Hi,

I love blender but i find that all Blender users are always facing the same problem : rendering power.

Shouldn't blender consider this problem to increase it's usage ?

Let me explain myself.

Like lot of blender user we rapidly face a problem : rendering power. After lot of searches and trials i've came to think there is no good solution for the moment and that's a problem Blender should take care of :

- High end computers : expensive plus it seems that even if GPU power is the future, some users still think CPU is more efficient.
- GPU solution (one or more Cuda Graphic cards) : same problem : expensive.
- renderfarm.fi ? cool but i'm not sure you can use this solution in a professional workflow when you don't know WHEN you'll get your work done and that it will be public !
- Have your own render farm ? That's an awesome feature of blender 2.6x. But converting old PCs to have rendering power is a bit frustrating : you don't get as much power as you'd like (i know we always want more !) and energy consumption is a part of the equation. And if you build a render farm with recent PCs, it costs a lot again.

Considering all that, i've seen some posts of people trying to use blender on PS3. I'm not sure i've understood everything but it came out that it's not a good solution as blender is not coded to use the PS3 cell power. And i think that's really too bad.

I've seen several university using 2 to x PS3 to build small cheap supercomputers. How can you beat a 200$ computer like a PS3 when a good graphic card is 300 to 500$ and can only have 4 max of them in 1 computer?

I suppose building a blender version that could work and use the power of a PS3 is a lot of work, but i think this could be a real deal :
- Open movies could use their own cheap render farm.
- Blender would be even more interesting for lot of companies as it could bring excellent results for reasonably good price.
- Blender notoriety would increase.

In any case, shouldn't blender think of that problem as part of the equation in order to expand itself ?
I know it's another business but honestly if Blender had a cheap powerful scalable solution to offer wouldn't you buy it?
I know i do !

Is this a so crazy idea ?

Odo

Odolyte wrote:

Hi, I love blender but i find that all Blender users are always facing the same problem : rendering power. Shouldn't blender consider this problem to increase it's usage ? Let me explain myself. Like lot of blender user we rapidly face a problem : rendering power. After lot of searches and trials i've came to think there is no good solution for the moment and that's a problem Blender should take care of : - High end computers : expensive plus it seems that even if GPU power is the future, some users still think CPU is more efficient. - GPU solution (one or more Cuda Graphic cards) : same problem : expensive. - renderfarm.fi ? cool but i'm not sure you can use this solution in a professional workflow when you don't know WHEN you'll get your work done and that it will be public ! - Have your own render farm ? That's an awesome feature of blender 2.6x. But converting old PCs to have rendering power is a bit frustrating : you don't get as much power as you'd like (i know we always want more !) and energy consumption is a part of the equation. And if you build a render farm with recent PCs, it costs a lot again. Considering all that, i've seen some posts of people trying to use blender on PS3. I'm not sure i've understood everything but it came out that it's not a good solution as blender is not coded to use the PS3 cell power. And i think that's really too bad. I've seen several university using 2 to x PS3 to build small cheap supercomputers. How can you beat a 200$ computer like a PS3 when a good graphic card is 300 to 500$ and can only have 4 max of them in 1 computer? I suppose building a blender version that could work and use the power of a PS3 is a lot of work, but i think this could be a real deal : - Open movies could use their own cheap render farm. - Blender would be even more interesting for lot of companies as it could bring excellent results for reasonably good price. - Blender notoriety would increase. In any case, shouldn't blender think of that problem as part of the equation in order to expand itself ? I know it's another business but honestly if Blender had a cheap powerful scalable solution to offer wouldn't you buy it? I know i do ! Is this a so crazy idea ? Odo

Dear Odo,

We allow us to present our service. We are RenderFlow, a commercial online renderfarm. Our expertise comes from offering services for 3ds max and Vray since 2008 and where we think to offer a high quality service. Since the beginning we followed the evolution of Blender and we developed render services for CPU which we are offering about 3 years now. This May we launched services for Cycles on CPU and GPU.

Our mission is to take care of the issues you mentioned. We position ourselves in the area of users which are disposed to pay for a powerful render service. Our services include Blender Internal on CPU and Cycles on CPU and GPU. We think that we can give a positive impulse on the pro sector in Blender since we work to help artists and studios to render their final product while the creatives can use the hardware for creative tasks.

We have to admit that we also suffer some limitations of Blender in some aspects but we expect the community to reach their aim which they published at Blender Conference 2012 last weekend, that they will work on making Blender more stable. Besides that we employ our internal programming team in the development of new features.

If you are interested in our service we also offer a free of charge demo account without limitations where you can test all our features. The final renders underlie the license Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0
Besides that you can also register to a private account where you also receive a render credit as a welcome bonus.


For more information you can contact us:
Web: www.renderflow.com
Email: info@renderflow.com
Skype: RenderFlow (GMT 9-13 hrs)

or follow us:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/RenderFlow
Twitter: @RenderFlow

We are interested in your feedback.

With best regards,

RenderFlow