The developer of a distributed render farm supporting Cycles and Luxcore replied: “The stimulus is needed, not material.”
He has a completely ready-made analogue of Sheppit support.
Several years ago, when the project was in working order, I rendered on his farm, everything works fine.
Differences from Sheppit and general features of this farm:
Encrypted. Protecting the privacy of projects
Unlimited list of personal tasks.
No limit on file size 500MB
There is support for Multilayer EXR
Automatic saving of finished renders. (When starting the task, the save path is specified)
Render node blocking blacklists
Render node favorites whitelisting
Private projects for rendering only with your own render nodes
Schedule of work of a node and work of devices
When starting a project, you can specify the minimum performance of a render node that will have access to work on the project (minimum number of GHz, RAM, CPU cores and GPU availability)
Tiles. No Denoise artifacts. For statics and animation.
Wide selection of tiling (from 2 * 2 to 8 * 8)
Each task has a separate list of render nodes working on it.
Explicit designation of the node that has hung, disappeared from the network, etc.
Automatic reset of problem nodes
A single server under close supervision and direct access of the author of the farm
Support for Luxcore, Cycles, and many other renderings from other programs (Cinema 4D, etc.)
The “start minimized to tray” setting
Windows and Linux.
Friends, all this is there, all this has already worked. All developments are saved. Everything can be turned on, run and we will have our own Luxcore and Cycles network rendering for images and animations. Without strong restrictions like Sheppit, for more serious projects.
There are already many of us, we can do amazing things!
You just need to give motivation to the developer. He doesn’t need money. The farm will be free. All you need is activity, users, project life.
What I propose is to collect feedback from those who wish. Let’s just count how many people want such a farm?
If you are interested, leave some signal. +1 or comment as you see fit.
the principle of operation of the distributed computing render farm itself:
This is very similar to torrent download. But instead of distributing files, each computer gives away a piece of its power. The key word here is particle.
You should not completely allocate all the resources of your computer, how will you use it then?
Let’s look at the most classic version of a regular computer / laptop: a regular CPU with 4-6 cores and some one GPU.
In order for the farm to work and you can use such a computer, it is worth highlighting only the CPU. And only 1-2 cores.
Let’s be honest, these 1-2 cores are idle all the time and you will not notice their load. But if you provide a video card for the farm, and you have one, then your computer will slow down 100%.
You can turn on the schedule, and choose that your computer would use all the CPU cores at night and connect to the GPU.
You can set in the schedule that in the morning your computer would stop rendering for the farm at all. And at night he was back in work.
Thus, your computer will accumulate points all the time without interfering with your work.
In return, you will be able to make projects that exceed the capabilities of your computer.
There are no limitations to make animations with a very long rendering time for each frame.
The only limits are your earned points in advance.
You can’t buy them. They can only be rendered in advance.
It looks like a Ghz bank. You gradually add the power of the computer, free from needs, there. Some interest is added to you (like in banks) and then you can spend everything.
We will compare the cost of work.
20 Euro - this is the cost of rendering Cycles, 500 samples, 500 frames, on a very cheap rendering farm.
Monthly work around the clock 4 cores Ryzen 5 1600 accumulates so many points that allows you to render 30000 frames.
A long time ago, when Luxcore 2.0 first came out, when this farm was running, I rendered a stunning 360-degree frame for VR in 8K resolution on it. And everything worked out!
The work involved 20 computers, active users at that time. There were trees, grass, buildings, lights in the frame.
UPD: Found another example of this farm.
38 renders in 4K resolution, in a few clicks, with only Intel i3 + Nvidia 740M
Automatic saving of finished renders. (When starting the task, the save path is specified)
Render node blocking blacklists
Render node favorites whitelisting
Private projects for rendering only with your own render nodes
Schedule of work of a node and work of devices
When starting a project, you can specify the minimum performance of a render node that will have access to work on the project (minimum number of GHz, RAM, CPU cores and GPU availability)
Tiles. No Denoise artifacts. For statics and animation.
For other who don’t know about it is a distributed rendering solution that help you render your project in exchange of you sharing your computing power for any time you want.
Each time you connect your PC for rendering on the farm you get some Point that can be used to
Render your own project at any time you want.
Detail are in first post.
The developer answered me that in a week he will analyze the amount of work to start the farm.
The last time the farm was running, it was focused on Blender 279.
Unfortunately, there is no news.
The developer cannot find time for this project. I kept a dialogue several times, he could not escape from the volume at the main place of work.
It’s too bad.
The idea of encryption of your project files is awesome.
What I don’t like at SheepIt that it sends the whole project as zip file with password protection.
I’m not sure about it, but probably a zip file can be cracked. At least quick google search showed several crackers unfortunately
