Planetside partners with Pixel Plow as Official Render Farm

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

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digitalis99

A victim of our own success...yeah, maybe a bit.  No need to worry, though.  Our farm size just doubled:

http://www.pixelplow.net/more-power-to-ya-2/
Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net

Dune


digitalis99

Finally...some new features for TG users.   :o

http://www.pixelplow.net/enhanced-frame-lists/

In a nutshell, we now support rendering sparse GI caches farm-side.
Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net

Oshyan

This is a great new addition, saving render time and making it easier to get smooth GI on the farm! Here's our documentation on GI caching, which references the 'sparse cache' approach:
http://www.planetside.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Terragen_3_Global_Illumination#Rendering_with_GI_cache_files

You may want to add the link to your blog post Ty?

- Oshyan

digitalis99

Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net

digitalis99

With Oshyan's help, we've dug into TG a bit more to automatically correct some issues with scene files.  Now, when the job is a single frame job that our system has decided to tile render, we're making sure the ray detail region and padding settings are such that TG will behave more like the user expects.  There were problems with missing shadows and the like when a scene file is tile rendered but those values aren't set appropriately.  This could also result in a blocky output image if not set correctly, since each tiles light setup would disregard the lighting in the adjacent tiles.  As you can imagine, that produced some unexpected (and difficult to troubleshoot) results.  Those should no longer be a problem, as our system will automatically correct those values in the main and any GI pre-pass scene files.

Additionally, we've had issues in the past with the tile stitcher that was native to the render farm management software we use internally.  It developed a painfully bad habit of reporting it was done stitching the tiles together when it hadn't actually completed...or would ever complete.  We switched to ignoring what that software thought it was doing to using ImageMagick, controlled by our software.  There were some ridiculous defaults in ImageMagick as regards EXR handling that had to be found and overcome, but that has been done.  The result is reliable and accurate tile stitching for Terragen still image jobs (and the other apps that support tile rendering) no matter what output format you've defined in your scene file.

Phew!  Lots of little issues circumvented.  We're hoping this makes TG users happier.
Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net

Dune


Oshyan

You guys are truly the best in the business when it comes to really digging in to the details of software capabilities and needs and making everything work as smoothly as possible on the farm. At this point I think working with Terragen on PixelPlow is a "near-native" experience, equivalent to rendering on your desktop machine, but a whole lot faster! :D

That's really quite an achievement. No other render farm has this level of Terragen-specific capability.

- Oshyan

digitalis99

Agent update today brings background zipping to the foreground.  Is that like combining matter and anti-matter?

Anyway, that's a small perk for TG users (since your scene datasets are typically quite small), but notable when you have a larger chunk of data you need to send to us.  If you care to, read a bit more about it here:
http://www.pixelplow.net/your-zippers-in-the-background/
Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net

digitalis99

Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net

digitalis99

Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net

digitalis99

We just released 2 major features to our service today, render time estimates and command line job submission.  If you're interested, you can read more here:

http://www.pixelplow.net/two-major-new-features-and-a-few-little-ones/

Also, the display name for Terragen in our agent now correctly reflects version 3.4, but we've been running that internally since it was released.
Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net

edlo

*Update:
I was contacted by support and they have managed to track the issue through their AVS provider down to what seems to be a difference in how Canadian banks report the AVS information; so as soon as I have some time I will try again changing the data and hopefully matching what the bank reports so that the payment can go through. For now it seems Canadian cards have issues going through.
BTW The invoice was deleted to keep the system from retrying automatically.
Thanks to the support person that handled this all the way through.

So I decided to try pixelplow; signed in added my CC and failed, I contacted support and I was told that the address should be exactly the same as the account, so I went into my bank account and copied the address and name exactly as it is. No luck; so then I was told Canadian cards have issues with AVS as they say they provide this feature, yet they dont. I talked to my bank and they do  offer AVS and of course I have used the card elsewhere several times without issue.
Long story short, the invoice was deleted from my account and no further effort to get me up and rendering was done, and no further communication, or help from PP.
You seem to be on top of things so you might be able to help further.
Thanks in advance.

Oshyan

Thanks for the update Edlo, I'm glad you got the support you needed and I hope the payment issue can be resolved soon. We've had our own share of frustrations with credit card processing for Terragen purchases as well.

- Oshyan

digitalis99

It's been a while since I've posted here.  We've been deep in the development trenches on multiple projects.

Since last posting, there's certainly a couple of improvements for Terragen users on the Pixel Plow farm.  Namely:


  • We support TG4
  • We now support tiled single frame jobs when additional output is defined

For the relevant blog/support portal posts on our site:
http://www.pixelplow.net/terragen-4-now-supported/
http://www.pixelplow.net/single-frame-job-updates/
http://www.pixelplow.net/support/still-image-renders-a-k-a-tile-render-jobs/

We hope both of these additions help the TG community.
Pixel Plow :: Render Endlessly :: http://www.pixelplow.net