This may be the best idea that has come down the pike in some time. It's called Corefarm.org. Unlike its commercial sibling Corefarm.com, Corefarm.org is free to use, sortta.
Here is the idea. All of us could use a large render farm from time to time, but not everyday. The Boxx render farm units start at $2000 US each. That could be a lot of money sitting on your desk most of the week waiting for you to finish your latest masterpiece. And there are other times when one or more computers in your office are sitting idle. Why not combine the two? Don't buy a render farm that you might not be ready to fully utilize, let your computer idle time earn you render hours on the Corefarm.
What is Corefarm? The web site describes it as;
"Corefarm is a place where you can either submit your Yafaray rendering job or participate to other users' rendering tasks. Corefarm splits your job in several small pieces and distributes them across the internet, leading to impressive rendering times."
Windows users; use Firefox to log into Corfarm.org (after you register) and walk away. You are given a localhost login page. Open that page and your system is part of the Corefarm. As other users submit XML projects prepared by Yafaray, buckets of render information are processed by one or more of your processor cores. Every job processed earns you points toward free rendering time on the farm. Up to 10 projects can be processed at any one time and to stop participating, you just logout.
There are similar processes for other operating systems as well, but as I don't use them, they are just plain over my head.
But you should spend a few minutes and check it out. If you have a server system that already farms out processor time, or if you have multiple computers, they can all share the same login earning your account points. The more systems logged in the more powerful the Corefarm is. Contact William Le Ferrand or see the information on the Corefarm.org website..
Corefarm is only rendering Yafaray at this time. Corefarm.com is a pay for use site that renders in both Yafaray and LuxRender.
But this Blog is not about Flash or Toon Boom. It's about Blender. Specifically, Blender 2.5.
Wow.
I had downloaded Blender back in 2000 in the 2.0 or 2.1 phase. It was interesting, but I really was not into 3D graphics back then. It seemed awkward and clumsy, but so did all 3D programs.
Opening the program was a surprise. The new 2.5 menu layout was great. I had no idea what all the menus and buttons meant, nor what they actually did, but there was a big build view screen and menus to the left an right. It did take me a while to find the wiki documentation online and because this is a Beta version, the documentation is far from complete. But there are lots of great free online tutorial sites for 2.5 already (Blendercookie, Blendernoobies, and BlenderGuru ) and it's not all that hard to make the leap from the 2.49 tutorials (.Creative Cow, Lynda.com, and others). Honestly, they are everywhere and many are free.
In just a couple of evenings I was able to set my personal preferences, create my own version of the work space, and make this simple 3D text
Screen from my machine. Click to enlarge.
As I said, I have no CAD or other 3D experience, so as little as this is, it's big to me at this point. Below is a short video that outlines Blender's history
I've been reading comparisons between the commercial softwares (Audodesk's Maya and others) and Blender, although slightly behind in some features, it seems Blender has lead the way in others and the new 2.5, when complete, should bring Blender up to the industry standards across the board
What does it take to run it? Lets do a simple compare with Maya:
Bender System Requirements Operating Systems
Windows 2000, XP or Vista
Mac OS X 10.2 and later
Linux 2.2.5 i386
Linux 2.3.2 PPC
FreeBSD 6.2 i386
Irix 6.5 mips3
Solaris 2.8 sparc
Minimal specs for Hardware
300 MHz CPU
128 MB Ram
20 MB free hard disk Space
1024 x 768 px Display with 16 bit color
3 Button Mouse
Open GL Graphics Card with 16 MB Ram
Good specs for Hardware
2 Ghz dual CPU
2 GB Ram
1920 x 1200 px Display with 24 bit color
3 Button Mouse
Open GL Graphics Card with 128 or 256 MB Ram
Production specs for Hardware
64 bits, Quad core CPU
8 GB Ram
two times 1920 x 1200 px Display with 24 bit color
3 Button Mouse + tablet
Open GL Graphics Card with 768 MB Ram, ATI FireGL or Nvidia Quadro
For 32-bit Autodesk Maya 2011
Microsoft® Windows Vista® Business (SP2 or higher), Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional (SP3 or higher), Microsoft® Windows® 7 Professional operating system
Maya Composite media cache requirements for playback:
10 GB minimum, 200 GB recommended
HDD: IDE, SATA, SATA 2, SAS, SCSI
Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 7.0 or higher, Apple® Safari®, or Mozilla® Firefox® web browser
For 64-bit Autodesk Maya 2011
Microsoft Windows Vista Business (SP2 or higher), Microsoft Windows XP x64 Edition (SP2 or higher), Microsoft Windows 7 Professional, Apple Mac OS X 10.6.2, Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 5.4 WS, or Fedora™ 11 operating system
Windows and Linux: Intel® EM64T, AMD Athlon 64, AMD Opteron, or AMD Phenom™ processor
Maya Composite media cache requirements for playback:
10 GB minimum, 200 GB recommended
HDD: IDE, SATA, SATA 2, SAS, SCSI
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 or higher, Apple Safari, or Mozilla Firefox web browser
Now that we know what it take in hardware, what does it take in GREENWARE? Maya - $4000.00 plus a license for every machine it runs on. Blender - Free (Contributions encouraged) and the same price for every machine it runs on - Free.
If you are just starting out or planning to expand your operation, it's worth a look.
