrics, global illumination, and in Ice Age 2, characters with procedural fur hairs that numbers in the millions...for each animal.

So, mabe 13 hours ain't so bad.

I only have 5 very slow (266-1598mhz) computers (6 if you count an ancient Mac - but it's not on the link).

"Bue Sky Studios who recently made Ice Age 2, upgraded their systems. They built a renderfarm that has a thousand (1,000) 2.4 Ghz cpu's. "

I'd settle for 10 3.9 ghz.

Right now I'm moving all my Bryce stuff to a 900 mhz P2 so that When I'm rendering a Bryce scene in the future I will be able to  use my main computer for other things. It will take 1.7 times longer to render on the old 900 but whatcha gonna do. At least I'll feel free to start Brycing again. 

As you might well imagine  from the slow speeds I listed I can't even concieve of a decent render in Bryce taking only 13 hours even at 800x600. 

Wow and double wow. even if those computers only cost only 500  buckazoids a piece that's a half a mill . . .. Why I could live the rest of my life on that. Also even using wireless connections I'm betting that the network routing of that many computers would make even Greg Maddox cringe.( A few years back he did the sound system for Fresberg's County Courthouse).

(Thunder and lighning strike in background - no really ;we're having another storm)

Hmm I wonder what they're gonna do with all those computers when they are done???

-TJ

I wonder what they're gonna do with all those computers when they are done?

-Keep using them, lol.

Ice Age 1 made $383 Million worldwide that's not counting DVD sales...and Ice Age 2 has raked in $504 Million worldwide so far, and again, that doesn't include DVD sales. Or...stuffed toys, posters, etc, etc...

Blue Sky is definitely staying in the cgi industry.  ;o)

wow! no wonder the water looked so perfect! wow wow and double wow

I think the millions of procedural hairs are actually one of the less hard parts on the render engine compared to the GI and all that stuff. As I've learned from my recent attempts at using hair and fur in 3dsmax hair is often rendered with some kind of buffered method, rendering one procedural hair at a time. keeps memory usage rather low, which is good, and it goes TONS faster then creating polygonal geometry for all those hairs :) especially so if you create a seperate render tool for the hair passes, like something that's not good for anything other but hair... lol

The hair doesnt impress me as much within the 13 hours, what does impress me is the 4k resolution rendering with GI! That's massive. Especially if you use lots of water 'n stuff. Ever tried rendering a scene with GI and raytraced refractive objects? I did and quite frankly i wished i was back in bryce 'cuz even bryce renders refractive objects faster then that!

I still haven't been able to pin down at what resolution they rendered at.  ;o

oh, bw AS, what kinda hardware do you use currently?

AMD Athlon 3200+ 64-bit cpu - Gigabyte K8NS Ultra-939 Mobo  - 1Gb Pc3200 DDR - Wacom Intuos 3 9x12 - and a $6 mouse, lol.

I'll wait for the next generation of Windows OS before I graduate to a 64-bit OS, for now I stick with my Win 2K, sp4. Love it.

Cool, only 999 to go and u'll have a faster renderfarm then Blue Sky

We should do a colab bryce project as soon as alienware FINALLY delivers the dual opteron dualcore system me and my colleague ordered back in januari. You could like work ur texture magic, and I could throw in some TA and other shading type of stuff and get 4 instances of bryce rendering next to each other on the end result (one instance per core) and we'll post it in the 3dsmax gallery and see how many people notice it's actually bryce

Rofl...maybe not many would know.  :oD

Rayraz: The only way to get them to ship faster is to be a squeeky wheel.....call,call,call,call. By the end of the order process, I knew Mo, Larry & Curly by voice....and even a couple managers, Abbott was quite helpful. If you want the dialog, IM me.

(Next time it's a BOXX for sure)

haha yea i know, we have only one person we talk to now. Her name is stacy. It makes thigns easier if you talk to the same person every time. And if we dont get her, we ask for her. I think we're getting our guarantee period stretched by 3 years to make up for their slow service or such now....

Btw, the name Abbott sounds familiar.. lol

Did u also get this one guy who speaks english with a very french accent?

We were thinking of cancelling and going for boxx, but upon closer inspection a boxx of the same specs turned out significantly more expensive! I think it was actually like more then $1K price difference!

Serge was his name......Yup went through exactly the same crew. Good luck, hope it gets there soon.

Not to mention I heard Ice Age II was created using 3DS Max, or at least some of it was. As for the money they made, due to the movie industries creative accounting you can bet your sweet bippy that the reported values are only half of what they really made.

Its alright making $504 million but what do they feed them at this renderfarm? ';)

Old Mac's, lol....

"As for the money they made, due to the movie industries creative accounting you can bet your sweet bippy that the reported values are only half of what they really made"

As for DVD sales...Hollywood is usually very tight-lipped about those sales, as when those sales reports do leak out, they sometimes reflect the same high amount that was made in the boxoffices. Sometimes higher.

Big money in DVD sales.

Its almost worth asking the bank manager for a largish loan, getting 1,000 CPU's, making the film, render it, sell it, pay back the loan and live on the interest for the rest of your life!........what a dream! LOL.

If you go to virgina tech, do you get to use this on nights and weekends? Virginia Tech System X :)

Quote - Its almost worth asking the bank manager for a largish loan, getting 1,000 CPU's, making the film, render it, sell it, pay back the loan and live on the interest for the rest of your life!........what a dream! LOL.

if only it were that easy! lol