Cheap Render Farms?

[Gojirax]

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?

[Gojirax]

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!

[Gojirax]

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

[Gojirax]

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