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I'm old, lots of systems over the decades. Your right and that is what we used at the time. ;).
Your old? I remember when fonts came on floppy disk from linotype, you could buy 3 crappy ones for $69 at Pearl Paint, or a Bob Ross paint set with a bonus 2 oz. tube of happy squirrel blue for the same price. Remember when Electronic Arts made Desktop Publishing Software? I do.
Yes, do you remember coding Fortran on bubble cards and feeding them into a computer the size of a house? Remember the WOZ kit that eventually became an Apple Computer? When Nortel existed, no scratch that, when they were still Bell Northern and I was designing phone boxes. Computers didn't have type back then. Programs were something you input, you couldn't buy them, graphics cards were a pipe dream. I remember all this as i was present. Do I win a prize?
Actually you do. Your generation sent men to the moon on less computer power than most kids use to play angry birds and take drunken pictures for Facebook... So yes, cudos!
Yes, you win me throwing your cards up in the air like I did to my older brother when I was 8 and he was learning COBOL. Evidently I was teaching myself physics and my brother decided to teach himself karate on my head. I remember my college getting a multi million dollar incentive to build a department to house the computers that would render scenes for the original (and only) TRON. Perhaps that Cray A-1 (or was it the XP1?) could be used as a 3Delight render farm.
Hey I remember the Renderman icon in the OS 7.6 chooser, that's got to be good for a Geritol, right?
Aaah MacRenderman..... Those were awesome times. If I remember right I was using Strata Studio Blitz during porting and development of MacRenderman as we tried covering as many tools and environments as possible. Then MacRenderman was shut down, Strata radically changed direction..... History is full of possibilities and death. ;)
Within the files for 3Delight, do you not have the 'background image shader' or some such named fie?
Any tried this? Seems to be some threads pertaining to this on your forum. Technically seems your software will allow this. Some settings may need to be tweaked in the RIB before render, but that's easy if necessary, they are just text files.
Jason, I'm aware they are text files, but not having the first clue how to write RSL... I don't want to mess them up... I'd really love to talk to someone who understands RSL to understand how to edit them...
First off, they are probably a mess. Most apps do a poor job of this, at least from human readable perspective.
If you have one your willing to share in can take a look, parse it and comment it. Might be valuable to everyone. Don't pick the largest one! ;)
Learning is kinda easy, make a simple scene, light, object, shader, texture and export. Test render. All good? Make a copy. Open in text editor, if you ne'er stand things you see great, otherwise add some lines for space, add some comment lines, find end and beginning of objects/functions and remove. Test render. Go back and name that in the original file, repeat. Pretty soon it starts to make a lot of sense.
That leads to cool features like archives, static object/functions, etc.. Most shaders also come with a read me in the 3Delight files for the parameters and what they do.
With some knowledge you can take your current renders to a whole new level. Everything you have ever seen in film/television can be reproduced rather easily in a text editor. Easier if you have an app and text editor.
Back in 2000, used an app that had very little bells and whistles, but allowed simple put/get through TCL. We wrote the RIB import/export and all the necessary tools once the RIB got exported for an animated series. Even included import for Sketchup for buildings long before it was acquired by Google of course. Almost anything can be done to better enhance the process with a little desire to go further. Could have used Maya, SoftImage, but the budget just wasn't there.
bloody hell... the backdrop renders... It didn't occur to me to remove the stupid alpha channel...
Great! It all worked a treat right off here. ;). I sent you some modified versions of your files to keep things cleaner and more human readable so constantly re-exporting everything is no longer necessary. Well unless your a masochist. Perhaps you'll share them with others here.
Jason, as soon as I get a handle on it, I absolutely will! Thank you VERY much! Hey... do you think I should post the stuff you sent me on ShareCG?
If you like. I've kept things simple. If you include everything in the folder people should get a good idea of what is going on. Maya has this feature these days, didn't back in the day. I may have to dig up a tool developed back in 2000 to help people using apps like DAZ3D to do this stuff easier, especially across animation.
you could probably sell it in the DAZ store!
By the way, for even more efficiency you can gunzip the ribs as well.
ReadArchive "cone.rib.gz"
If your using primitives, swapping them out for 3Delight's primitives at render time will drastically reduce render times as well. I know it was just a test, but you would be amazed at how many things can become from primitives. We used to import models and map to a primitive, delete the imported model leaving an exact replica but with a primitive. Render times plummeted. You are limited here with DAZ for import, but export can be tweaked.
Interesting... I wonder if any of the script writers would be interested in this...
All interesting and entertaining but I suspect the same discussion has gone on long before I started here in 2011. If one explores how it is done for developers running professional 3D software, one can see that the gap is wide at the moment. For example go here: http://www.rebusfarm.net/en/ and click on "What's the REBUS Render Farm?". These types of solutions are set up to provide services I could not find anywhere for either DS or Poser.
Perhaps Octane shows some promise for speed but, to be honest, I will be surprised if they end up completing a DS plugin. Hope they do and the cost/quality/speed balance is reasonable.
For now, although the price was painful to pay, I have purchased the Dreamlight tutorial http://www.daz3d.com/3d-time-saver-get-more-done-in-less-time and found some interesting tips there.
Yeah, for DAZ and the PAs who earn here its serious business. For the rest of us? You tell me...
it depends. If you're doing an 8x10 for print, you need to render out at 3000x2400pixels. If you have several of those to render, and this can take a long, long time, a render farm will be the best way to go for those of us with a single machine. So, yeah, the tool is serious, and the product is serious...
No doubt the render farm solutions are all about taking care of (serious) business.
My question was in reference to DAZ/DS and the limitations faced by those of us attempting to use DS for development of content-not-sold-in-the-DAZ-store (or Renderosity). Obviously, because of the limitations, most of the professional 3D world (including "3D World" plus the render farms) do not take DS very seriously. How about the rest of us who are attempting to use DS for development of content-not-sold-in-the-DAZ-store?
BTW, I neglected to mention http://farm.blenderrenders.com/. This is is for Lux and not 3Delight. When I started this thread I was not considering Lux because Reality (a very nice piece of software BTW) requires more time than I wanted to invest. However, if the new Lux solution DAZ is pushing can produce quality .lxs files with a button press, perhaps blenderRenders becomes more interesting.
@artistb3 - I don't see why I couldn't give people here access to a render farm. The questions that need to be answered would 1) how many people will seriously use it for it to be a worthwhile? 2) a reasonable cost to cover electricity, hardware replacement, licensing, etc., what would people be comfortable with? 3) would they be thinking per frame or time based fee structure, I would be inclined to time based as it encourages people to be efficient.
Assuming enough people at any given time would like to utilize the farm, I'm willing to look at bringing something online and provide tools to make things easier. I'm kinda mulling this over as a way to help those not in feature film/television to access such tools. Nearly any app can dump the necessary info to be passed to 3Delight and more info can always be added post export and pre-render. I'm at least open to discussing it.
Jason, I absolutely would do so if I could afford to send you money. I have a project I'm going to have a tough time rendering because it's 3000x2400 and needs three passes... But I would absolutely take advantage even for stills!
I appreciate what you are trying to do.
First, you may want to check on the legality as there seemed to be some question as to whether the necessary files could be uploaded to any render farm without violating terms of use.
Second, in my case, I would want to see some statistics as to what could reasonably be expected in terms of performance.
Third, I would want to have a clear understanding of the tools provided. For example, is it a DS plugin? How is the output presented?
Four, how can one calculate the cost?
It would appear that render farms such as Rebus have literally millions of dollars invested in hardware and software.
I appreciate what you are trying to do.
First, you may want to check on the legality as there seemed to be some question as to whether the necessary files could be uploaded to any render farm without violating terms of use.
Second, in my case, I would want to see some statistics as to what could reasonably be expected in terms of performance.
Third, I would want to have a clear understanding of the tools provided. For example, is it a DS plugin? How is the output presented?
Four, how can one calculate the cost?
It would appear that render farms such as Rebus have literally millions of dollars invested in hardware and software.
Could be more precise in the legality issue you have mentioned?
Like many that are unaware of renderfarm technologies, speed has more to do with the files sent. The current output from DAZ is very inefficient. You can always find a single system that if set up right can be very fast for a frame. However if you have to render 50 frames your system is going to seem like your drawing Picasso's with crayola's and arthritis. I have frames that have taken 18 days to render, could you afford not having access to your personal system that long? If you feel your system is what you need, then that is the way you should go. Your statement is like comparing a personal system with a server, not possible as they both have very different functions. And each will accel in very different ways.
As for the tools, they would streamline RIBs, especially or faster testing and animated sequences. As for a DS plugin, possible, depends on the rel need in the community. If only one or two people would really make use of it, we all have the answer.o Output can be presented several ways, direct back on a frame by frame basis. A link to stored images, etc., many options exist.
The renderfarm sitting in front of me is worth about $500,000 and has been used on various television shows, feature films and festivals.
As for cost, well that is moot at this point. ;)
Could be more precise in the legality issue you have mentioned?
Like many that are unaware of renderfarm technologies, speed has more to do with the files sent. The current output from DAZ is very inefficient. You can always find a single system that if set up right can be very fast for a frame. However if you have to render 50 frames your system is going to seem like your drawing Picasso's with crayola's and arthritis. I have frames that have taken 18 days to render, could you afford not having access to your personal system that long? If you feel your system is what you need, then that is the way you should go. Your statement is like comparing a personal system with a server, not possible as they both have very different functions. And each will accel in very different ways.
As for the tools, they would streamline RIBs, especially or faster testing and animated sequences. As for a DS plugin, possible, depends on the rel need in the community. If only one or two people would really make use of it, we all have the answer.o Output can be presented several ways, direct back on a frame by frame basis. A link to stored images, etc., many options exist.
The renderfarm sitting in front of me is worth about $500,000 and has been used on various television shows, feature films and festivals.
As for cost, well that is moot at this point. ;)
To be honest, I suspect the entire discussion was moot before I posted the question.
In regard to the legal issues, please see the first 3-4 posts on the thread. I don't see how anything could go forward without resolving these issues first.
It's really not an issue so long as the renderfarm is trustworthy and is going to delete everything once the job is done. Frankly, I'd be very inclined to trust Jason, and I'm of the mind that I do not want to be in trouble with DAZ... well... mostly not... (MODs, stop kicking me under the table!!)
I'm sorry, I misunderstood. You want to use 'models' you have no rights to, possibly for ommercial work? That's a no no from any companies software or content property. I suppose that if the only content one has is legally blocked then you ate correct, the discussion is moot. For those that wish to go beyond that things may still be open. Of course I'm sure DAZ is like any other company and willingly license models for specific uses. I'll leave this up to the community here as you all know your software and rules far better than I at this point.
Yes, well I can't think of any benefits of storing such jobs after completion, in fact if another job is in the pipeline, everything ahead of it would get over written anyway. Space is at a premium as it affects render speed and network efficiency.
However if one can't trust a service, one shouldn't use it, thus crushing the service. ;)
You should contact DAZ3D and try to find an arrangement! DAZ3D mainly licenses complete models to us end users, with the limit that we can't redistribute them, but we can install on any number of machines at one physical address. ;-) The interchange method is through a proprietary format that doesn't include any of the licensed content. That way DAZ's assets are preserved. I don't know how big the market for a render farm is among most users, but we'll never know until someone offers the service. I'm reasonably sure DAZ3D can be convinced to exchange the right to use their models for render time (they have promo artists who would probably be grateful for faster renders), that would open up the RIB upload format to your farm; or there could be a private arrangement of some sort to reach that end. The big problem is that there are also quite popular private vendors that sell though DAZ3D and reaching an agreement with them all could be time consuming. I'd be surprised if you couldn't work out something at least with DAZ3D (be sure to mention how big your render farm is! ;-) )