Planetside partners with Pixel Plow as Official Render Farm

Started by Oshyan, August 22, 2014, 05:46:04 PM

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JP-RANCH

Quote from: digitalis99
While I can't address how you feel, my comments were not insulting.  They were a statement of facts.  We've never criticized you or even posted in your threads when you were the official render farm for Planetside.  I request the same courtesy from you, even though you seem to be upset and nervous.

You simply mentioned our company name whereas nobody did that before. We obviously cannot let this post without answer. Those 'statement facts' are your opinion but clearly not ours.
We had the 'courtesy' to never mention our competitors names in our thread(s) so you never had to intervene.

Quote from: digitalis99
If you were looking for an account that seemed to come directly from us, you won't find the jobs we ran through your farm.  Efficiency is not at all subjective.  The mere fact that you state efficiency is subjective means we can't really have a logical discussion about it.
Job completion time does NOT equal job render time when it comes to discussions about how your service works.  That's really all the farther I need to take that discussion.

We did not directly look for a Pixel Plow account: we know our Terragen users.
I now assume you compared the old RANCH (176 servers). Because the waiting time in the queue is now shorter than ever. At this point, I cannot see how the completion time can be faster on your farm, at least for quite significant projects.

Regarding efficiency, I insist: it is vague and subjective in most cases as it depends on customer's needs. Well once again we disagree.
What is the most efficient between a wonderful sports car and a great off-road car? They are both cars but the 'efficiency' completely depends on one's needs.

For instance, the Pixel Plow farm cannot be more efficient than the RANCH farm for a customer who has a big project with a very tight deadline. Everybody should agree that the major value for a renderfarm is the speed. We hope it clarify our point of view.

Anyway you were right on one thing: customers may try for themselves.

Good luck for the future.

JP-RANCH.

RANCH Renderfarm (www.ranchcomputing.com) - Fully Automated 24/7 - Fast and affordable cloud rendering service.

JP-RANCH

Quote from: Oshyan on October 14, 2014, 06:33:37 PM
Folks, please keep things things civil. I don't think much good is going to come from 2 competitors trying to outdo each other here, let your services stand on their own merits.

Both Pixel Plow and The Ranch support Terragen and both offer great services. We've chosen to partner with Pixel Plow going forward for reasons we've outlined on our partnership page and we encourage everyone to try their service. But every customer needs to make up their own minds which platform works best for their needs. There are no "bad" choices here, we respect and appreciate both of these valuable contributors to the Terragen ecosystem.

- Oshyan

Thanks Oshyan for your diplomatic post. As people can logically understand we just had to intervene by defending ourselves: PixelPlow publicly (and wrongly in our opinion) compared their service to ours.
We just want to make sure that everyone is aware of both opinions.

Cheers.

JP-RANCH.

RANCH Renderfarm (www.ranchcomputing.com) - Fully Automated 24/7 - Fast and affordable cloud rendering service.

digitalis99

Hey folks, we have an agent for all you Mac fans now!  No need for a Windows box, VM, or bootcamp install any more...our client-side software runs directly on your Mac.  This has been the most asked-for feature since we launched our service.  It was unfortunate that it took us this long to implement it, but we wanted to take the time to do it right.  You can read a bit more here:
http://www.pixelplow.net/#!/fruit-fans-find-fabulous-fips-for-frames/

We're making every effort to keep the feature set identical between both OS builds.  The only significant difference we've seen is that Apple makes it (possibly) impossible to allow our application to self-update.  While we are still looking into that, the Mac agent will now simply display a "Download Update" menu option when it detects we've released something.  Both installation and updating is as simple as downloading the 1 file and copying it to your Applications directory.  Safari automatically unzips it for you when it lands in your Downloads folder.

We've tested this extensively in Yosemite, with less testing in earlier OSX builds.  It does what we expect it to do in all of the OSX versions tested.  I'll make another post a bit later today to tell you about all of the other changes we've made to our agent, on both platforms.  Let me know if you have questions about the Mac agent.
Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net

digitalis99

We have a number of improvements to our agent software, both Windows and Mac.  The summary version:

    Automatic sub-accounts (multi-computer use)
    Single executable
    All compression is now internal
    Job size calculation and display
    More remembered settings and fewer clicks to submit a job
    Queue viewer updates

You can read more about them here:
http://www.pixelplow.net/#!/new-agent-improves-workflow-and-capabilities/
Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net

Oshyan

Awesome! That kind of continuous improvement is great to see.

- Oshyan

digitalis99

I've updated our online User Guide with information about how things work now, along with pictures of the new GUI.  It actually shortened up a bit, since overall the agent is easier to use.  In case anyone wants to go directly there, it's an option in our agent application menus and available to everyone here:
http://www.pixelplow.net/#!/user-guide/
Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net

digitalis99

1.59 is out for both platforms.  The most significant improvement being all jobs submitted by one agent ID are now viewable/controllable from any machine's queue viewer.  Jobs submitted from the viewing machine are in black, but jobs submitted by other machines are in grey.  We display the submitting machine in the queue viewer as well, just for information's sake.
Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net

digitalis99

Wow, has it really been that long since I updated this thread?  Yikes!  Several improvements and features for our agent since the last post.  The most notable for TG users is external asset file path check/warning prior to job submission.  We now also display "Cost Consumed" in the queue viewer while the job is running.  Even if a job slice hasn't completed yet, you can have some indication that things are running and a clear understanding of how much time (and time is money) you've burned thus far.

The biggest news of this agent release, though, is Multi-Session File Transfer:
http://www.pixelplow.net/#!/who-says-agents-cant-multitask/

Version 1.65 has been approved for automatic release on Windows and notification on the Mac.  Do yourself a favor, save yourself some time, and make sure your agent is updated before you submit your next render job.
Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net

Dune

Hey Hannes, Ty, did you ever work out the Paypal paying method?

digitalis99

Quote from: Dune on January 06, 2015, 02:59:30 AM
Hey Hannes, Ty, did you ever work out the Paypal paying method?

Unfortunately, no.  I'd be willing to give it another try with someone else, though.  Hannes was busy with other stuff shortly after we started trying the PayPal route.
Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net

Hannes

Sorry, I couldn't get on with that. I was really busy (and still am), but I'd love to try that again, once I have something to render on the farm.

Simius Strabus

I'm trying to get this job done at the Pixel Plow render farm, but right now its status is "Suspended" at 3% and exceptions says "No Output". Is something wrong?
Why stop dreaming when you wake up?

iMac i7 2.8GHz 8Gb

Oshyan

Sounds like there's an issue with the project file(s) you submitted and it is rendering out black/blank frames (that's partly a guess, I've run into similar things before). Best to email them directly about any problems that come up (though they'll probably be in touch with you about it soon anyway).

- Oshyan

Simius Strabus

Left it for a night. Just looked at the project. Its working:). And fast too. Incredible. Pixel plow is the way to go:)
Why stop dreaming when you wake up?

iMac i7 2.8GHz 8Gb

digitalis99

Quote from: Simius Strabus on January 07, 2015, 03:46:11 AM
Left it for a night. Just looked at the project. Its working:). And fast too. Incredible. Pixel plow is the way to go:)

Oshyan is right, it's best to contact us directly.  We actually emailed you why it didn't work, but your email server rejected our messages to you.   ::)

FYI, the problem was that you specified an %04d in the output file name you created.  You actually don't need to do that (because we insert it automatically), and our farm management software threw a rod when the final pass hit the farm.  We saw it and fixed it, which allowed the job to complete normally.  We have added a check for this particular naming convention in our agent and one other that would cause problems.  It will be released with the next agent version on both platforms.

Thanks for helping us find that bug!  ;)
Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net