7 ms·

SheepIt Render Farm server code goes open source

165 points by hyperific 2y ago

Havoc 2y ago
For those not familiar this is basically crowdsourcing rendering. You contribute compute and get credits for it that you can redeem against the collective render farm later CPU or GPU but obv favours gpu
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  Are there any notable works that have been created with this model? Or all hobbyist projects?
  - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
    Blender is cheaper than Maya and Autodesk Nuke... and accessible to every artist. Thus, it is a very common tool choice behind the scenes (targeting OpenEXR frame sequences and post-render compositing layers), but the color profiles are usually still done with professional video editing software. The OpenEXR format offers a few tricks for cleaning up lighting without re-rendering a scene. Blenders problem is it is perpetually Beta, and plugin ecosystems can be unreliable in a production setting. The film Flow was a miracle to pull off with a tool with dozens of known broken features every "release". It is like any other tool, in that most of its features take a lot of time to master. For low-poly game assets, it is totally worth a donation. =3
    - BoredPositron 2y ago
      Autodesk Nuke? That was genuinely painful to read. Setting aside the Freudian slip, you're projecting an unwarranted level of confidence, especially considering the information you're presenting is either outdated or just factually incorrect. I'm left wondering, why is that?
      - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
        Check out the price per seat, and the hurt will spread to your wallet. I like Blender in many ways, and wish their development path was more user-workflow regression-tested with actual output =3
        BoredPositron 2y ago
        [flagged]
        Joel_Mckay 2y ago
        Yes, that is an non-editable transposition typo as per YC... but considering Adobe and Autodesk own just about everything now... it is on my mind a lot. No, we don't use Nuke as the in-house rudimentary Matte painting solution is adequate for our project needs, and is natively compatible with the other choices we made. Reallusion products have been a mixed experience for mocap, and offer limited export options. We are currently trying out the iPhone Unreal mocap, FacIt, and Blender: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/live-link-face/id1495370836 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/live-link-face/id1495370836 https://faceit-doc.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://faceit-doc.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ May want to clean up that potty mouth when offering advice, as finding options that reduce the time commitment is always welcome input. Our project needs are rather basic, and have nothing to do with big-screen film vfx. Best of luck =3
        BoredPositron 2y ago
        „Typo“. Editing previous responses to guide the discussion is bad manner. But what else to expect… Frankly, I struggle to understand why you feign knowledge you don't possess. Instead of simply admitting a lack of understanding, you double down, revealing an even deeper lack of technical expertise with each post. Even unasked like in your last response. Boggles the mind.
        Joel_Mckay 2y ago
        Indeed, I discovered Reallusion was not a good direction early on, but we didn't need to double-down on something like the rokoko solutions either. Even after unproductive discussions with their developers asking for a key feature, it was clear it still wouldn't meet the project goals. The 9 seat studio license cost for FaceIt was inexpensive, has shown reasonable results, and I like supporting that kind of FOSS compatible work. Did you actually have any insights, observations, or questions? They make medications for mind "Boggles" I hear. Best of luck =3
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  Blender has had its own render farm utilities for dormant workstation utilization for sometime: https://flamenco.blender.org/download/ https://flamenco.blender.org/download/ The reason is simply a weird copyright paradox could form when a work is rendered on someone else's computer outside a company. No one that does media for a living will risk their revenue model on some amateur cloud service. Now for those lucky few that have a dozen RTX 5090 laying around unused, it is a niche problem most folks wished they had right now. lol =3
  - Tomte 2y ago
    > The reason is simply a weird copyright paradox could form when a work is rendered on someone else's computer Why? Copyright protects creativity, not hardware ownership. J.K. Rowling doesn't print her books in her apartment, either.
    - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
      An external work done by someone else is implicitly owned by that creator. i.e. if Rowling wrote some description about a bigoted neglected single mom striking it rich, and someone else actually wrote the work... than ownership is not guaranteed without legal assignment of rights to said work (depends on the location in the world). Thus, a publisher may not pay the muse unless under legal obligation of rights transfer, and having similar works further complicate exactly who owns the copyrights. When you publish media or games, than the providence of assets/compositions become extremely important in a commercial setting. I didn't make the rules, but do hire project artists all the time. The paperwork involved ends up ridiculously complicated, and requires specialized lawyers. This is why we avoid "AI" content, cloud based GPU service, and any vendor ignorant enough to force the issue. =3
      - Tomte 2y ago
        > An external work done by someone else is implicitly owned by that creator. Rendering an image is not "creating a work“ in the copyright sense. There may be all kinds of other legal quagmires, implicit contracts etc., but copyright is not one of them. > someone else actually wrote the work So you throw in a totally different situation? If the Blender scene has been modelled by someone else, then yes, that someone owns the copyright. But not because I let someone else render the completed scene.
- virtualritz 2y ago
  > CPU or GPU but obv favours gpu Why obviously?
  - MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
    Rendering is significantly faster and more energy efficient on a GPU.
    - fc417fc802 2y ago
      That only applies to video game level stuff. Most "real" scenes from professional movies won't fit in RAM on a typical desktop, let alone the extremely limited VRAM on a GPU. For example (from 2016, so 10 years out of date): https://www.disneyanimation.com/data-sets/?drawer=/resources/moana-island-scene/ https://www.disneyanimation.com/data-sets/?drawer=/resources...
    - virtualritz 2y ago
      That's a prevalent misconception among people outside of offline rendering/VFX. The short version is: no, it is not. For this reason render farms for the CGI you see in blockbusters and series nowadays are usually CPU-only, still. How do I know? I work in that industry.
      - MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
        That's quite surprising to me, as a regular hobbyist Blender user who sees at least 4x speedups on GPU vs CPU. Is it because of VRAM limitations on huge scenes? I assumed that big render farms used rigs with many GPUs with some proprietary technology to share memory between them to be able to fit the massive scenes. Or are you actually responding directly to what I was saying, and it turns out that on big scenes, even apart from the memory use, CPU rendering is somehow more efficient than GPU rendering? I don't think I'm prepared to accept that claim without a lot more substantiation. edit: I found this thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25616372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25616372 I guess the conclusion is that it is really about memory use, but at least 4 years ago, there wasn't a total consensus on the topic.
- Imustaskforhelp 2y ago
  Hmm interesting indeed.
- sureglymop 2y ago
  Are there any security concerns when it comes to a model like this?
  - Havoc 2y ago
    It's pretty open book. e.g. when adding compute you can see the image being generated. So no nsfw The parts of blender that are security concerns are disabled, so not all of the blender pipeline is available
    - echoangle 2y ago
      Could the people running the render recover the blend file you’re rendering?
      - Havoc 2y ago
        Don't know but doubt it. From memory you basically only see a blurry thumbnail. Doubt anyone is using this for serious work that has copyright risk though...it's just people playing with blender from what i can tell, so a more relaxed stance is fine
        echoangle 2y ago
        But the render process has to get the scene data including the whole 3D objects and materials and shaders to do the rendering, right?
        diggan 2y ago
        Yes, the machines who are doing the rendering could take the .blend file/data for themselves, otherwise the renderer wouldn't be able to do its job.
aerostable_slug 2y ago
Is this linked to the fun & free Electric Sheep collaboratively-rendered screensaver in code, personalities, or just in spirit?
- spot 2y ago
  just spirit!
citizenpaul 2y ago
This stuff is DOA. Why would you risk someone possibly generating CP on your computer? You know its gonna happen.

165 points by hyperific 2y ago

For those not familiar this is basically crowdsourcing rendering. You contribute compute and get credits for it that you can redeem against the collective render farm later CPU or GPU but obv favours gpu

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
Are there any notable works that have been created with this model? Or all hobbyist projects?
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  Blender is cheaper than Maya and Autodesk Nuke... and accessible to every artist. Thus, it is a very common tool choice behind the scenes (targeting OpenEXR frame sequences and post-render compositing layers), but the color profiles are usually still done with professional video editing software. The OpenEXR format offers a few tricks for cleaning up lighting without re-rendering a scene. Blenders problem is it is perpetually Beta, and plugin ecosystems can be unreliable in a production setting. The film Flow was a miracle to pull off with a tool with dozens of known broken features every "release". It is like any other tool, in that most of its features take a lot of time to master. For low-poly game assets, it is totally worth a donation. =3
  - BoredPositron 2y ago
    Autodesk Nuke? That was genuinely painful to read. Setting aside the Freudian slip, you're projecting an unwarranted level of confidence, especially considering the information you're presenting is either outdated or just factually incorrect. I'm left wondering, why is that?
    - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
      Check out the price per seat, and the hurt will spread to your wallet. I like Blender in many ways, and wish their development path was more user-workflow regression-tested with actual output =3
      - BoredPositron 2y ago
        [flagged]
        Joel_Mckay 2y ago
        Yes, that is an non-editable transposition typo as per YC... but considering Adobe and Autodesk own just about everything now... it is on my mind a lot. No, we don't use Nuke as the in-house rudimentary Matte painting solution is adequate for our project needs, and is natively compatible with the other choices we made. Reallusion products have been a mixed experience for mocap, and offer limited export options. We are currently trying out the iPhone Unreal mocap, FacIt, and Blender: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/live-link-face/id1495370836 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/live-link-face/id1495370836 https://faceit-doc.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://faceit-doc.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ May want to clean up that potty mouth when offering advice, as finding options that reduce the time commitment is always welcome input. Our project needs are rather basic, and have nothing to do with big-screen film vfx. Best of luck =3
        BoredPositron 2y ago
        „Typo“. Editing previous responses to guide the discussion is bad manner. But what else to expect… Frankly, I struggle to understand why you feign knowledge you don't possess. Instead of simply admitting a lack of understanding, you double down, revealing an even deeper lack of technical expertise with each post. Even unasked like in your last response. Boggles the mind.
        Joel_Mckay 2y ago
        Indeed, I discovered Reallusion was not a good direction early on, but we didn't need to double-down on something like the rokoko solutions either. Even after unproductive discussions with their developers asking for a key feature, it was clear it still wouldn't meet the project goals. The 9 seat studio license cost for FaceIt was inexpensive, has shown reasonable results, and I like supporting that kind of FOSS compatible work. Did you actually have any insights, observations, or questions? They make medications for mind "Boggles" I hear. Best of luck =3
Joel_Mckay 2y ago
Blender has had its own render farm utilities for dormant workstation utilization for sometime: https://flamenco.blender.org/download/ https://flamenco.blender.org/download/ The reason is simply a weird copyright paradox could form when a work is rendered on someone else's computer outside a company. No one that does media for a living will risk their revenue model on some amateur cloud service. Now for those lucky few that have a dozen RTX 5090 laying around unused, it is a niche problem most folks wished they had right now. lol =3
- Tomte 2y ago
  > The reason is simply a weird copyright paradox could form when a work is rendered on someone else's computer Why? Copyright protects creativity, not hardware ownership. J.K. Rowling doesn't print her books in her apartment, either.
  - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
    An external work done by someone else is implicitly owned by that creator. i.e. if Rowling wrote some description about a bigoted neglected single mom striking it rich, and someone else actually wrote the work... than ownership is not guaranteed without legal assignment of rights to said work (depends on the location in the world). Thus, a publisher may not pay the muse unless under legal obligation of rights transfer, and having similar works further complicate exactly who owns the copyrights. When you publish media or games, than the providence of assets/compositions become extremely important in a commercial setting. I didn't make the rules, but do hire project artists all the time. The paperwork involved ends up ridiculously complicated, and requires specialized lawyers. This is why we avoid "AI" content, cloud based GPU service, and any vendor ignorant enough to force the issue. =3
    - Tomte 2y ago
      > An external work done by someone else is implicitly owned by that creator. Rendering an image is not "creating a work“ in the copyright sense. There may be all kinds of other legal quagmires, implicit contracts etc., but copyright is not one of them. > someone else actually wrote the work So you throw in a totally different situation? If the Blender scene has been modelled by someone else, then yes, that someone owns the copyright. But not because I let someone else render the completed scene.
virtualritz 2y ago
> CPU or GPU but obv favours gpu Why obviously?
- MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
  Rendering is significantly faster and more energy efficient on a GPU.
  - fc417fc802 2y ago
    That only applies to video game level stuff. Most "real" scenes from professional movies won't fit in RAM on a typical desktop, let alone the extremely limited VRAM on a GPU. For example (from 2016, so 10 years out of date): https://www.disneyanimation.com/data-sets/?drawer=/resources/moana-island-scene/ https://www.disneyanimation.com/data-sets/?drawer=/resources...
  - virtualritz 2y ago
    That's a prevalent misconception among people outside of offline rendering/VFX. The short version is: no, it is not. For this reason render farms for the CGI you see in blockbusters and series nowadays are usually CPU-only, still. How do I know? I work in that industry.
    - MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
      That's quite surprising to me, as a regular hobbyist Blender user who sees at least 4x speedups on GPU vs CPU. Is it because of VRAM limitations on huge scenes? I assumed that big render farms used rigs with many GPUs with some proprietary technology to share memory between them to be able to fit the massive scenes. Or are you actually responding directly to what I was saying, and it turns out that on big scenes, even apart from the memory use, CPU rendering is somehow more efficient than GPU rendering? I don't think I'm prepared to accept that claim without a lot more substantiation. edit: I found this thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25616372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25616372 I guess the conclusion is that it is really about memory use, but at least 4 years ago, there wasn't a total consensus on the topic.
Imustaskforhelp 2y ago
Hmm interesting indeed.
sureglymop 2y ago
Are there any security concerns when it comes to a model like this?
- Havoc 2y ago
  It's pretty open book. e.g. when adding compute you can see the image being generated. So no nsfw The parts of blender that are security concerns are disabled, so not all of the blender pipeline is available
  - echoangle 2y ago
    Could the people running the render recover the blend file you’re rendering?
    - Havoc 2y ago
      Don't know but doubt it. From memory you basically only see a blurry thumbnail. Doubt anyone is using this for serious work that has copyright risk though...it's just people playing with blender from what i can tell, so a more relaxed stance is fine
      - echoangle 2y ago
        But the render process has to get the scene data including the whole 3D objects and materials and shaders to do the rendering, right?
        diggan 2y ago
        Yes, the machines who are doing the rendering could take the .blend file/data for themselves, otherwise the renderer wouldn't be able to do its job.

aerostable_slug 2y ago

Is this linked to the fun & free Electric Sheep collaboratively-rendered screensaver in code, personalities, or just in spirit?

spot 2y ago
just spirit!

citizenpaul 2y ago

This stuff is DOA. Why would you risk someone possibly generating CP on your computer? You know its gonna happen.