Hi all of you fellow Bryceaholics out there. I am starting this thread to discuss the pros and cons of Bryce Lightning. If you are wondering what it is, let me explain it.

Bryce Lightning is not a way to model lightning in a scene. Rather it is a way to speed up your render time for a Bryce project. I'm sure if you have worked with the software for at least a couple of months or longer, you have discovered that some render times can be much longer than the time it takes to compose a scene or an animated sequence. With Bryce 7 Pro you will also recieve Bryce Lightning. This is something that is supposed to help with render times by spreading the render operation among several computers. The way it works is as follows:

1. Have a network of friends or business associates who have Bryce Lightning installed on their computers. They don't have to have Bryce 7 Pro installed, although they can if they want to.

2. When you have a project you have put together ready that you know will take a large amount of time to render if you use just your computer, contact this network via e-mail or whatever to let them know you need the use of their computers to help speed up the render. Ask for permission to do this.

3. Now when you have it all ready, set up the render parameters. when you start the render, Bryce Lightning will make your computer the server, and all of the others in the network at that time will be the slaves. Each slave computer will recieve a portion of the project that it will render and send back to the server when done. The server then assembles all of the rendered parts into a whole. If it is an animated project, each slave computer will be used to render a certain amount of the frames, which are then assembled by the server.

Obviously, this is a way to create great works in a much shorter amount of time. In the case of animations, a clip that might have taken months to render can be reduced to a few hours or less, if you have enough computers working on it through Bryce Lightning.

Now this is my reason for starting this thread:

I would like to know what you think of this. Have any of you used Bryce Lightning, or tried it? Is it something you would be willing to try? If you have tried it, how would you rate it on a scale of 1 to 10? Would you recommend it to others, or would you warn others against it? If you think it is great after using it, could you describe the experience for the rest of us?

These are things I'm sure many of us wish to know about Bryce Lightning. I have it installed on my PC, but have not had the opportunity to try it out yet. I'm sure that it has its good points as well as bad points. The thing we need to know is whether it is worth using or not. The only way I can think of to know this, (without having used it), is to find someone that has and see what they think about it.

As a new product for Bryce, it probably has a few bugs that need to be addressed by the good people at DAZ 3D. The way to find these bugs is to work with the product and report the problems to its creators, so that they can work to improve it. This is how DAZ 3D improves all of the software and products they offer. I applaud them for this, as it allows their consumers to be a part of the process.

If you would like to know more about Bryce Lightning than what I have provided here, you can check it out at daz3d.com, or you can acquire the Bryce 7 Artist's Guide, (see my thread by the same name, also in this forum), which has a section that explains it far better than I can.

Well that's pretty much it for now. Let me know what you think. I will welcome any and all comments concerning this here.

Thank you.

I think my brain is in my big toe!

Why?

Because when I stubbed it, my Doctor said I had a concussion!

I've never had the hardware to use it but Lightning has been around for quite awhile, at least B5.5 I believe.

Oops... I've always misread it as Bryce Lighting, and all to do with ... oh, never mind. So is this something like the render farms people talk about?

Just checked and yes, it's installed, but never used.

Quote - I've never had the hardware to use it but Lightning has been around for quite awhile, at least B5.5 I believe.

Thanks for that bit of information. I did not know that. Of course I am new to the digital art community. I've only been using Bryce for perhaps 7 or 8 months. I started with 7.1 PLE, and upgraded to 7 Pro 3 months ago. I have already created a lot of pretty good pieces with the software. Since acquiring the Bryce 7 Artist's guide, I have increased my skills with the software quite far.

Still there are things possible with Bryce Lightning, if it works, that boggles the mind. We could create our own network of Bryce users with the Bryce Lightning Connection. Use it as equal partners, and even for colabberations on art pieces, both still and animated.

Quote - Oops... I've always misread it as Bryce Lighting, and all to do with ... oh, never mind. So is this something like the render farms people talk about?

Just checked and yes, it's installed, but never used.

It may be a type of render farm, I can't say for sure. All I know is that this has some fantastically great potential if it works well. The way I understand it, you and your group can create your own network of users and friends that can work together to complete a project. I think it is a great way to do things.

I used Lightning some years ago when I had three different PC's all about equal in power. It was little tricky to setup and understand it the first time around but I got the hang of it fairly quickly and it worked very well, speeding up my renders noticably. I do think I was using it with Bryce 5.5 at the time? (wow, time flies).

I haven't used Lightning in a long time just because I eventually invested my computer budget money into building a single powerful computer since as the years went by, most of my other programs needed a beefy (single) computer to work well and they could not be networked to perform better. (i.e.; Photoshop, ZBrush sculpting, etc)

Lightning also became less of a used tool for me because the more powerful single computer I built has a quad core cpu which is (almost) like having four individual computers networked up as a render farm.

Overall though, Lightning is a a bit of a enigma to me as it a HUGE opportunity for Bryce as its Ray-Traced scenes do take longer to render and having any amount of extra computers networked into a rendering farm is only going to be helpful, but...you rarely hear of anyone ever using Lightning. (and some of the Bryce users have been in this forum for many years)  ;o)

AS

It seems that perhaps the promotion of Bryce Lightning might be the reason it is seldom used. When I think about the professional quality of the things that can be done with the DAZ 3D software, (including Bryce), and the fact that most of us are not using it to its fullest potential, it makes me wonder if the company offering these programs are doing enough to get the word out. To me, these programs are among the best for the amount of money paid.

Yes, I've had Bryce Lightning for many years now but only now am I almost ready to try using it.  At last I have the option to use some other hard drives as well as my four core main computer, plus I may have an eight core in the future.

However, not having used it before I could do with some help in figuring out how it works, and how you connect things up for it to work.

I'm away from home at the moment, but hope to be back with all these options and extra hard drives at the end of July.

The trouble is that since so few people use Bryce Lightning is very hard to get information on this subject, from users. So we may be stuck with the kind of information you get in a manual -- hopeless!

I understand that Bryce Lightning is not a render farm itself - it is merely the program to connect and get a render farm working - the farm being an array of harddrives/ or other computers acting as slaves to the main computer, and that you can either send all the rendering to the slaves, or include the main computer in the rendering job...

I think the reason it's hardly used is that most people just have one computer at a time, not many have extras PC's or Macs lying around available for such a task.

Quote - Yes, I've had Bryce Lightning for many years now but only now am I almost ready to try using it.  At last I have the option to use some other hard drives as well as my four core main computer, plus I may have an eight core in the future.

However, not having used it before I could do with some help in figuring out how it works, and how you connect things up for it to work.

I'm away from home at the moment, but hope to be back with all these options and extra hard drives at the end of July.

The trouble is that since so few people use Bryce Lightning is very hard to get information on this subject, from users. So we may be stuck with the kind of information you get in a manual -- hopeless!

I understand that Bryce Lightning is not a render farm itself - it is merely the program to connect and get a render farm working - the farm being an array of harddrives/ or other computers acting as slaves to the main computer, and that you can either send all the rendering to the slaves, or include the main computer in the rendering job...

I think the reason it's hardly used is that most people just have one computer at a time, not many have extras PC's or Macs lying around available for such a task.

You are right about it being a way to connect and get a render farm going; however, if I understand it correctly, it is also a way for multiple users to create a project by working together. I figure than anybody working with me on a project, no matter what part he or she is working on, will have the right to own a copy of it. Naturally the person that conceives the project would own it as intellectual property; but if it is the brainchild of more than one person, all contributers to the concept should own it as intellectual property.

Of course I'm not saying that Bryce Lightning is for anything more than the rendering process; however, if you have a network of fellow artists, friends, and associates that are willing to work with you on your project, Bryce Lightning would be a great tool to have in your collective arsenal. Speeding up render times can cut your production time  way down, allowing you to reach publishing readiness much sooner.

I could see a team of artists getting together to form an online production company. They would work toward mutual goals to create a production, and use things like Bryce Lightning to speed the rendering. And they could discuss ideas among themselves, vote on the issues at hand, and decide what to work on. Any profits made would be split as evenly as possible. Also, if one of them has a problem that needs to be addressed, the others can help find the solution.

Although Bryce Lightning is a way to link several computers to speed up the rendering times, (and I think this is great), it may be due to trust issues that it is not used as much as it could be. People don't want others taking control of their machines. This is why I suggest an association of Bryce Artists that would be an environment with rules and regulations that all members would adhere to. In this way, each member would be able to trust all other members. The work that could be produced this way would without a doubt be phenomenal.

quote "We could create our own network of Bryce users with the Bryce Lightning Connection. Use it as equal partners, and even for colabberations on art pieces, both still and animated."

I don't think Lightning is a virtual internet render farm.  It is the software driver for physically linked machines. 

One thing I remember someone saying was not to make your fastest/most powerful machine the host but instead set it up as a slave to the controlling unit.  The host is simply the "traffic cop" to the machines doing the real work. Hope that helps some.

@ Fran

8 CORES !!!!    I'm pulling for you to get two of those machines and link them.  16 CORES of pure power.  Wow. 

4 cores makes me sniffle and 8 cores makes me cry like a baby. I was planning a serious new comp in sept but my partner just recieved her redundancy notice as the company she works for is re-locating its centre of operations. Sooooo my current Win xp 2.6 and 2G ram is just going to have to keep on truckin.

Cheers

GG

It seems that many of us would rather have several computers of our own linked in this way for the rendering process. In other words, have just one machine that works as the server, along with 3 or more machines owned by the same person that act as the slave machines. While that may be an ideal set up for many of us, there are people like me that can only afford the one machine; and like me they would love the opportunity to use a tool that could speed up the renders.

I like this comment from skiwillgee: "One thing I remember someone saying was not to make your fastest/most powerful machine the host but instead set it up as a slave to the controlling unit.  The host is simply the "traffic cop" to the machines doing the real work." It makes sense to have the more powerful machines doing the work while the least powerful one coordinates it all and does the assembling of all the parts rendered by the others. Of course this would mean the person with the least powerful machine has control over all the others for this  purpose. Perhaps this is where trust issues would arise. Like I have already said, having an association of willing participants, who would be subject to a set of rules and regulations, would definitely help to alleviate such issues. 

Agent0013,

Again I don't think Lightning will do what you are implying.  It is a hardwired network of machines, not a virtual collective over cyberspace.  At least that is my impression of what that particular bit of software does.  That is why you are not finding many folks with any real experience.  Not many people have multiple computers daisy chained in their play rooms and homes. 

You are invisioning some setup like SETI's. 

Correct. Lightning is as I knew it and as I read about it now, is just for chaining physicaly networked computers together for splitting up the job of rendering images or animations. As I understand it, it does nothing else, nothing in the way of networked or online networked collabrative scenes or projects.

Now...what I do not know; if I had a collection of say a dozen computers, could I somehow configure Lightning on each of them so that anyone else, anywhere online (that was using Bryce & Lightning) could use their own Bryce to use my cpu's to help speed up their own renders? (from like, the other side of the planet?!)

I don't know. But, that would be a cool ability.

Btw;
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/pub/bryce_lightning/renderfacts

Quote - Correct. Lightning is as I knew it and as I read about it now, is just for chaining physicaly networked computers together for splitting up the job of rendering images or animations. As I understand it, it does nothing else, nothing in the way of networked or online networked collabrative scenes or projects.

Now...what I do not know; if I had a collection of say a dozen computers, could I somehow configure Lightning on each of them so that anyone else, anywhere online (that was using Bryce & Lightning) could use their own Bryce to use my cpu's to help speed up their own renders? (from like, the other side of the planet?!)

I don't know. But, that would be a cool ability.

Btw;
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/pub/bryce_lightning/renderfacts

From what I read when I recieved it with my download of Bryce 7 Pro, Bryce Lightning is supposed to be able to be installed on computers even if they do not have Bryce installed. I believe it was indicated that you could contact your friends and associates and ask them to allow this, after which you could then use their computers to help with the rendering of large scenes and animations. Basically you create your own render farm. I don't know if this is true but if it is not, then the text that came with it is misleading and needs changing to clarify the meaning.

Quote - Agent0013,

Again I don't think Lightning will do what you are implying.  It is a hardwired network of machines, not a virtual collective over cyberspace.  At least that is my impression of what that particular bit of software does.  That is why you are not finding many folks with any real experience.  Not many people have multiple computers daisy chained in their play rooms and homes. 

You are invisioning some setup like SETI's. 

  I am only suggesting that a network of artists could get together to build an online production company. Bryce Lightning would be just one of the tools they could use to cut render times way down. I know that it is not a network in and of itself. The network I speak of would be something that is outside of Bryce Lightning, but the use of Bryce Lightning would be available to that network.

I apologize if I was not as clear as I should have been concerning this.