Using 2 or more computers to render one image

[jrharvey]

I am an architecture student and am really interested in the digital part of the field. I love to make 3d models and render them. I heard from my teacher that big companies like Pixar and other movie companies connect many supercomputers (maybe a hundered) together to render their images and movies. Now i dont have a supercomputer but i thought it would be cool if you could hook 2 computers together to increase processing speed and what would be involved there. I don't even know if this is possible without some crazy software but I was jsut curious. I recently did a render of 1 image for school and it still took 6 hours. It would be nice if I could cut down the time.

[King_Critter]

Never done it before, but I think Beowulf clusters are what you're looking for:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_(computing)
http://www.beowulf.org/

From the Wikipedia article:

Beowulf is not a special software package, new network topology or the latest kernel hack. Beowulf is a technology of clustering Linux computers to form a parallel, virtual supercomputer. Although there are many software packages such as kernel modifications, PVM and MPI libraries, and configuration tools which make the Beowulf architecture faster, easier to configure, and much more usable, one can build a Beowulf class machine using standard Linux distribution without any additional software. If you have two networked computers which share at least the /home file system via NFS, and trust each other to execute remote shells (rsh), then it could be argued that you have a simple, two node Beowulf machine.

Well, that sounds simple enough. :D

[jrharvey]

Oh wow a resopnse, thanks :)

[immolat3]

You are talking about Net Rendering. I am a senior in Digital Media and do what you speak of all the time. It's popular with such programs as Maya and 3D Studio Max, but at this moment I am unsure if Blender has such a feature. I once was using our net render servers, about 50 computers, for an entire weekend to render my 3d animation final.

Fun stuff.

[smartboyathome]

You are talking about Net Rendering. I am a senior in Digital Media and do what you speak of all the time. It's popular with such programs as Maya and 3D Studio Max, but at this moment I am unsure if Blender has such a feature. I once was using our net render servers, about 50 computers, for an entire weekend to render my 3d animation final.

Fun stuff.

I was searching through synaptic, to install blender, adn came accross reppu, which does exactly this. You can use that with it.

[jrharvey]

You are talking about Net Rendering. I am a senior in Digital Media and do what you speak of all the time. It's popular with such programs as Maya and 3D Studio Max, but at this moment I am unsure if Blender has such a feature. I once was using our net render servers, about 50 computers, for an entire weekend to render my 3d animation final.

Fun stuff.


That does sound really cool. Is this default in 3DS or is it some plugin? Is it only on a server with certain software?

[AJB2K3]

Im not sure if i read that there was a cluster version or a pluging for using blender on render farms.