new to indigo

[godpurenoob]

hi i am new to indigo and is interested in doing a small render farm, and i had few question which i can't find the answer on google or here, the question is

1) for "slaves" what are the important hardware which i need to consider, a intel core i7 or xeon is better, what are the ram recommended and also is graphic card a requirement or a must, and lastly a hhd or ssd would do better job?

2) I wish to purchase indigo program and according to "http://store.glaretechnologies.com/", does it mean that €595.00 is just only for one pc or one master and unlimited slave or only one master and slave, or only one computer whether it is master or slave, because i might purchase about 9 slave and 1 master, and the program might be even more costly than the hardware itself (€595.00x10=€5950.00) which is very expensive and lastly is it life time or for a period of time.

3) render for 3dmax and maya, i am not very sure how to set up the software part, other than installing the plugin and select network slave mode, what else i need to do for the whole render farm system to work, and after i complete the art in 3dmax and maya all i need to do is just import it to indigo and render right??

thanks in advance for answering my post and sorry for my poor and broken english.

[PureSpider]

Heyo!
1) Slaves should have the same hardware as the master, RAM and CPU wise, as they do the same calculations as the master.

2) The 595€ is a license for one master and two slaves, each additional slave license is just 99€!
For one master and 9 slaves that would be 595€ + 7*99€ = 595€ + 693€ = 1288€

[godpurenoob]

Heyo!
1) Slaves should have the same hardware as the master, RAM and CPU wise, as they do the same calculations as the master.

2) The 595€ is a license for one master and two slaves, each additional slave license is just 99€!
For one master and 9 slaves that would be 595€ + 7*99€ = 595€ + 693€ = 1288€

1)thx purespider for the reply and that mean that, the slave should also have the same motherboard and graphic card as the master as I am using some kida high spec graphic card and motherboard, it will more very costly for my slave than, cause i wish to reduce the unnecessary cost on slave.

2)is it for life time or for a period of time, and let say for example i have 9 slave, and 3 master, is it possible that i use all 3 master to render at the same time using the slave, and will it end up like 1 master 3 slave render or randomly chooses the slave or the master will have to line up to wait the other master done its render?

and again thx in advance for answering my question ^^

[Zom-B]

1) A fast network to connect your slaves with the master is also very important, since there are quite some GB to transfer if your render in High Resolution with SuperSampling and LightLayers enabeled!
The Process of gathering together renderoutput of 9 Slaves, each with one GB of IGI Data can take quite some time!!
Regarding CPU you can throw everything SSE2 capable at Indigo AMD or Intel, But RAM should be same as Master, since the same scene gets rendered and would be a shame for the slaves not be able to render because of insufficient amount of RAM.
GPU rendering for slaves is broken atm, but gets fixed soon. Here is a good amount of RAM usefull too (2GB+)
Regarding CPU performance other rendering benchmarks like frybench, cinebench etc. are quite adaptable to Indigo regerading performance scale between CPU models.

3) Wherever you get your Indigo Scene exported from (Maya or Max) you end up with a scene that you open up with Indigo, enable network rendering and start.
I'm not sure how "Production Ready" the Max Exporters are atm...

[godpurenoob]

1) A fast network to connect your slaves with the master is also very important, since there are quite some GB to transfer if your render in High Resolution with SuperSampling and LightLayers enabeled!
The Process of gathering together renderoutput of 9 Slaves, each with one GB of IGI Data can take quite some time!!
Regarding CPU you can throw everything SSE2 capable at Indigo AMD or Intel, But RAM should be same as Master, since the same scene gets rendered and would be a shame for the slaves not be able to render because of insufficient amount of RAM.
GPU rendering for slaves is broken atm, but gets fixed soon. Here is a good amount of RAM usefull too (2GB+)
Regarding CPU performance other rendering benchmarks like frybench, cinebench etc. are quite adaptable to Indigo regerading performance scale between CPU models.

3) Wherever you get your Indigo Scene exported from (Maya or Max) you end up with a scene that you open up with Indigo, enable network rendering and start.
I'm not sure how "Production Ready" the Max Exporters are atm...

thx zom-b for the quick reply and after reading your detail explanation, i had some idea of the hardware and as you stated "GPU rendering for slave is broken at the moment"<< this part i don't really get what does it mean, do you mean that indigo has some bug that need to fix regarding GPU or GPU is not needed for render slave, and but do hhd and ssd make any in rendering and do motherboard has any effect too??

thx again in advance ^^ hehe love the helpful member here (Y)

[Zom-B]

... as you stated "GPU rendering for slave is broken at the moment"<< this part i don't really get what does it mean

I am referring to this here: http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... =5&t=12166

and but do hhd and ssd make any in rendering and do motherboard has any effect too??

afaik the HDD is quite unimportant, regarding performance. The mainboard is maybe relevant for a few % of more or less speed. A PCI-Express 3 connection is better for GPU rendering afaik!

thx again in advance ^^ hehe love the helpful member here (Y)

Always glad to help

[godpurenoob]

... as you stated "GPU rendering for slave is broken at the moment"<< this part i don't really get what does it mean

I am referring to this here: http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... =5&t=12166

as this mean its either the slave must have same GPU as the master(that will be costly for me) or Indigo's bug that yet to be fix, am i right here?

and but do hhd and ssd make any in rendering and do motherboard has any effect too??

afaik the HDD is quite unimportant, regarding performance. The mainboard is maybe relevant for a few % of more or less speed. A PCI-Express 3 connection is better for GPU rendering afaik!

so according to your experience, it mean that hhd and ssd doesn't make much different to render speed right?

so in conclusion the hardware part for the slave is that
1) good processor (i7 or Xeon)
2) motherboard doesn't play an important role in renderfarm except the PCI slot
3) ram should be same as master in order to catch up ( well sort of )
4) hhd or ssd doesn't matter much
5) GPU should or must same as the master

i am right for the hardware part??? hehe ^^

[PureSpider]

5) GPU should or must same as the master

I think you don't need a super fast GPU, as most of the mid-level GPUs are too fast for the CPU to feed them enough data to render anyway.

[CTZn]

Hi, I'm in charge for the Maya exporter (MtI). I'm curious to know about the kind of scene you intent to render.

As for network rendering, it was implemented very early and I could never test it with my single PC. It may require some updating, that should be quick and easy. At this point the option is currently not even exposed in the exporter, though it can be reached somehow. There was never an explicit demand; there is very little feedback from MtI users. Figures.

MtI will do fine with still scenes, regarding animation many Maya features are not supported yet. In my quick tests a rigged smooth skin was rendering ok, while rigid objects under constrains may be misplaced in the render.

Motion blur is designed to work with rigid objects that are keyframed, hierarchical animation works ok.

Regarding Indigo features the exporter is rather complete.

[CTZn]

5) GPU should or must same as the master

I think you don't need a super fast GPU, as most of the mid-level GPUs are too fast for the CPU to feed them enough data to render anyway.

True, it's important to know that Indigo uses CUDA/OpenCL in an hybrid fashion, where the CPU and GPU will share different tasks sequentially for one sample (I think it's correct to say so). Unlike most pure GPU renderers.

In pretty much all cases the GPU will be under a low or moderate usage, not the CPU wich will be used at full throttle.

So for hybrid rendering with Indigo the graphic board strength can become quickly irrelevant.

I own an I7 860 and a GTX 260, both low end but I know for sure that the GTX 260 is too fast for that CPU (haven't quantified it tho).

[godpurenoob]

Hi, I'm in charge for the Maya exporter (MtI). I'm curious to know about the kind of scene you intent to render.
.

hi ctzn and thx for your reply and here a some of the example of image i will be rendering at http://www.imagerom.com.my/

and as u stated that GPU is not very important so let say i am planning assemble a mid to high end range slave and here are my spec,

1)core i7 3770 (since i am not going to overclock)
2)a normal or cheap motherboard (most likely a h77 chipset board) to reduce cost and enough to support
3)32 to 64 gb ram since my master is using 64 gb ram (kida costly)
4)a mid range graphic card, maybe gt 430 to gtx 650
5)a normal 500 gb hhd (or ssd if recommended)

those are the main part of the slave will it be all right and if i am not wrong with my master spec it is

the currect highest spec master i had
1)core 3820k
2)64 gb ram
3)2tb hhd
4)sabertooth x79
5)quadro 2000 (about that range)
will the slave be able to handle the master's spec and there are some lower spec master which i had forgotten the spec,

and once again thx you for you reply ^^ hehe

[Zom-B]

hi ctzn and thx for your reply and here a some of the example of image i will be rendering at http://www.imagerom.com.my/

Thats some sweeeeet car renderings there!

Regarding that you'll end up rendering High Polygone Cars most of the time I would suggest that GPU rendering is not usable for you at all!
In GPU rendering the whole meshes need to fit into GPU RAM!

I have no exact idea how big your stuff is, but the best way to check out is to give such a scene a run on a machine of yours.
So you see how much RAM the PC eats up, and each slave will take the same amount to help rendering.

Also a RAM hungry can be the target resolution with SuperSampling and LightLayers. What Resolution do you aim to render in? Its easy to to calculate the RAM usage to hold that render Data in memory once we have that Info.
In the end Its really the best to try a scene of yours first and then you'll see, since your terrain of usage seems to exceed the one of most if not all users around here

will the slave be able to handle the master's spec and there are some lower spec master which i had forgotten the spec

You can use quite everything as a slave that supports SSE2 on CPU and has enough RAM to fit the whole scene and rendered data inside.
The speed of the RAM is afaik not important at all, so there is no need to go for the fastest RAM, since you'll not notice any speed benefit!

[galinette]

The speed of the RAM is afaik not important at all, so there is no need to go for the fastest RAM, since you'll not notice any speed benefit!

Are you sure of this? I would have guessed that RAM speed is quite critical. Indigo spends a lot of time traversing trees and reading textures, which is very RAM speed dependent.

Etienne

[CTZn]

Hi, I'm in charge for the Maya exporter (MtI). I'm curious to know about the kind of scene you intent to render.
.

hi ctzn and thx for your reply and here a some of the example of image i will be rendering at http://www.imagerom.com.my/

Wow you have impressed Zom-B, great jobs there indeed.

A few MtI limitations that may be of concern for you:

Constrains are reported to break export atm, and there is only the first UV set considered. Nothing is definitive though.

[OT] MtI development would ideally be user-driven because you guys are the ones with production needs, I'm not much of an artist anymore myself. Let me know stuff you need and I will be looking into that.

and as u stated that GPU is not very important [...]

Well it's raw power does not have to be the highest, unlike it's embedded RAM as mentioned.

edit: when I see a computer screen within a car I can not help but to think "BSOD"

[Zom-B]

Are you sure of this? I would have guessed that RAM speed is quite critical. Indigo spends a lot of time traversing trees and reading textures, which is very RAM speed dependent.

Yes, I'm quite sure to remember something about that, should be quite easy to benchmark, since RAM can be clocked down in the Bios without problem