previous page
TOC
Autonomous Animator
O ppOrtunities
By Martin Grebing
Useful, Guerilla Rendering Tactics S
o you have a big animation submittal due but your server just went down. Or maybe you typically work in the cloud, but your internet connection is suddenly on the fritz. Or maybe you no longer have the luxury of utilizing your studio’s in-house render farm because a recent pandemic has forced everyone to work from home. Or maybe, just maybe, you have a rag-tag handful of workstations in your modest home studio, but you can’t afford a high-end network and server, but you still need to render multiple shots across multiple computers to make deadline. Whatever the case, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and create your own makeshift render farm!
network, so this is when those memory sticks will come in handy. Simply copy all the folders and subsequent files of your primary workstation to your memory stick(s) and then transfer said files and folders to each render machine.
Step 2: Portion out Your Shots Use a white board, simple spreadsheet or old fashioned pencil and paper to keep track of which frame range is being rendered on which computer.
Prepare for the Storm
neously, you’ll need to periodically check each machine to make sure they are rendering correctly and not stopping or freezing for some unforeseen reason. To do this, simply glance at the render status of each computer and if one of them has stopped or crashed, write down the last frame the computer rendered before crashing, reboot and restart the render where it left off. Be sure to update your whiteboard, spreadsheet or hand-written notes accordingly. As rendering can take many hours, days or even weeks to complete, now would be a great time to catch up on the latest movies, episodes and music that you’ve been wanting to check out but never had the chance.
Step 4: Wrangling
Chances are, no amount Now that all of your of last-minute heroics can machines have finally finsave the day if you are ished rendering and your ill-prepared. Therefore, in frames look outstanding, anticipation of emergentake your trusty memory stick around to each comcies popping up from Ready for Stormy Weather: Sometimes, you have to be prepared for animating without the help puter and copy the frames time to time, you should of your favorite cloud. (Peter Sohn’s 2009 short Partly Cloudy, courtesy of Pixar.) from the workstation to make preparations while the sky is clear. Here is a checklist of some of For example, if you have three computers, the memory stick. the basics you will need to successfully create respectively named Moe, Larry and Curly, with Do not, under any circumstances, cut and and operate your own guerilla render farm. Feel Moe being your primary workstation, and you paste, because if something happens while the free to piece-meal these things together as have a 1,000-frame sequence that needs to be files are in transit, you risk losing all your best you can: rendered as soon as possible, divvy up the se- frames to the ether. If this happens, you’ll need quence into three equal chunks based on each to re-render the entire sequence(s) all over Surge protectors / power backup As many computers are you can get your computer’s rendering speed. If Moe happens again from scratch. And when time is short, hands on — old, new and anywhere in between. to render twice as fast as Larry and Curly, then this could spell disaster for your submittal. An assortment of memory sticks, preferably Moe should be assigned frame range 1-500, Once all frames are copied to your primary Larry should get 501-750, and Curly should workstation, you can then composite, edit and high capacity and high speed Multiple mouse controllers and mouse pads get 751-1,000. export the final content as needed. Open the same scene file on all three comMultiple keyboards With some thoughtful preparation and puters, adjust the frame ranges accordingly, hands-on guerilla rendering techniques, even Multiple monitors and render. If you prefer to use command line when networks and the cloud may fail, you A good room fan or two rendering, then you would specify the frame still have a chance to deliver your animation Your animation software of choice range on each computer via the command on time and to spec, thereby keeping your cliline vs. batch rendering within the animation ents happy and you replete with much deStep 1: Standardize Your software. served cash. ◆ Workstations The first task is to make sure each computer Martin Grebing is the president you will be using to render has the exact same Step 3: Keep Your Eye on the of Funnybone Animation Stusoftware, updates, files and folders as your pri- Prize dios. He can be reached at www. mary animation workstation. For the sake of Being that time is of the essence and you funnyboneanimation.com. this article, you do not have the luxury of a have multiple computers rendering simultawww.animationmagazine.net
TOC
46
september|october 20
previous page
