#Press Relase WFW LAN
6 messages in this thread
Dick:
I get the picture with AM Labs needing to power render while animators work
away but the scenario you've offered includes X PC's plus 1 Render Garden. Why
not buy X + 5 PC's and give yourself the option of having someone use the 5
additional PC's when not in peak rendering demand?
Now, if you don't need the monitors, keyboards, CD-ROM drives, etc. then you
are really only getting the extra 'network problems' (as you put it) as the
major perceived drawback. I say perceived because (knock on wood) I haven't
had a problem at all with the Novell network I have in place. With perusal of
the 'Confessions of a Network Renderer' file in the libs here I elimanated many
potential snafus. My first setup of a network rendering station took about 15
minutes and I can easily set up one in less than 5 minutes and most of that
time is the computer copying the required files over.
I am certain the machine performs as you and others report, I'm just trying to
understand why this is the best investment for me. I am an architect and there
is no money in this racket to be spent on equipment that does not offer
flexibility and the potential for 100% usability. I don't have the volume of
work to have this Garden at my beck and call all day, all year. As this
business goes, though, I'll have a few weeks here and a few weeks there when 10
Render Gardens couldn't render fast enough. At the price point of $20k I
couldn't entertain the unit. I don't think I am unrepresentative of the
MAJORITY of 3DS users. I think the power animators may entertain this new
equipment and the rest of us will continue to buy individual PC's. Speculation
on my part but heh…
Bob
I've got to agree Bob, the apparent price differential would seem to make the
Render Garden a luxury item for those that want a plug and play solution. It
would think that you should be saving money buying something like this Multi
CPU in a box; less graphic cards, less keyboards, less mice, less network
cards, less monitors, instead of spending what looks like to me twice as much.
As far as extra keyboards, monitors, and mice go, I've got two little switch
boxes which eliminates all but two of each and it works well for me. Sometimes
I network render and sometimes I render systems individually. I can appreciate
the space savings but that's about it. And the other fact is that fitting all
the peripherals into one box would be a real chore in itself what with the
availability of addresses one would need along with DOS limitations. I've got
different systems tailored to meet specific tasks, but they all render, which I
don't think is all that unique.
John E.
John:
I think you and I are in quite different environments yet you also have set
yourself up with a very flexible solution. To be an attractive offering the
Render Garden would have to have an attractive price. Here's my car analogy
(seems motor vehicle analogies are big today <G>):
I have 5 commuters which need to get to work at the same time. I could pile
'em into a van and have them there in 10 minutes. I save on gas, drivers,
vehicle maintenance. Now, if someone said for the price of the van I could get
5 Corvettes and let each commuter get to work on his own, by his own route and
allow him to detour wherever he wanted, would I be wise to invest in the
multi-vehicle solution? I think I would.
Bob
Hi Robert,
I liked your car analogy. Let me carry it a little further…
You have five employees and five vettes and you need them all together at an
important meeting across town. The problem is that vette one is down at the
7-11 getting a slurpee, vette two is out picking up dry-cleaning, and vette
three still hasn't found its way in from the morning commute. The remaining
two are angry that they have to wait on the others and your important meeting
gets trashed.
Also, when its time for tune ups, oil changes, and tires you now have five
vehicles to service instead of one.
Obviously the van isn't always the right solution for a group of commuters
just as the render garden isn't the right solution for all animators, but it
does have an important role to fill.
As an example I'll relate the following experience of an architectural firm in
Chicago:
This is a large nationally know firm that has made a major committment to 3D
Studio. They have stumbled upon the myth of network rendering. At first blush
the idea sounds great, "at the end of the day, run around the office putting
all of the machines in slave mode and render like a demon all night long."
The reality is that in many networked enterprises few of the machines will be
suitable for use as rendering slaves. Of the suitable machines various work
habits, political concerns, and logistical problems will prevent them from
being effectively used as rendering slaves. What you are left with are a few
machines that are difficult to access and cannot be reliably scheduled.
The solution is to set up a dedicated rendering network. Now the issue
becomes one of getting approval for a P.O. for five separate machines,
network packages, cabling, installation, and configuring of the rendering
network versus a one price, one box, pre-configured system. The dedicated
animation shop with in-house experts will probably favor the flexibility of
the separate systems but I suspect that the engineering, architecture, and
design firms using 3DS in a support role will be attracted to the one-box
plug-and-play solution.
What I've noticed in many of the queries is that people only think of the
base cost of five PC's without accounting for the costs associated with
network hardware, software, and the time to install and configure the
systems. My understanding is that all of this is included with the Render
Garden.
Now its Matt's job to document all of that and prove to the market place that
the Render Garden is an economically sound solution for certain applications.
Go to it Matt,
Steven
A question; what happens if the van breaks down? 🙂 Also, what operating
system is this beast using to do "parallel processing"? As far as I know,
there isn't an NT or UNIX version of 3DS yet…
David,
> what happens in the van breaks down?
I admit that no solution's perfect. Anyway, I'm no expert on this
thing, I just saw it in action at Jim Murphy's conference. I was
impressed at how well it seemed to work and how fast it was. That was
just a first impression with no spec's to fall back on.
It'll be up to Matt to get the spec's, pricing, and other marketing
info into our hand's for the real test.