Hi Rob,

your message went under the radar because you sent it to the 'info' e-mail (from where came your registration validation) instead of the 'contact' or 'support' e-mail. I'll answer you today.

Fred

Attached Link: http://www.ranchcomputing.com

in the case you'd like to send projects to the RANCH, I recommend you read our PDF User Guides here. You will find answers to most of the questions you can have... You can also contact us by e-mail or phone.

Cheers,

Fred

You also might want to take a look at the RANCH if you frequently do animation renders (we have a $50 free trial for new users). Now that you can define a render time limit for a render you are sure not to exceed whatever budget you have. Interestingly enough some of our customers have even stopped buying new computers when they discovered that outsourcing their renders was not as expensive as they thought...

Fred

Hi dvdcdr,

I sent you an e-mail.

Fred

Peggy,

there is no time limit, so no problem.

ArtPearl,

• if the job exceeds 15 minutes, you will have to pay for the difference. We offer exactly 15 minutes of rendering, so anything above is automatically charged.
• if the job does not use the 15 minutes, you will still have the remaining time for another project. It's like a mini prepaid subscription in fact, it lasts until all the time is used.

Fred

synergy543,

The 7-Zip format is indeed available for the Mac. Look in the 7-Zip download section and you will find several OSX Mac variants (p7zip, EZ 7z, 7zX). Many RANCH customers have Macs and use these utilities without any problem.

If render times really seem too slow, you can visit us at the RANCH. But there are serious limitations with Vue 5/6 Esprit projects, as this version of Vue does not have the "Incorporate texture maps" option, which is rather essential to send a complete project in one .vue scene (this is required to use the automated RANCH).

www.ranchcomputing.com

Thanks Chipp, for now all our customers are happy with the performance and ease of use of the RANCH. Of course it is not free, but we are already the most affordable renderfarm on the market, and we are doing everything we can to make it accessible to a lot of people, within reason.

The interesting thing is that when you are not as limited by render times, you begin to think of new ways to do things. The reasoning is simple: if your PC was 20-40 times faster, how would you do things? The BLITZ! formula is there to show that a farm can be used for previz and short projects, not only for superbig final renders.

Ah well enough talking, I only hope every Vue user tries it at least once :)

Just to put things into perspective and give you a better idea of what you can expect for still images, I rendered the 3 VueMark classic scenes on the RANCH in higher quality and much higher res (with V6I 6.10 - build 291050):

• Peaking Through (Ultra, 4000x3000) is rendered in 25 mn 23s
• Radiosity Room (Superior, 4000x1810) is rendered in 15 mn 20s
• Cerro Verde (Ultra, 4000x3000) is rendered in 14 mn 54s

As you can see all three would easily fit in the BLITZ! time frame.

Hi Polax,

I am glad the RANCH contributed to your project being published. It's certainly a great image!

Fred

Hi buuster72,

without having the scene it's hard to do a diagnostic, maybe it is a Vue bug, did you open a customer support ticket with e-on ? Anyway if you solve your problem but are too short on time afterward you can visit us (www.ranchcomputing.com) if you want us to render your scene for you.

Fred

Hi everyone,

the RANCH is working fine, Ryan perhaps you sent something precisely when we were switching our internet connection (pretty low probability, but bad luck can't be reduced to probabilities :).

Anyway we now have an incredible 100 Mbits/s symmetrical internet bandwidth, having upgraded to an FTTH direct Fiber Optics connection. It means every user can now download his/her files at his/her maximum download speed! Very useful when dealing with hundreds of megabytes of animation frames...

And just a reminder : the 'Hobbyist Month' at $9.00 per hour is valid until May 31st, so don't miss it!

Fred

What about much more than 8... Did you try the RANCH ?

Vue 6 Infinite, yes.

Unfortunately the whole scene has to be sent to each cow as all the information in the scene is relevant to do a render. So with 10 cows with a 100 MB scene it's 1 GB to send. Plus the textures must be sent too, plus each cow has to send each frame / tile rendered back, plus other data is exchanged between the server and the cows, etc.