Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: Gojirax on July 19, 2006, 11:18:40 PM
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Pardon me for the cross post. (I submitted this on the Video Toaster/Flyer Mailing list on Yahoo as well, but I have a feeling there might be someone on here that has the answer)
I remember in 1995 walking into Clackamas Computers (Haven for Video Toaster systems in the mid 90's) and seeing the demo of the Video Toaster 4000 system.
I also remember them mentioning agonizingly long render times for Lightwave and other stuff.
They mentioned a solution back then of using "Dec Alpha Raptor Render Farms" and described it as 20-30 computers all networked as one huge super-computer that did the rendering work for the Toaster.
What ever happened to these 12 year old systems? Is there software available that would allow me to set up a relatively low cost PC cluster to be the Mega-Brain of my rendering system?
Windows? Linux? Amiga/MoS/Etc?
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Hi,
That was "ScreamerNet" if I recall. It was enabled in the Amiga version of Lightwave and I remember seeing it in action, but only using Amigas as render nodes and not a PC or Alpha. You should be able to use modern day PCs with this same tech, but would most likely need copies (or render-node versions) for each machine which would be quite pricey.
Good luck!
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Hmmm, so ScreamerNet comes with Lightwave?
I just bought a copy of Video Toaster 4.1 on Ebay which included Lightwave 4.1...
I hadn't thought about using another Amiga to assist with the rendering, but since I'll have a moderate A1200 system sitting next to my A4000 that's a possibility!
I'll check into that ;)
Thanks!
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Yup, Screemernet is part of the Flyer software on the 4.1 CD. You need to connect the amigas via the paralel port if I remember right (I'll have to look in my manual to see for sure)
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I found some tutorials on how to setup ScreamerNet on the PC/Mac, but haven't found one on setting it up on the Amiga.
I did find a ScreamerNetII download on Aminet, which claims to be an upgraded version of the software that came with the Toaster.
I'm getting excited. I love this kinda stuff ;)
It's like RC5 but with purpose ;)
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You'd be better off getting your hands on a used copy of PC lightwave and use it. Just some real world numbers.
In 1995 when Lighwave 4 came out on the PC, on my 100Mhz Pentium processor (Not 2, not 3, Not 4, not even a Pro), the dual spacecraft scene from lightwave, rendered 10X faster then with lightwave 4 on a stock 25 Mhz 68040 4000. I did a whole article for VTU about it. A throwaway P3 laptop will easily do 100X or more faster then your Toaster system, so use it to generate your lightwave frames, save them as Flyer clips and move them to your flyer when you get it.
-Tig
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BTW render farms are still used ( I also saw your post in yahoo) I work in a large animation studio and we have 1000's of nodes. A few years back at onther studio we still used lightwave(NOT AMIGA) to render, and heck yeah we had a farm. We wrote our own software but that does not change much. Screamernet has been around for a while (I can't belive how long....don't want to know makes me feel old). Nowadays we don't use DEC alphas anymore.(they are now slow) You could/should use pc's as a renderfarm for lightwave (otherwise linux, but you can't render lightwave on linux....) Check out the spider render cue software. If you intro history you CAN connect your a1200 and 4000 but it will not be BLAZING fast! It's not realy A good idea to go with and oldschool render farm. why?
1, slow machins suck as much power as fast ones
2, slow and old machines take up more space than new ones
3, to have the same power as 3 new ones you would need 20 old ones, and unless you live in a huge dust free env. with tons of power you are going to reach you maximum power load FAST. This is actualy why INTEL stock has gone back up with there new chips, they use less power! Not a huge deal if you have one CPU but considerable if you have 50 units. Now if all you want to do is connect the a1200 and the a4000 sounds like a nice project, if you realy want render power, get some intel or amd boxes and go crazy!
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The whole reason I bought my first Amiga back in the 80's was to animate. I have used Arexx to combine a few software packages to speed up rendering times and combining effects but I wanted to build a 'render farm'. So now I own 6 Amigas, two with ethernet cards and all with lots of rendering and animation software. I am NOT thinking about a commercial film or a high-tech space shoot-em-up, but actually a dull educational video about early low-tech art technologies, like Greek kilns, Pueblo pit firings etc. So this Screamernet stuff would enable my Miggies to join up and assist my project? Where can I get it? I have 3 Toasters and 2 Supergens. I have Toaster 4000 software, too.
Heck, I don't think that slogging along with a networked Amiga render farm is all that bad. Maybe a bunch of high end PCs could do the same thing 100's of times faster, but why is that more satisfying than using ancient beat-up old Amigas to create educational art? My ceramics can take weeks to sculpt and up to 18 hours to fire. You can't speed up a wood fired kiln, but you also would find it very very hard to get the same effect from a gas or electric kiln. So I am going to try to do what I started out to do many years ago: build the render farm and make some videos.
I think there is a lesson to be learned here. If we were traditional Japanese we might be happy to slowly, carefully, produce a work of art. There is nothing wrong with not making a profit, not speeding to a destination, and looking down at the strawberries that are growing at our feet. As I told my students when I taught sword work: sometimes fast is slow, and slow is fast.
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As I told my students when I taught sword work: sometimes fast is slow, and slow is fast.
Wise words!
... and you needed a renderfarm, because... ? :-)
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That a great dream, I do the same thing. Make stuff with my old amigas becasue I enjoy working with them... HOWEVER it not the same as ceramics. With computer animation the tools sucked 15 years ago, and not in a good way. Things have evolved. I can now do they type of work I was dreaming of back then. Ceramics has been the same sice hte invented that spinning table... I want people to understand that while you can do this as a hobby, don't expect if to complare with current technology! Also it's not cheap, AMIGAS are VERY expensive! Also like I mentioned above there are practical consideration, like space and power consumption! Another thing is that it actualy A LOT OF work to maintain an AMIGA render farm, parts will fail you will need to fix things, software will malfunction, MORE SO THAN ON OTHER PLATFORMS. The older the gear the more work you will have to do, it's not trivilal, I have experience with amiga render farms and as an AMIGA fan I can honestly tell you I can glad we have better gear now!!
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Thanks for the fantastic input guys!
I've got a tremendous amount of PC's (I even have a Dual Xeon server sitting gathering dust!)
I might just have to see about getting them all working on something crazy like that..
As a woodworker by hobby I also appreciate creating stunning works of art with old tools. I use old wooden hand planes instead of routers and have a brace and bit for when I want to drill holes. Sure I have new tools too, but sometimes it's about the ride and not the destination.
I'm going to have a play at both I think ;)
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Can't you just render the frames on different machines ?
if you've got two machines, than machine 1 renders all even frames and the ohter one all odd frames ? (for example)
don't need a render farm for this, just more computers. :)
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you can just render even and odds.... but a real render farm does way more than that.
1,
you can use many machines to render just one (realy heavy) frame. (with some software)
2,
you can set up and manage a whole bunch of different scenes at the same time, some lightwave, some renderman some imageFX some shake.....for nice 24/7 render action.
3,
manage resources in a production enviroment.
4,
You can keep all your textures in one place and share them,
things you want to avoid....
render the same scene on different patforms. if you use motorola render the whole scene on that, if you have intel render the whole scene on that, ALPHA ... why? becaue the random number generation is different on various chips for procedial textures (Like marbel) will look differnt causing
wired flicker.... just thought you wanted to know...
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You might consider WinUAE if u want a fast Amiga to render lightwave scenes on !
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@pierre
becaue the random number generation is different on various chips for procedial textures (Like marbel) will look differnt causing
wired flicker.... just thought you wanted to know...
Nonsense. If random numbers are different, it's a bug which should be fixed.
Most CPUs don't have random number generators anyway, this is just code, and code can be made to act the same way on all CPUs.
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hey man, maybe it's a bug, just telling you what I saw and what I was told it was.... I think you are right on modern hardware/software has this fixed, ppl where talking about Amiga renderfarms I know that this issue was real in those days, there was lots of odd stuff back then. Not total nonsense unless you wrote lightwave and can tell my why the frames looked differnt.. :)
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I had problems while rendering odds on intel cpus and evens on amds, but that was back in 1997 (i think) with lw6 over screamernet. It was just on some mathematical textures 8-)