XSI Entry Level Render Farm?

[x3dx]

What would be the best computer configuration for afordable but capable home based XSI render farm? It should be capable rendering simple animations with motion blur in standard DVD format and sometimes in HD format (1080+). How many computers? What CPU? Minimum memory? Which software would you use for distributed rendering. How about XSI licences?


Thanks for help and your advice.

[JDex]

As it sits right now... I'd get 5 Dual Quad-Core Intel systems (Clock-speed, the highest your budget allows) w/ 2GB of memory (maybe make it 3GB on at least one of them), and a low-end video card (or even integrated) running Windows XP Pro 32bit and a single seat of Advanced and Frantic Film's Deadline for management.

Why...

Hardware
Although the dual processor set-up is expensive - from a licensing point of view (OS, XSI and Deadline) it provides the best bang-for-buck.

Memory-wise... most renders/passes will be fine under the 2GB threshold and if you go w/ Windows32 3GB is the most that's really usable. Having one or two systems w/ 3GB allows you to render Motion-blurred passes a bit faster and the systems w/ like-amounts of RAM can be put in groups in Deadline, so you can specify which group a pass should go to.

Video cards can assist certain rendering tasks, but unless you go high-end with each node, it's more effective to just do w/ out and run the systems headless on a KVM and through Remote Desktop/VNC.

OS
Why Windows?... well:
a) XSI and Linux "can" be a headache unless you are very proficient at Linux
b) most plugins/shaders are Windows32 only
c) Deadline is Windows only
d) Easiest to get community support

Why 32bit?... unless you have the budget for more than 3.5GB in each node, and you're willing to not use several of the good addon-shaders, 32bit is the way to go IMHO.

Apps
XSI Advanced is a steal if you have 3 or more render nodes... upgrade your ESS seat, and gain licensing for 5 dual-multicore systems.

Deadline is a bit more expensive than many other solutions, and it's Windows only... but I must say, after months of testing and fighting with installations of other render management apps... followed by a production that I rendered over 250,000 2Kx2K multi-pass frames, it's the only one that I would buy again.


Finally, you'll need a good file server for the repository, license manager and output to be rendered to. Get an Enterprise Class GB Switch and make a subnet just for the farm to talk to the server... use Jumbo Frames to get faster throughput for all the packets of data too-and-fro. Run Windows Server 2003 or your favorite variant of Linux on it.

[Adrian Lazar]

I agree with JDex but I'd suggest 4gb ram or more and a 64 bits os, the ram is cheap and a 64 version of windows isn't more expensive... and you never can have enough ram.
Good to know about Deadline, I'll search more info about. I'm currently testing Royal Render and it's great, a bit expensive but has a lot of options and it's quite stable.

[JDex]

Aye... 64bit has it's moments of "saving my life", but realistically, I only need the RAM access that it allows me in a very small number of circumstances. More often then not, I rue the day that I chose to use it because a shader that is only available for 32 bit would save the day. Using Large BSP and mesh splitting usually gets me through better than a sup'd up 64bit render node. I'd opt for a 64bit workstation dual-bootable (using 32bit most of the time) with loads of RAM, before wasting the RAM on nodes.

[Adrian Lazar]

yeah, I really miss the t2s shaders that are not available for 64 bits XSI but they work on 32 bits XSI running on vista 64, obviously in this case you can't take full advantage of the 64 bits os

[Heinerich]

For systems that do not need to do Quicktime encoding with the native tools (quicktime pro player) I'd use xp64.

That gives you the option to switch to 64bit when needed as is not really more expensive than xp32.

The 32bit flavor of xsi runs fine under xp64. I'd also get more RAM than 2gig.. RAM is cheap these days, and some types of work require 2 instances of the batchrenderer running (because they can not multithread and therefor sticking with one running intance is a huge waste of time).

As render manager I'd recommend Royal Render. Definitely not the cheapest solution around, but after several years of working with it and several hundretthousand rendered frames later I won't switch to anything else ;).

Concerning the RAM issue: It depends a bit on what you do. Since the current version of XSI doesnt yet implement MR assemblies (shame!), which is something like vray-proxies or Renderman delayed archives, there are situations where you need tons of RAM. I recently had a foliage scene with lots of displacement around.. after heavy optimization we rendered it with a peak of around 6gb.. under xp64 that worked like a charm.

[franky]

funny enough we have EXACT the render farm here Jdex described! 5 quad core intels, 2gb ram, in a 19" rack nicely mounted and crunching away down in the basement (the noise level is comparable with a starting jet!).
with the current price you cant do wrong. they are fast and cheap.

we use royal render as well and i didn't heard a single bad comment about it since ever and i know why :) the entry price might be step, but with more render slaves its really getting cheap compared to others like smedge.
its one of the best pieces of software i know and it saved me quite some weekends at home with the family :)

[x3dx]

Sorry for my late reply.
Thanks guys for your help.