OK, many people told me this will not work or be crappy, but being stubborn as usual i do not give up that easy.

OpenVue 0.1 - a free public renderfarm

**About:
**
The idea is simple: You want to render an animation and your computer is so slow it takes days to finish. While rendering you can barely do anything else and your computer is blocked. With OpenVue we want to give unused processor time a new meaning. While you surf the web, write emails, listen to music or watch movies on your computer the processor is idle around 95% of the time and valuable processing power is converted to heat instead of being used. With a free renderfarm you could render your vue animations on other people's computers while they browse these forums, write their CV or play games.

**The Solution:

**OpenVue, a free public renderfarm. Besides Easel and Esprit all vue versions come with Hypervue, which enables you to render on up to 5 nodes at once, which should speed up rendering animations significantly.

**Current version:

**The current version is 0.1, which is the initial one. Simple Tests have been done, but before i write the software for handling the clients and keeping the farm together i need your help. I need you to participate, all you have to do i being a part of this project and hopefully render an animation here or there, hey the good news: You get processing time from all other participants. I can not pay money for your help, but i am thinking of ways to compensate for your time. Maybe i can arrange elevated privileges in the project team, priority rendering slots and so on.

**How to use the renderfarm:

**As an active user you just need to have a computer with rendercow installed in the version 6.60, built number 292711 (most recent).

Your rendercow must be reachable from the internet, so in case you connect this computer to the internet via a router, you need to set up a Network Address Translation Rule to forward that port from your router.
I know that not everyone knows how to do this as its a bit "techie stuff", but i hope at least a few people here are able to do this. I will try to get some tutorials for doing this, but this of course varies from one router model to the other, so only basic help can be given. At a later state - if this project develops as i hope - i will try to implement a function in the control suite that aids you in doing this step.

As a third step you will need to let me know the internet address (IP Address), so your rendercow can be reached by other computers. Most Internet connections have variable IP addresses, so this will change usually every 24 hours. To keep track of your computer easier i recommend to install a service like no-ip.com or similar free dyndns providers. This assigns an easy to remember name to your IP address and some small tools automatically update this address once your IP is changed.

I am aware this is all very technical and many people reading this will be unable to understand all of it. Still i hope some nice souls here support my cause and are able to set up a rendercow. Once you are done just send me your DNS name and port (Standard rendercow port is 5002 unless you changed that) so we can start the first serious tests.

**Rules, limitations, drawbacks:

**There are loads of drawbacks. This will never be a solution that can be compared to professional renderfarms like ranch computing - they have a whole room of servers that are high redundant, have super performance and run all day long, they are being monitored and are dedicated to rendering for customers only.

OpenVue will have the following drawbacks:

• No privacy: At least at a later point when we have loads of users you can not control who gets to render which scene. Your scene to be rendered will be transmitted onto all nodes participating, so it should not be "confidential", "secret" or "not to be seen by the public". Like Renderosity here does with your images, we will have a policy that noone may copy or use your artwork, all copyrights belong to the original creator (you) and may not be infringed. However - technically (like renderosity) we can not guarantee some malicious person illegally copies your artwork 8vue scenes) without permission.

• No giant files: As internet connections are fast these days, but not at the speed of a local network, we will definitely limit the file size of your scene. it is of no use to upload a 100 Megabyte scene to 5 computers, resulting in you sending 500 megabytes over the internet. Sending the file would most probably take longer then rendering, so at least for the beginning we heavily limit the file size.

Other possible problems are stability (people turning their computer off while it renders a frame of your scene), performance and maybe even more. However - for many problems i will try to find a technical solution. Untill i start programming i do need excessive testing, feeback and people that are interested in this project.

**Demo

**If you want to help RIGHT NOW, you can render test scenes on my computer. Just pick a test scene you would like to try, open the render options in vue and select external renderer, then click on "edit" and choose hypervue network manager. Click on "Add" and select "name" and in the corresponding field enter "darkfire.zapto.org". Make sure "port" is set to 5002.

basic rule: Please do not pick scenes that "take ages" to render. I'd say around 30-60 minutes on a "normal single core" should be the maximum. I reserve the right to delete scenes that take too long for rendering as i only have this single computer for testing right now (Currently setting up a second machine).

If you like the idea contact me via site mail here to discuss details. Right now i need more people offering a rendercow reachable from the internet.

Please leave your feedback and ideas here. You can most probably not talk me into giving up right now, i will listen to all constructive criticism, but please do not post just "This is stupid" or "you will fail", this will not help anyone. Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Vue content creator
www.renderarmy.com