Mac and windows as a renderfarm.

[cgxev]

Hi people,

I'm using Blender 2.60 which is 3D software. And I also do a lot of rendering with Luxrender.

Now with luxrender you can do network rendering. So I was wondering if my MacBook Pro 15" late 2011 (Core i7 2Ghz) and my Pc (Core i7 3,4Ghz) could render over the network (local) somehow to produce the final render image.

Of course the question is: Can you do this with 2 different OS's? Or does this really matter?

Or should I ask this question at the Luxrender Forums?

I already searched the web and found nothing helpful. So I thought let's ask this on the macrumors forum.

Cheers, and have a good day.

 

[mBox]

Muster

I used this back in the day with SGI and Intel render boxes for Maya.
http://www.vvertex.com/muster-details.php
Not sure if you have the budget for it.

 

[cgxev]

I used this back in the day with SGI and Intel render boxes for Maya.
http://www.vvertex.com/muster-details.php
Not sure if you have the budget for it.

That is some impressive software. Thanks for showing.
I do have the budget. But I was thinking of another solution, like free .

 

[MisterMe]

...

Now with luxrender you can do network rendering. So I was wondering if my MacBook Pro 15" late 2011 (Core i7 2Ghz) and my Pc (Core i7 3,4Ghz) could render over the network (local) somehow to produce the final render image.

Of course the question is: Can you do this with 2 different OS's? Or does this really matter?

...

First off, a renderfarm is just a cluster that is dedicated to rendering. The nodes communicate with each other via TCP/IP. I have never heard of a heterogeneous cluster. Clusters are composed of identical nodes whose only difference is IP address. Nobody uses Windows* to power a renderfarm. They use a Unix-like or UNIX operating system. The most popular OS for running clusters is Linux. The same software can run on MacOS X.

Do not confuse renderfarms and clusters with distributed computing like SETI@home. Clusters leverage large numbers of computing nodes communicating over very short distances using fast connections to act like one extremely fast computer. Distributed computers divide-up large jobs into small discreet chunks where time is not of the essence.

*The No. 5 ranked supercomputing cluster belongs to the GSIC Center of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. It is composed of HP ProLiant SL390s G7 Xeon 6C X5670, Nvidia GPU, giving 73278 cores. It is supposed to run Linux/Windows. However, its primary OS is clearly Linux.

 

[cgxev]

First off, a renderfarm is just a cluster that is dedicated to rendering. The nodes communicate with each other via TCP/IP. I have never heard of a heterogeneous cluster. Clusters are composed of identical nodes whose only difference is IP address. Nobody uses Windows* to power a renderfarm. They use a Unix-like or UNIX operating system. The most popular OS for running clusters is Linux. The same software can run on MacOS X.

Do not confuse renderfarms and clusters with distributed computing like SETI@home. Clusters leverage large numbers of computing nodes communicating over very short distances using fast connections to act like one extremely fast computer. Distributed computers divide-up large jobs into small discreet chunks where time is not of the essence.

*The No. 5 ranked supercomputing cluster belongs to the GSIC Center of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. It is composed of HP ProLiant SL390s G7 Xeon 6C X5670, Nvidia GPU, giving 73278 cores. It is supposed to run Linux/Windows. However, its primary OS is clearly Linux.

Oke, that didn't really gave a clear solution.
Thanks for commenting.

I'm looking for a way so that both my mac and my PC, are one with rendering.

Do you have any idea how to?

 

[AlanShutko]

It looks like luxrender supports network rendering across platforms. I'd suggest asking on the luxrender forums for some more help.

 

[chrono1081]

First off, a renderfarm is just a cluster that is dedicated to rendering. The nodes communicate with each other via TCP/IP. I have never heard of a heterogeneous cluster. Clusters are composed of identical nodes whose only difference is IP address. Nobody uses Windows* to power a renderfarm. They use a Unix-like or UNIX operating system. The most popular OS for running clusters is Linux. The same software can run on MacOS X.

Do not confuse renderfarms and clusters with distributed computing like SETI@home. Clusters leverage large numbers of computing nodes communicating over very short distances using fast connections to act like one extremely fast computer. Distributed computers divide-up large jobs into small discreet chunks where time is not of the essence.

*The No. 5 ranked supercomputing cluster belongs to the GSIC Center of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. It is composed of HP ProLiant SL390s G7 Xeon 6C X5670, Nvidia GPU, giving 73278 cores. It is supposed to run Linux/Windows. However, its primary OS is clearly Linux.

Will this make my Farmville run faster???

(Interesting stuff though!)