German Aerospace Center DLR - Test Facility Animation - First Cloud Project Finished

[olika]

I would like to share my latest animation and the first project finished on the cloud with you:

https://vimeo.com/303779557

It was a very positive experience to do it with the cloud workflow, i don't need to mention the speed but also did all the plug-ins like itoo stuff and effects like aerial perspective work without any problems.

Sure it isn't the cheapest solution as is see many people complaining since the prices came out, but hey c'mon renderpower will never be for free i guess and so we need to use it wisely

On the other side it releases a lot of free time you can use for i.e. spending it with your family or do more jobs at the same time... maybe you could earn even more money despite the cloud is expensive, just because you are able to finish way more work way faster. Í really try to see it from that perspective. I still have my little renderfarm which is a great helper in everyday work but from time to time i need some real power and therefore i'm really happy i have this solution from now on.

And yeah sure i wished too it would be a little cheaper to use but let's see what future brings. If that way working will be more and more mainstream i guess prices will come down also.

[JezUK]

Great looking project and fantastic work.

I'd have no idea how much to render that all out would cost, so if that's something you could share for other to learn from, that'd be great

[anthonyh]

Nice work, good looking movie. Only 1 thing I`d say is a couple of the tracking points on the call-out lines look a tiny bit wobbly. If you use After Effects to composite your animation look into AETransfer for 3dsmax.
It exports camera/object/null translation data very easily from max making your tracking points rock solid. Incredibly cheap too. Saved us so much hassle.

[olika]

JezUK that's the question i would love to know too haha!
Honestly i did the project while i was able to use the free beta service (which made my swabian heart goes boom hehe)
so i only can roughly estimate it, afraid to throw wrong numbers but my guess would be something about 1k or so for those final camera views.
Since i`m playing with the cloud i also try to make up a calculation for myself.
I own about 10 Workstations/Rendernodes. To buy them, keep 'em running and updated is first big factor.
Second for me is the time you spend to push a heavy animation through those 10 machines. That will keep me busy just for days, checking and waiting, transfering etc.
So on the other side, at the cloud i used 50 machines for rendering. When i saw how fast they rendered my guess is that's pretty much a 10k workstation in that cloud server (just my guess for calc)
So using 50 of those nodes gives you renderpower in the value of 500000$ right?!
When you double this to hundred with the click of a button you render on a million$ worth hardware. ...awesome
And you don't need to spend time to manage them at all.

So my thought right now is about:
Money spent on own machines, room for it, electricity, service time, etc. (that's quite a big amount to be honest)
vs.
doing it on the cloud
hmmm it's quite avdifficult calculation or better a estimation, i do not have a final thought about it,
would love to hear what the others think (and please don't just price bashing )

[olika]

anthonyh you caught me! ...i was just to lazy to track, damn
don't tell it to my clients haha

[anthonyh]

Never tell the client anything they don`t *need* to know ! Most of the time they`ll never even see it. I`ve done way worse tracking when the video just doesn`t give you anything to work with. For $5 though you can`t go wrong with that script. I`ve used it so many times now, it`s great.
For render power I`d say you probably can`t go wrong with the Threadripper CPUs. TR2 2990x if you can afford it or TR1 1950x because the price has hit around £500 here and even cheaper in the US. I like the idea of GPU rendering but I think it`s going to be more expensive at least for now and you`re still limited by card memory I think.
We only have 1 TR1 but it`s 3-4 times as quick as our main workstations i7-3930k so the TR2 should be almost twice as fast again.
We`ve always had a small render farm, it`s just too expensive to use external rendering for us, you have to watch the electric bills though !

[^Lele^]

olika PhoenixFD for the smoke?
And, btw, really pretty job!

[olika]

hi ^Lele^ ,
thx! and yes it's phoenix.
Recently after few different things in phoenix i was able do create my first own blast!
Pretty much fun when phoenix setups are not as crazy as my boat or bike sims

[pixelplume]

really nice job

[glorybound]

Cool bean, man! How many hours do you have in it?