[Bf-funboard] Re: Use idle online internet computers as a distributed rendering

[Robert Townsend]

Hi Ton,

This is my last post on this subject.

Obviously, you know your product and customers better
than me.  Most of the concerns mentioned are bandwidth
related.  I'd just like to make the following
additional points:

- Bandwidths are only going to increase and become
cheaper going forward.

- I would encourage you to implement the most general
purpose architecture possible.  Putting in place an
architecture that falls in place in the future is a
good thing, I think.

- I think BOINC could be used as an intranet solution,
then opened up later as bandwidths increase.

- It looks BOINC has done much of the work already,
though it may be more complicated than you really need
at the moment.

There are three similar solutions that I've found that
could be investigated.  They are:

Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing
(BOINC)  Open source project.  My guess as the most
likely candidate.
http://boinc.berkeley.edu

United Devices - Grid.  Commercial product.
http://www.ud.com/home.htm

Entropia - DC Grid.  Commercial product.
http://www.entropia.com

I might be interested in helping with this project if
one of the goals was high quality output and another
was to somehow harness a large cheap source of
computing power, like with BOINC.  I'm a C++
programmer with over 10 years experience programming
under various OSes, and I graduated as a Mechanical
Engineer with honors.  I would help with the BOINC
part, since working on the core of Blender is probably
beyond my capabilities.  I think bandwidth may not be
as much a problem here in the US, but that is only a
guess.

I'll probably have this e-mail address for quite
awhile, but sometimes I change it, so I've included my
snail mail address below.

Sincerely,

Robert S Townsend
8233 Verbena Drive
Riverside, CA 92504
USA

<Hi Robert,
<
<We've been playing with such ideas in the past
<several times, most obviously the problem is in the
<difficulties of controlling such a public service:
<
<- animations will easily run into 100s of megabytes
<of results.  
<Bandwidth limitations (uploading such amounts) will
<make it difficult for most users to participate
<- there is no method in Blender to detect or control
<the amount of resources needed... someone can easily
<make a .blend file that uses 1 Gig or more memory
<- Blender files itself, packed, with all textures,
<also can grow into 20 or more megs. Another
<distribution problem
<
<But most important:
<If you do an actual calculation; taking into account
<the amount of time it needs to transfer/distribute
<all data, render it, and get it back, you'll easily
<and up with unacceptable delays for such a system to
<work efficiently. Blender is really an animator's
<tool, designed to quickly render huge amounts of
<frames overnight. For example for a high-quality
<renderer - like Yafray - this might be much more
<efficient.
<
<My suggestion:
<Let's first develop an easy & simple system with a
<nice GUI for intranet purposes. With as main
<features having a good control & overview of what's
<going on with all rendering jobs. In practice,
<Blender renders so fast that one artist can easily
<get his work rendered overnight at 2-3 systems. Most
<people have a spare machine hanging around. Or small
<studios then can efficiently use the workstations to
<act as renderfarm in spare hours.  With such a
<system in place, it will be mich easier to review
<possibilites to extend this to an internet service.
<
<-Ton-





__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com