Peter: Thats amazing and insprational:
Vincent, this would address your concern about beowulf for animation rendering and also cost... On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 9:40 PM, Peter Brady <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello, > > If you're interested in do it yourself clustering for rendering > purposes you may want to check this out: http://helmer.sfe.se/. > > On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 10:47 AM, Dmitri Chubarov > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hello, > > > > my first reply missed the list by mistake so I will repeat a few points > that > > I mentioned there. > > > >> > >> What is 1u? > >> > >> What is a blade system? > > > > Compute clusters are often built of rack-server hardware meaning boxes > > different from desktop boxes and chipset that have features not necessary > > for desktop PCs like ECC memory, redundant power supply units, integrated > > management processors, RAID controllers, that altogether provide better > > reliability, since the failure rate for a cluster of a 100 nodes is 100 > > times higher than for a single node. You may not need any of it for a 16 > > node rendering farm. > > > >> Anyone using clusters for animation on this list? > > > > We are just writing up on a research project on distributed rendering. > > Rendering is the part in the animation process that requires the most > > processing power. We used 3dStudio Max (3DS) for modelling and V-Ray for > > rendering. 3DS has its own utility, called Backburner, for distributing > > frames among a number of cluster nodes. > > > > We observed that V-Ray failed on some certain frames thus stopping the > whole > > rendering queue, therefore the process was not completely automated. > > > > I would also repeat that a storage subsystem that uses an array of disks > is > > essential for performance. > >> > >> At this time I am trying to figure out the racks. Am meeting the > hardware > >> guy on Saturday and we were thinking of opening up the PCS i have lying > >> around and taking measurements of how the mother boards fit into the > >> cases,with the intention of creating a rack from scratch. Any ideas of > what > >> goes into a good rack in terms of size and matieral (assuming it has to > be > >> insulated) > > > > This sort of rack is more of a research project. On the contrary, the > usual > > kind of rack is an IEC standard server rack, > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_inch_rack > > > >> > >> Am planning to run animation software (like blender) on it. Since > >> animation software requires large processing power i am assuming they > have > >> already worked on parrallelizing the code... > > > > > > Blender does not seem to have a driver to distribute rendering (I might > be > > wrong) but it can generate PovRay scripts and povray can make use of > > parallel processing in a number of ways. > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] > > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > > http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf > > > > > -- Best regards, arjuna http://www.brahmaforces.com
_______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
