Do you feel there is a need for free render management software

[GeneCrucean]

//-- Copy of my post on the list --

This is kind of a big deal and I wish SI would actually take it serious.

I'm in need of cheap or preferably free render management software. Backburner immediately springs to mind. Small, works every time, does enough to make it worth while, free, comes with every seat of Max.

So... First up. DrQueue (open source) http://drqueue.org/cwebsite/. Let me start this section by having you look at the HowTo Docs for Windows... http://drqueue.org/project/wiki/CompilationHowto. If they can't even figure out how to compile it on windows how the heck am I supposed to do it. I failed.

Next up Splish (open source) http://splish.sourceforge.net/. I had quite a bit more luck with this one. I seem to have it compiled on a few OS's but it only runs on my main workstation because of dependencies. Lots of pre-req's, takes time to configure and build everything, non-existant docs. It seems to have potential but is a bit early in dev and pretty hard to install. I failed.

Still on my ToDo list:
Rush. http://seriss.com/rush/index.php?tab=contact
Muster. http://www.vvertex.com/. No XSI Support? The last time I tried this was a while ago and I had no luck with getting it running properly.

I've used Backburner, Royal Render and Deadline on productions and RR is bar none the best of the bunch. Big props to Holger for writing that amazing piece of software. But, (there is always a but)... it's WAY to much for the typical small studio. It's great for studios that need that kind of power but quite a bit overkill for most smaller shops. The overkill comes at a price imo which is a complicated setup. I'm sure some will disagree but I can't for the life of me get it running. Even if I could it's a few thousand more pennies than I need to be spending atm.

I'm not knocking any of these pieces of software btw. I'm simply trying to make a point that Soft should see that there is a need for something like Backburner... but for XSI. Something simple that gets renders done and sets up very easily.

... Please take a look at it.



-The frustrated artist with a tiny farm and no spare cash. I'm too busy spending it all on GAS!

//----------End


So I ask you guys here too (with a poll), do you see a need for simple render management out of the box? Go vote!

Anyone remember BatchServe? That's exactly what I'm not talking about :)

[Firebird]

I would love to have one out of the box.
We are a small company with only 4 Ess seats and a dell power edge renderfarm.
There is, at the moment not really ,money, time and ppl left to get 1 of those big rendermanager.

Atm we are only satellite rendering and it really sucks if u just have a few hours rendertime on 1 scene and the next is waiting short befor the weekend.

I had to come in on Saturdays just to start the next scene more than once.

So it would be great if we could get something simple out of the box.
It doesnt need to be a super fancy thing

just do what its build for.



(sry for my bad english)

[jamination]

Coming from max years ago, it was kind of a shock that XSI did not come with any net rendering support, especially considering the cost (then), and when they finally offered one, it was expensive and a complete PITA to set up. Eventually we bought royal render which is a touch pricey up front but not so bad for updates. If they came out with one in the next release I would be hard pressed to drop RR.

edit: that being said of course XSI should have a simple to use network rendering system (and it is silly they have not for so many releases).

Phil

[GeneCrucean]

Hey thanks for the responses guys.

Phil, I fully agree RR is amazing. And if I had it running at my studio I would be hard pressed to drop it also. But, what if you didn't have the IT experience, required hardware or money to pull off the initial install? I can name a bunch of studios that fall into this category that I've personally worked for. They are the ones who need this the most.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the largest body of studios 1-5 man shops with little to none render farm?

Speaking of little to none, it would also be nice if the software could be run without the need for a dedicated server. Backburner does this. You just run the small server software on any networked computer (your workstation if need be) and you're off launching jobs. Just in the last 2 months, I've worked at 2 different studios that have no farm but use the artists workstations at night. This is the perfect scenario imo for this software.

[Kentamanos]

Never heard of Dr. Queue, but doesn't it have a built one here?:http://drqueue.org/project/downloads

[kim aldis]

http://kim-aldis.co.uk/drupal-6.1/node/19
and
http://kim-aldis.co.uk/drupal-6.1/node/11

Watch.exe is a folder watcher, executes anything you drop into it, in the order it's dropped. Batchmaker builds and saves .bat files into the Watched folder.

I used to set them up in small studios and I use them myself for rendering. I wouldn't go so far as to call the combination 'render management' but they work and their simplicity makes them bullet-proof.

[kim aldis]

Never heard of Dr. Queue, but doesn't it have a built one here?:http://drqueue.org/project/downloads

Dr. Queue is bloody awful.

[Vmpre]

While not the most robust of them out there, Smedge was OK and at a decent price of $85 per box (regardless of CPUs).

Takes a little fiddling to get it working with XSI but once its there its really easy to use.

I even used it for processing scenes. Again, takes a tiny bit of scripting but you can send script commands to Smedge. So if you need to batch export FBX or need to cache a simulation or whatever you can send your scn of to Smedge and it will send the scene off to the farm and assign it a machine for processing. While you cant distribute some tasks, you can get them off your local box and queue up a bunch of jobs.

Its not perfect and has its issues, we managed to get things going at a decent price. Oh and Robin's support was also very good.

HTH

[GeneCrucean]

Never heard of Dr. Queue, but doesn't it have a built one here?:http://drqueue.org/project/downloads

http://drqueue.org/files/win32/READ.THE.DOCUMENTATION.BEFORE.DOWNLOADING.THIS.txt

[ThE_JacO]

While not the most robust of them out there, Smedge was OK and at a decent price of $85 per box (regardless of CPUs).
85$ per node is actually pretty hefty, especially since I wouldn't consider smedge exactly in the top tier.
Rush is considered one of the most expensive and it squares out at 90$ per node for small batches.
Qube is a pretty damn good RM, works out of the box with xsi, and I think is a chunk cheaper than both per node.

[GeneCrucean]

Yeah, RoyalRender is only 25Euro per node. Which is about $39 USD per node. Or if you buy 40 or more it's only 15 Euro.

[lexluthor]

85$ per node is actually pretty hefty, especially since I wouldn't consider smedge exactly in the top tier.
Rush is considered one of the most expensive and it squares out at 90$ per node for small batches.
Qube is a pretty damn good RM, works out of the box with xsi, and I think is a chunk cheaper than both per node.

i think qube is $125 per node.. plus support plus the server at around $250 plus support

[ThE_JacO]

i think qube is $125 per node.. plus support plus the server at around $250 plus support

Wow... if that's the case I stand corrected.
I was going by a (not too old) quote, but by no means I'm sure.
Those numbers are with pricelists at hand?

[lexluthor]

just checked... $500 for the supervisor..

$250 per host

[ThE_JacO]

If 250 per host means it covers only one node/ip that's pretty ridiculous.
Chalk off my suggestion then, I had been given entirely different prices originally.

[lexluthor]

still awaiting to see what the softiamge qube pricing will be now they have this partnership

[GeneCrucean]

Their partnership is only for distribution. I doubt they are giving a deal to SI customers. Who knows though.

I've been talking to a Qube rep over the last few days and she failed to mention the price so far. I'm still in demo stage with them. But honestly... $250 per node sounds about right considering the service I've received from them so far. She's been great.

However, either way $250 is way too expensive imo.

[GeneCrucean]

I like how Soft is avoiding this thread like the plague :D




... just kidding guys. Smile. Life is good.

[GeneCrucean]

Haha, Raf. Want to explain? :D

[ThE_JacO]

Haha, Raf. Want to explain? :D

Which Raf?
If it's me I don't work for Softimage, I just accepted to help moderating these forums in exchange for beers and a t-shirt (and have received neither yet, damnit!)

[jgoldfin]

But you did get Dio concert tickets, Raf! :)

Gene, I personally don't have the answer regarding qube pricing. Pipeline FX and Softimage have a distribution agreement, we aren't bundling the products together.

That said - as I mentioned, I'll get some proper info for you later today.

jen

[ThE_JacO]

But you did get Dio concert tickets, Raf! :)
I consider that like a personal favour I owe YOU for.
You can claim an Italian dinner for it and a tour of Milano, Soft as a company still owes me beers imho.

[GeneCrucean]

Haha nice. I'd probably feel the same way :)

Which Raf?
If it's me I don't work for Softimage, I just accepted to help moderating these forums in exchange for beers and a t-shirt (and have received neither yet, damnit!)

Actually I just meant because you are the only one to vote no in this thread. I just thought you could toss in your 2 cents.

[ThE_JacO]

Because I think there are much better ways to spend RnD money, and I'd rather use a manager software written by a studio that uses it for a renderfarm than one written by somebody without a studio environment around them to base design and testing on.

Between the old manager by Olivier, Behaviour and other bits and bobs I'd say Soft has already been wasting enough money and time on satellite applications that everybody so intensely wished for but nobody ended up buying or using.

I should probably also add that if the example is backburner than we definitely disagree on rendermanager standards.
I had to use it in Passion Pictures for a few months, and I'd probably rather submit and monitor things manually and re-write the same scripts over and over again every time I want to render a preview than use that PoS software again.

[GeneCrucean]

Backburner was the example because it's simple and works. Not because it's the best one out there. Soft could write something like it in a week, if that.

I would say that they should just buy RoyalRender but that would defeat the purpose of this thread. Point being XSI needs something small that works and installs easily without the need of additional databases, servers (hardware), blah, blah.

[jgoldfin]

okok, fine. I retract the DIO statement. :)

It's been a few years since I bought you a few beers. But now that I am scheduled to go to London in July - you are off in Sweden.

We'll have to meet up in Italy this September then!

jen

[pboucher]

I'm a bit late in the fray here but here are my 2 cents.

I do agree that Soft has better things to do than write render dispatching. And I'd rather do more manual labor than to have to handhold a half arsed implementation.

With all the solutions out there allready and at very different price points (including free) a Soft solution would be redundant and you'd wind up at the bottom of the support and feature pole as users of other packaged solutions may be.

As for the products out there...

I've used Smedge, Rush and Qube! and, IMHO, Qube! is a cut above in terms of stability. As far as support goes, it's another point for Qube! though I have to give props to Greg (Rush) for doing everything he does, he is a one man show after all. These two things, to me, justify the higher price point (but don't press your luck PipelineFX).

I also prefer the API aproach of Qube! although I'd like to see something a bit sturdier and fleshed out (as far as Python goes - haven't checked out the others).

The one thing I've always liked about Rush over Qube! is that Rush is round-robin on equal other criteria while Qube! is FIFO. The FIFO restriction is necessary as I understand it to enable the Subjob concept. I'd just like to be able to break out of that if I wanted to - I think there are ways but they wouldn't be pretty.

Ciao!

[pboucher]

I'd really like to play around with RR one of these days. Heard so much good of it!

[jamination]

Having the simple solution built in would be attractive to the smaller businesses, especially those coming from a package where it was taken for granted (which is most of them). We all have our ideas of SI wasted recources and for me it was all that development involved with crosswalk which made version 6 a rather underwhelming update for me, but I am sure others find it very useful:)

Phil

[GeneCrucean]

edit: I value all of your opinions guys so don't take any of this the wrong way...

How about we let SI handle their own resources and not worry about it? You know why? Because every single person in this industry has a different idea of what is important. Modelers want more modeling tools. Animators want more animation tools. Do I care about CAT getting stuck in? Not so much. But I know that there are people out there that want it badly... making it just as valid of a request. This is why you can't worry about it. Bitch about what you want (like me :) ) and let Soft prioritize the requests.

Would you like to see something similar to backburner included with XSI? Yes or No.The reason I asked Raf why he voted no was because I knew this was his reason. So if resources were completely unlimited, would you like to see it?

[GeneCrucean]

Between the old manager by Olivier, Behaviour and other bits and bobs I'd say Soft has already been wasting enough money and time on satellite applications that everybody so intensely wished for but nobody ended up buying or using.

And let me say that maybe it has more to do with the cost of said satellite apps. How many people would have bought face robot if the price was reasonable. Wasn't behavior ridiculously expensive when it came out too?

Personally I think if SI is going to spend R&D on these things, they should just include them into XSI right from the beginning and make XSI that much more appealing. One has to wonder how many seats of XSI would have been adopted solely because XSI came with face robot, or behavior, or. I'm willing to bet more than seats of those things individually.

[ThE_JacO]

And let me say that maybe it has more to do with the cost of said satellite apps. How many people would have bought face robot if the price was reasonable. Wasn't behavior ridiculously expensive when it came out too?
behavior was actually the cheapest crowd system out there.
Even after both batch render and behavior became free they still didn't get used much, and that is after people cried and cried that they could have so used all of that if only it came for free with advanced.

Personally I think if SI is going to spend R&D on these things, they should just include them into XSI right from the beginning and make XSI that much more appealing. One has to wonder how many seats of XSI would have been adopted solely because XSI came with face robot, or behavior, or. I'm willing to bet more than seats of those things individually.I'm willing to bet not many seats, probably not even double digit, got sold because batch, behavior or whatnot became free.
Not a peep was heard from anybody when behavior developement stalled. That goes to show how many people cared.

This was a poll, you asked me why I voted that I don't feel there's a need for a free render manager like back burner, and I said why. It doesn't mean I'm right or wrong, it's what a poll is supposed to be for :p
My two cents are out there, take them or leave them :p
But I do know for sure, and seen it first hand from both sides of the fence, that people want and say a lot of things, but end up hardly ever using a fraction of them.

We all have our ideas of SI wasted recources and for me it was all that development involved with crosswalk which made version 6 a rather underwhelming update for me, but I am sure others find it very useful:)
Apple and oranges.
A renderfarm management software means a completely different product, that requires dev and testing in a very particular environment (one which can't be simulated efficiently), and would go against a market already crammed with solutions and all.

You are effectively discussing offering the client base a way to apparently cut their costs without really doing it though (because a half arsed render manager will end up costing you money, no matter how small you are as a company).
I also honestly question the idea that back burner xsi would increase seat sales by anything close to a fraction of the dev and support cost of such a project.

Crosswalk, which I haven't used ONCE since it came out, filled a gap that there was no other way to fill and that helped sell seats like crazy.

There is a difference between wasting time on Soft's side and features I'm not particularly interested in. I don't call the latter out like the former, rest assured :)

I've had no use whatsoever for MOTOR yet, but it's not wasted time. Behavior (with the benefit of hindsight) managed and marketed with the low profile they gave it, was a waste of time, even if I used it and appreciated having it available when need arose.