Bryce was my first 3D rendering app ever, i got Bryce 4 quite cheap in around 2000 and although i liked the "ease of use"  i somehow abandoned it after a while.

Now like 10 years later I am a bit surprised that it still looks and feels how i "left" it. There are probably a million new features "under the hood", but on my first few clicks in it I still have the feeling i did something wrong and accidentially installed my old version.

maybe it's really just too long ago and my mind is playing tricks on me, but only difference that was "obvious" for me was the tree button (Which is quite neat imho!).

I think editing of terrains also became a bit better (I at least seem to recall it was "worse" in version 4), but my terrains still look quite crappy, i think i just lack the talent or practice. If i get anything done that doesn't look like a 5 yo made it imma post a pic in the gallery tomorrow.

I'm not really like "over excited" about the Version, but it feels a bit like a time travel, so I am still glad i get to play with it.

It will be around 2000 Euro, but only because i use pre-owned components, luckily i get warrant 12 months, so imho this is as good as new stuff. Also i already had the Windows serer 2003 enterprise license - was on a burned server case i bought on ebay for very cheap, so i basically got it for free. These are normally expensive i think.

Okay i checked the RAM, its not that bad... I found a seller where i can get the ECC Ram for around 20 EUro per 2 GB bar, so thats 320 Euro for the RAM which is imho affordable, i think Apples holy RAM is more expensive (But they always had odd points of view regarding RAM prices, i think if you buy RAM from apple you are really rich.). I think its good to have fault checking because with 16 RAM bars you raise the chances to have a faulty one. I already spent too much time with RAM related faults, i already  have a boot CD with a RAM Test out of my experience.

I plan to use Windows 2003 enterprise server, i got a 64 Bit version, i assume it will run fine with opterons?

I hope the boxed fans will be well enough to cool them enough for a permanent 100% CPU loads, i am unsure about this as no normal server in a business has 100% CPU load, i dont think they really are MADE for that, but i could be wrong.

Good topic, after some experience with rendering times in Vue regarding loads of reflections i am building up the perfect Vue computer. My current checklist:

• **ASUS KFN5-Q/SAS  (4 x Opteron 8000 Series Quad)
• 4 Opteron 8XXX Processors @ 2.5 GHz, not overclocked (at least for now)
• 16 GB DDR2 RAM
• Simple 1 TB SATA drive, maybe 2 for RAID 1
• Windows Server 2003 Enterprise edition 64 Bit

I would have loved to get a mac, but i would have ended up paying as much for an 8 core machine as i now pay for the 16 core machine, so it was not really an option.... Maybe if i find some new project for funding?**

Thank you everybody so much, without your help i would have bought so much Junk. Now i have bought a ASUS KFN5-Q/SAS which has 4 Socket F for Opteron 8000 Class processors.

How is that called when i fill it with 8XXX Quadcore opterons? HexaDeka Core?

I will try to get 4 Opteron processors at 2.5 GHz, so i have a 40 GHz parralel computing power. I have read i hsould go for paired (matched) pprocessors. I think it will be just fine when i look the revision numbers printed on the processor will be the same, right?

Also i have read that the board needs DDR2 667 Reg. ECC RAM, well the DDR2 667 is quite obvious, but whats Reg ECC RAM, anything special to look for? Also what power supply do i need? I think with 4 opteron, fans, discs and stuff i will need a bit more than the usual 350 Watts?

Thanks again everyone for your input, you guys and gals really saved me!!!

I'm currently testing Vue 6.60 rendercows on WINE under Ubuntu and it seems i can these to run stable. This would be the cheapest solution. Note that there are cheaper hardware vendors then Dell. My current lowcost setup is AMD Phenom with 8 GB of DDR-II Ram, NIC and VGA on a lowcost Motherboard.

Hi Chipp,

Yes you are right - "altering rendercow" is of course out of question. So the final software will just act more like a "macro", entering info like it was the user. Also in the discussion is currently the possibility of directly writing into .ini files (where settings are stored) or the registry. The application itself will definitely NOT be changed as this would not be possible due to licensing reasons.

In Windows setting the affinity is possible with the WIndows task manager, this is part of the operating system not the application and should be easy to control. Here the application also will NOT be changed. I do not (yet) have a mac to try, so unfortunately software development will need to focus on the windows version first unless some friendly mac programmer wants to help out.

The amount of data needs to be limited, talking about the file size of the scene. I am not 100% sure how to do this with the software, either the software has to check the filesize by the user loading the scene into the OpenVue software, or with some kind of demon process that continously checks the files submitted for their size. For the beginning we will need to just "agree" not submitting ridiculous large files, but we will try finding a software solution.

I can only speak for my windows related rendercow, but in the current version (6.60) it is remarkably stable, i have not yet had one single crash in the tests. I can not say the same for the windows rendercow running under WINE (in a linux environment), but this is rather a side project and I am working on that.

Oh and Chip - is that true - you have a LAN with 1 MB/Second??? O.o
I have gigabit Lan here (1000 MB/second) and i would REALLY want to talk you into upgrading, Gigabit Network cards became really cheap (Around the price of a good lunch here in germany), and having 1000 times faster network is really worth investing a few bucks.

However - Yes this IS a flaw, agreed, i already mentioned that in my original post. Sending terrabytes over the internet will not be an option, OpenVue is not meant to handle terrible huge files.

Dear Artpearl,

1. We are currently doing it technically, so YES.

2. What is illegal with using someone else's computer to render???? If this is illegal then all render farms including Ranch Computing must be illegal following your logic. I am no attorney, but I don't think so.

No, your hypervue is by default limited to 5 nodes, so you can not render your animation with more then 5 nodes unless you buy additional rendercow licenses. You can install rendercow on any machine, the cow itself will not ask for any serial or be bound to one.

Sidenote: Cow was down for server re-configuration, but now its up again, so everyone can stress it again.  =)

@warangel:

1. I recommend looking at this site:

http://www.portforward.com/routers.htm

It gives good instructions for about every existing router model. On the site you can pick a game to set up, just take any random one and in your mind replace the "port number" mentioned there with 5002. This is the standard port rendercow uses on startup.

1. As there are no known exploits for rendercow you can not get hacked through it. Due to the simple nature of the rendercow communication chances that flaws appear in future versions tend to zero. E-on would really need to be terribly drunk to make a future rendercow insecure.

Yeah Ranch computing has awesome performance, and while being "affordable" in terms of professional services it is for sure no solution a hobbyist user would ever use. Really! I had once played with the idea of using the ranch for a 1 minute animation of a very complicated scene with a huge ecosystem and on my system here at home it would have taken ~ 120 days to render the animation. After tweaking lighting/atmosphere/resolution i got it down to about 20 days which was still too much for an impatient guy like me. I used the ranch price calculator and while the animation would have rendered in less then 6 hours at the ranch it would have costed like 1200 USD. And 1200 US Dollar for 60 seconds of animation is not what the usual home user can afford. Just for the records: in the original settings that would have taken my computer 120 days it would have costed a whooping 7900 USD.

Yes - maybe some home users can afford to render a single frame still image for a few bucks there, but OpenVue is for hobbyists like me that want to render 1 minute animations a bit faster then 20 days.  :-)

Don't get this as a try to defame ranch Computing, their prices and performance are much better then anything else and for a professional service they are probably super cheap and stuff, but for private users like me and many others here that had to save up the bucks for Vue itself, it is out of question to spend 100 Dollars here and there for faster rendering.

I don't think OpenVue will be appealing for professionals or that it could be acompetition for ranch Computing. This is neither the focus of the project nor very likely.

Hi Johnj1611, the current approach utilizes the second mechanism - the ip addresses (hostnames) of participating clients will just be added to your hypervue list, so there is no difference between a network rendercow you have at home (maybe your old laptop or secondary computer?) and an OpenVue rendercow, the only difference is that your home rendercow has a local IP Adrress and OpenVue rendercows have an internet IP Address.

I have not yet tested anything with protected content yet, but from my understanding - if you can render protected content on your home rendercows it should also be possible with the OpenVue rendercows.

And again: Everyone is welcome to render your test scenes via my official OpenVue rendercow. Just add darkfire.zapto.org with Port 5002 to your hypervue and give it a try.

:-)

Thanks you all for your comments!

I will try answering what i can:

@Artpearl: Yeah now in the earliest beta phase i still dont ahve a software that controls the resource usage on your computer, but i plan at a later phase to have the rendering threads adjusted so they will NEVER steal CPU power from your other applications by making the rendercow thread lowest priority of all processes, so it will only get CPU power if the CPU has true idle time. You can however be a passive tester if you want, right now i am at work, so in these times it is also okay to have a "larger" test render processing if you want to.
There might be users that drive their processor at 100% load for around 95% of all the time, but from my research (I interviewed some "hobbiist" artists) this is a rare occassion and while many people have days where the render 24/7 there are "usual" also times when the CPU is idle (i.e. the phase when you create scenes, do postwork or just need a creative break).

@Rutra: Generally you can save a scene with all textures included, there ARE Cornucopia3D objects that you can buy "protected" or "unprotected". If you buy the protected version it unfortunately cant be helped. All professional renderfarms will also have this problem, only exception is Ranch computing, it is rumoured they got a special version by e-onsoftware that ignores the protected flags and can "access everything" regardless of the serial. I dont expect to get that version for obvious reasons, but this is a quite small limit that should also occur in your network at home. If you have a rendercow installed on some random laptop in your home network or some user of OpenVue in lets say asia it should not be a difference. A cow is a cow is a cow. I think with byuing protected content you are willingly buying such problems - but i have not yet had the chance to test this to confirm it is really impossible to render this. I challenge you to just try it out, my node is waiting for you.  smile  =)

About security: rendercow has NO known exploits, meaning it is safer then about every other internet related software. As the rendercow and what it does is quite simple compared to programs like winamp, emule, other p2p software etc i think it is very unlikely that exploits appear as the accepted data is very very limited, i yet have not found any handle for exploits and think it is unlikely one will appear.

For the rendercow version we try to have the same version (latest 6.60) for all nodes in the beginning to make testing easier. This version is reported to be stable for most users and seems to be widely accepted, so for pure testing this should be okay. Later on i might implement a version control in the management module, so Vue 6.1 users will only render to 6.1 cows. Maybe there is also another solution, but we will care about that at a later point, we have to care for the basics first.

@jonj1611: Well maybe you have some times here or there where you dont drive your computer to 100% cpu load, i initially thought my own computer has the same workload, being ALWAYS in use, but de facto it is not utilizing the CPU over a constant 100% when i really measure it. I might also add a feature that only "offers" your cpu if your screen saver is running and the CPU load is below a set threshold (like under 50%). unless your computer is a pure renderfarm node it is very unlikely that your cpu is really at 100% "all the time" (For a desktop you'd probably have problems if this is the case).

Right now i need testers! Torture my node with your test renders! Try to not overdo it too excessive, but right now you can also send files that take long to render. better a very busy node then having noone testing at all! And it would be awesome cool if we could get another rendercow node for testing! crossing fingers

Yeah the scene is deleted now, Turbosquid instead links you to 1 of trillium36's palnts.

I think it's a good thing he took it down, copyright violations can be expensive.

The picture is so small it is really hard to see what it could be. Without knowing the scene and only seeing these tiny pics i can only agree - yeah there seem to be some artifact, but just by looking at these i can not tell what it is. Could be the background of your scene or so. I would like to see the whole image.

Every bird should have a unique movement or it will look atificial. Long ago since i animated something in poser, but cant you just copy one birds animation and then move the keyframes a bit or so? I think that should be sufficient for each one to look unique.