Hardware for a "Render machine"

Hardware for a "Render machine"

Hello guys, as we (here in Germany) are still waiting for the black water cookers to come (Mac Pro 2013) we are investigating a pure render box solution for doing the work of strictly only rendering single pictures from our models (so no movies etc.). Is there any experience outside with the new iMac or Mac Mini versions and their speed? Or is there no work-around in buying some old 2010 Mac Pro's as used box?

UNIQUECO said:

Hello guys, as we (here in Germany) are still waiting for the black water cookers to come (Mac Pro 2013) we are investigating a pure render box solution for doing the work of strictly only rendering single pictures from our models (so no movies etc.). Is there any experience outside with the new iMac or Mac Mini versions and their speed? Or is there no work-around in buying some old 2010 Mac Pro's as used box?

Click to expand...

I wish I could help but don't know of many current render farms compatible with Cheetah 3D or Macs. I'll have to take a look, but last time I checked, years ago they are very expensive.

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Currently rendering an 85 minute movie made in Cheetah 3D, but it's taking longer than I was hoping using a mac with 2.53 GHz processor Intel.

I would like a solution to create the assets in Cheetah 3D, then render everything real time almost, as they did with Unity, when Unity finally irons out a movie editor addition to the program. That would save a ton of time and look hopefully as sharp as the PS4 at 1080p.

Cheetah 3D's renderer is great, though each frame can take 70 seconds or more depending on the situation, with hundreds of thousands of frames.

It's a shame Cheetah 3D doesn't support Applescript (perhaps there are secret command-line options). Strictly for rendering the most cost effective solutions are probably (a) hackintosh or (b) Mac Mini. The problem is handing off the render job — the simplest option is probably screen sharing.

That said, the Mac Mini is overdue for an update.

http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

$900 quad core Mac Mini gets a multicore rating of 12000 vs. 32000 for a $7000 12-core Mac Pro.

Now once C3D et al start leveraging the D700s in the Mac Pro, the value proposition will change markedly. But it needs to get a LOT better for the Mini to not be good value.

I used to use a mini to help out with projects created on an iMac.

One app I have can distribute the render, which is really helpful. Others, however, cannot, and require direct interaction. I used Share Screen for this as detail isn't necessary.

The main problem with the mini is heat: my would sound like a UFO preparing for liftoff several times a day. During heavy renders, I would stay in my office just to watch over the mini, occasionally pausing output.

This week, I upgraded the mini to a Mac Pro and have no regrets at all. It can sit there and work for hours and I can go about life without worrying.

For the Pro, I use a Thunderbolt cable to connect it to the iMac and use target display mode, which is awesome, but needs a second keyboard.

podperson said:

It's a shame Cheetah 3D doesn't support Applescript (perhaps there are secret command-line options). Strictly for rendering the most cost effective solutions are probably (a) hackintosh or (b) Mac Mini. The problem is handing off the render job — the simplest option is probably screen sharing.

That said, the Mac Mini is overdue for an update.

http://browser.primatelabs.com/mac-benchmarks

$900 quad core Mac Mini gets a multicore rating of 12000 vs. 32000 for a $7000 12-core Mac Pro.

Now once C3D et al start leveraging the D700s in the Mac Pro, the value proposition will change markedly. But it needs to get a LOT better for the Mini to not be good value.

Click to expand...

Good points about the Mini Macs option.

catman2 said:

I used to use a mini to help out with projects created on an iMac.

One app I have can distribute the render, which is really helpful. Others, however, cannot, and require direct interaction. I used Share Screen for this as detail isn't necessary.

The main problem with the mini is heat: my would sound like a UFO preparing for liftoff several times a day. During heavy renders, I would stay in my office just to watch over the mini, occasionally pausing output.

This week, I upgraded the mini to a Mac Pro and have no regrets at all. It can sit there and work for hours and I can go about life without worrying.

For the Pro, I use a Thunderbolt cable to connect it to the iMac and use target display mode, which is awesome, but needs a second keyboard.

Click to expand...

The 2009 mini mac I have rendering 24/7 and it's as quiet as a mouse who is asleep. They really amped up the efficiency with that version on up. Sad the newer ones decided a DVD or blu ray drive wasn't worth adding, since they didn't lower the price. I wonder if they still have iDVD in the iLife pack installed with the newest mini macs? I'll have to check.

I have a mac mini (quad, latest version + ssd) and i'm doing 3D stuff on it (cheetah 3d and blender). It's is a good machine and relatively fast.

But I have one problem with it. When it has to render something like glass or something other that requires more "horsepower" then the fans are blowing like hell. It continues to work & render the project but it's very loud.

So...I don't know if it's a good product to render. It's very good to a certain point like simpel renders to advanced. But when it becomes complex, it blows.

gille1981 said:

I have a mac mini (quad, latest version + ssd) and i'm doing 3D stuff on it (cheetah 3d and blender). It's is a good machine and relatively fast.

But I have one problem with it. When it has to render something like glass or something other that requires more "horsepower" then the fans are blowing like hell. It continues to work & render the project but it's very loud.

So...I don't know if it's a good product to render. It's very good to a certain point like simpel renders to advanced. But when it becomes complex, it blows.

Click to expand...

So does it render slowly because it's thermally maxed out, or is it merely the fan noise that annoys you (I have similar issues rendering on my laptop).

The only Macs that aren't going to start running their fans like crazy during big renders are the Mac Pros (I imagine Hackintoshes will tend to be really bad in terms of noise — Apple works hard to make their machines quiet).

I'm going to guess the opposite with a hackintosh - you'd have far more control over the things like cooling - being able to choose a large fan and heat sink. If you were content with intel video, this could be a pretty quiet solution too.

I am working my new MacPro pretty hard... 12 threads almost maxed out for two hours at a shot (3D video)... it is very quiet.

I also work with audio recording of conversations... I can record with the MacPro rendering away, something that was impossible with a mini.

That said, the new iMacs (2012 and later) are pretty fast at rendering and are very quiet, too.

podperson said:

So does it render slowly because it's thermally maxed out, or is it merely the fan noise that annoys you (I have similar issues rendering on my laptop).

The only Macs that aren't going to start running their fans like crazy during big renders are the Mac Pros (I imagine Hackintoshes will tend to be really bad in terms of noise — Apple works hard to make their machines quiet).

Click to expand...

The mac mini renders the project without a drop in rendering, even when the fan blows like crazy. So no problem with the render time.

any chance cheetah 3d could incorporate ip over thunderbolt and some kind of Xgrid thingamajig to create a mini render farm eventually?

elohel said:

any chance cheetah 3d could incorporate ip over thunderbolt and some kind of Xgrid thingamajig to create a mini render farm eventually?

Click to expand...

I think if you really want to render movies seriously, you'll want to use tools with serious production capabilities.

E.g. render-to-layers, network rendering, NLA, and so on. All the credible options run on Linux and there are cloud-based render farm solutions that are ridiculously more time- and cost-effective than trying to cobble together a solution around Cheetah 3D.

If you really want to work in Cheetah 3D and have a credible production rendering option on the Mac, you might consider ElectricImage which has all these features, is insanely fast, can load FBX files, and costs under $1000. (You'll need to rebuild all your shaders in EIAS). I haven't used EIAS in a long time, but it certainly used to be amazingly good (it has a lot of production movie credits).

If all you want is an inexpensive box that can render stuff for you offline then grab a Mac Mini or build a Hackintosh.

podperson said:

I think if you really want to render movies seriously, you'll want to use tools with serious production capabilities.

E.g. render-to-layers, network rendering, NLA, and so on. All the credible options run on Linux and there are cloud-based render farm solutions that are ridiculously more time- and cost-effective than trying to cobble together a solution around Cheetah 3D.

If you really want to work in Cheetah 3D and have a credible production rendering option on the Mac, you might consider ElectricImage which has all these features, is insanely fast, can load FBX files, and costs under $1000. (You'll need to rebuild all your shaders in EIAS). I haven't used EIAS in a long time, but it certainly used to be amazingly good (it has a lot of production movie credits).

If all you want is an inexpensive box that can render stuff for you offline then grab a Mac Mini or build a Hackintosh.

Click to expand...

I really do prefer working in cheetah but I don't know any other programs either....conversely I just am looking to create short clips at 1080p maybe for portfolio work I guess is it good for that?

I'm going to resurrect this thread instead of starting a new topic on the same thing.

Anybody have any thoughts now of the best option for handing off C3d rendering jobs? I started rendering an 8 second animation clip (1024x768, 30fps) this morning about 6 hours ago and it's only at 5 seconds now. I see some older Xserves on eBay that aren't too expensive. How would one of those compare to one of the newer MacMini's / Silver Case Mac Pro Towers? I'm doing most of the testing and setup of my working files on the i5 iMac. Usually I drop the frame rate really low and pixel dimension down by about 1/4 the resolution I put above for testing until the file is ready for the full size render.

I have Snow Leopard Server Software already, so I'm not worried about having the newest version of OS X Server. I think Martin has said that he plans on v7 supporting SL anyway. Just looking at some options to speed it up a little. Also to add, I'm in several other memory hog apps all day long (Adobe suite, etc.) so this is the other reason I bring it up.

Thanks for any thoughts on the discussion!