Presenting BlenDistribute

Hello there!
I have been working on a project, the goal is to create a distributed rendering network of computers to render blend files. You can upload a blend file and it would distribute it out to the ‘nodes’ running the program. This works through a central ftp server, the client nodes scan that ftp server at an interval and once it finds a blend, it downloads it, deletes it from the server, renders it, and uploads the resulting image… This is written in python, and the upload form to upload a file to be rendered is in the form of a web interface.

So far, this program works fine! But whenever you upload a blend file, it will only be rendered by one node (as long as somebody is running the program), this program is still in heavy developement.

I was wondering if some of you would be willing to run this python program a bit, and email me any suggestions or questions.
Read the readme file that comes with the package as for it has things you must do in order for this to work.

=D, hope to hear from some of you.
http://eleaf.no-ip.org/

Great. Is it going to be free? There is already another project similiar too yours called BURP (Big and Ugly Rendering Project) they have only come to pre-alpha status but if you would help them it would probbly go faster. Or if you’re going to make it possible to render single images by splitting them up and giving them too other computers then it’s better you continue on your project cause BURP’s just for animations.

eleaf anyone in durango looking for any 3d (blender) help, or anyone looking for designers in general?

Yes, this is planned on being a free and open project. I’ve heard of BURP and checked it out a little, I’m still unaware on what languages they are using and how their system is actually set up. The original plan was to have one image split up into multiple images to be rendered. I’m having a little bit of trouble implementing this but hopefully I will be able to get the system working to where a single blend file can be split into multiple chunks to be rendered on different machines. I’m also of course planning on having it work with animations as well.
One part I’m confused on what to do is how to differentiate which blend file is an animation and which is simply a single image.

Anyways, =)
–Ethan Lofton.

Support for splitting single blend files (so that more than one processor is working on a single given blend file.)

Outside of coding…
There is a simple way to do this. If you go into camera mode, create a plane (close to the camera), and in material buttons enable the “env” button, the area the plane covers will not be rendered! What if a script is implemented where the plane covers a different portion of the camera veiwpoint, and spits out a whole bunch of blend files. AND than these files are distributed to different computers.

(Just thinking outloud)

Wow! I never would have thought of that. I’ll have to give some of these ideas a try, thanks for your suggestion.
Any other ideas are also appreciated!

Thanks for everybodies interest and help. :smiley:

It doesn’t seem like anybody from this forum has tried this program or tried uploading anything.
Do any of you want to actually give this a try or to give some more suggestions?
Thanks, home to hear from you soon! =D

Can a moderator please move this thread to a more appropriate one? After the forum topics have been changed around, I don’t think this is appropriate for “Basics and UI” when this area was “Blender General”. Maybe “News and General” would be an appropriate thread? I don’t know…

Anyways, I’ve worked on the program a little bit more and now it supports splitting of animated blend files, which are successfully distributed and rendered! I need some people to try it out though! :wink:

–Ethan. =)

Eleaf, this sounds like a good program for home use if one has an extra computer. But for me, I use a 256 node cluster for my “light” blending chores (sorry had to brag :cool: ) Anyways, I don’t think it will help me.

Is this able to use more than 1 node?

Search for drqueue, it may be faster to learn to use it, than it is to program your own distributed render controller. I don’t know, my render farm consists of one machine at the moment ;(

Absolutely! It can support more than one node rendering at a time. I just got done working on the main splitting of the blend, so currently, more than one node can be working on an individual file (up to as many nodes as needed)

"Search for drqueue, it may be faster to learn to use it, than it is to program your own distributed render controller. I don't know, my render farm consists of one machine at the moment ;("

Yes I know what drqueue is, that is for local uses though. This is a distributed rendering project over the internet, not just locally and can therefore be more vast if people choose to contribute.

Still, can somebody please try testing this out with me? (I’ve had a few people trying it out over irc, but so far nobody here has tried it to my knowledge)