Would you be interested in a RANCH support for Terragen?

[RenderFred]

Hi everyone,

I am Frederic Louguet, co-creator and main developer of the RANCH renderfarm (link in sig). We are the first Vue renderfarm and are also unbiased rendering specialists, currently offering the highest performance available today for Maxwell Render, Fryrender and Indigo. We also support 3ds Max and Lightwave projects. We offer some unique characteristics amongst renderfarms: no sharing (the full power is always allocated to each project, currently 1536 GHz / 512 cores), the lowest prices on the market (standard Sapphire formula at $0.12 / 0.09 € per GHz/Hour), full automation 24/7, and we dedicate a unique web site to each software we support. We are running on XP64 with Core 2 Quad / Extreme architecture.

We are considering the possibility of supporting Terragen in the future, but we would first like to know if there is an interest. As we are fully automated, develop all our software ourselves (we do not use third party renderfarm managers) and optimizes everything to the max, supporting a new 3D software takes time / dedication / money. So before we contact the Planetside staff directly, we would like to know if you, the user, would use a "RANCH for Terragen".

Thank you for your attention, I am looking forward to hearing your comments / questions!

Fred

[Mohawk20]

Interesting that you are the second render farm interested in TG in a short while...

Your price is low, which is good.

But the problem is that there are not so many users that have the animation package (yet), and those that do are mostly non-commercial users.
That said, I don't know how many companies are thinking about using Terragen. It certainly has potential, so render farm support would certainly be appreciated I think.

[Tangled-Universe]

Interesting that you are the second render farm interested in TG in a short while...

Your price is low, which is good.

But the problem is that there are not so many users that have the animation package (yet), and those that do are mostly non-commercial users.
That said, I don't know how many companies are thinking about using Terragen. It certainly has potential, so render farm support would certainly be appreciated I think.

I agree with you here.
So can I make a pricing-example here for a project I want to render? It is a single frame:

I have 1 CPU = 4 cores @ 2.4 GHz = 9,6 GHz
$0.09 / GHz / Hour --> 9,6 x 0.09 = $0.0864 / Hour
My image probably takes 40 hours to render (you have to guess it right?):
So 40 x 0.0864 = $34,56.

Assuming this is a correct calculation and then compare to the guys of RenderFarm.Ca
1 CPU = CAN $52.80 x 0.8162 = $43.10
4 CPU = $172.38
(choosing CPU's is a bit confusing compared to paying / Ghz)

Anyhow, it is quite cheap

We all know Terragen can be a bit "stubborn" when rendering and often problems occur.
How are these being handled? What happens when the render crashes just before finishing?
Are the costs for the client?

Martin

[RenderFred]

@Mohawk20

We have been looking at Terragen from afar for a while, and as Vue specialists it is only 'natural' that we look at other landscaping applications. But you are right, we are not sure if there is a pro market for Terragen right now, that is why we are asking the question here

@Tangled-Universe

Price is simple on the RANCH, as every project gets 1536 GHz. So a one hour render is always 1536 x $0.12 = $184.32. Estimating still images render times is always difficult, since it depends on how complexity is distributed in the scene. The best way is to do a lowres render and multiply to get the estimation (you can estimate that a 6400 x 4800 render takes 100 times more than a 640 x 480 render of the same scene). If your scene takes 40 hours on a Q6600, and assuming we are 100 times faster on this image (can be more, can be less), it would take 0.4 hour = 24 minutes on the RANCH, that is around $73.

We have a very clear policy on crashes. The customer pays for his mistakes (e;g: specify wrong render parameters, did not read the manual, sending a scene which crashes even on a single machine - because then he can test it before sending it to us etc.). If the customer has made no mistake, he never pays for unpredicted crashes. In our partnerships, we communicate directly with the developers of the application, which is good for everyone. As we have a lot of machines, we detect and are often affected by bugs that are never seen on common configurations. It can be a pain sometimes, but ultimately it helps the people who develop the software to iron out a lot of difficult bugs, and it helps us to provide a better service.

[Tangled-Universe]

Thanks for your response Frederic,

So your proprietary software somehow utilizes all 1536 GHz...that's amazing

I'll make a small render and apply the same math to it like you did.
I'm interested to try it, just to see how this works and if I like it
Also, now you mention, I could render poster-size images for print without rendering it (for eternity) myself
Around $100 is really not expensive in my opinion.

Martin