rendering animation in a cloud

[Crayox13]

Hi guys I have been searching for a cloud service a bit...I found some, but not sure if they're real, nor if they can work with MAX/vray renders. I would love to hear from some of you who actually used cloud service to render their fly-through (not an hour and a half movie)

Like I hear Amazon EC2 mentioned a lot, but I guess that's for cartoons and "real production movies", not architectural fly through? Since I don't see any mention of vray on their website.

Also these guys sound ok but...
http://www.vswarm.com/
Cloud companies (or distributed render farms like this, or for instance SETI) can't render if they don't have MAX/vray installed, right?

And this one sounds like a real deal.
http://www.renderrocket.com/

[Morbid Angel]

My experience with the cloud is limited, however when we tested amazon, it was something like this: you setup your machine image, so you put on everything on that machine which you need to use, i.e software, render manager etc. Then mirror that image across ass many cpus as you can afford and then they show up like a farm in your monitor (deadline in our case). We however run into some problems, for example not every software vendor allows for cloud licensing, like shave and haircut in our case. So we could render in maya/vray no problem but not with shave

[vlado]

Instead of setting up your own virtual render farm on f.e. Amazon, you could also go through solutions like Zync and GreenButton, which provide a nice frontend inside the modeling application and abstract all the cloud details away. Of course, in that case, it might not be too different from a regular render farm like Rebus.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Björn Radler]

.....you could also go through solutions like Zync and GreenButton, which provide a nice frontend inside the modeling application and abstract all the cloud details away...

Hopefully they become open for public use soon, since those are very promising solutions.

But for now Rebusfarm allways did a great job for me. Great In-app interface and quick support.

Best regards

Björn

[Crayox13]

Thanks guys. Now that is starting to make sense more. I guess I'm gonna have to try it to see how it works. So far the way I saw it was wrong...I thought you send THEM the scene (files, textures and everything) and THEY render it.

Is it fast enough though? I mean I have DSL connection but if it's a in-app service it sends stuff live?

Oh, and, have you guys at Chaos considered giving these services? I mean you have every vray user at your disposal

[vlado]

I thought you send THEM the scene and THEY render it.

Amazon is just a hardware provider - you pay for virtual machines and you do with them whatever you want.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Crayox13]

How come Greenbutton doesn't say on their website they support vray? Not even MAX, only Blender and some other renderers I've never heard of. I don't really understand their website. Do I need cloud API or management API?

[vlado]

I suppose there will be more information soon... you can also probably contact them directly.

Best regards,
Vlado

[jacksc02]

Greenbutton is a very good service.
AS Vlado said there should be some more information as soon as it is out of beta.

[Crayox13]

Oh sorry then, I thought this was some widely used (and older) service and I was missing something. Ok then.