Introduction

Hi there,
John Hearns pointed me to this list from the beowulf list since this
list might be of some help to me. Though, I've combed the archives and
the activity hasn't been that high; not a bad thing neccessarily.



A little presentation of me:

My first computer graphics experience was DeluxePaint and Sculpt
Animate 4d on the Amiga. I tried my hands on Real 3d, but never felt
comfortable there, and let things rest for many years.

During that period I earned my engineering degree in software
development and worked as a programmer, system administrator and all
around trouble shooter for whatever computer related problems there
are.

Then, last summer I wandered into NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting
Corporation) expecting to do some freelance system managment at the
Sami language branch here in Karasjok. Instead I ended up as a 70%
news graphics artist and 30% diverse childrens and magazine artist.
Currently I'm working on creating new graphical profiles for the Sami
parliament elections and news profiles.

And last week I was invited to join a startup in 3d animation here in
Karasjok; which is a place of 3000 inhabitants, 70 working in NRK and
70 working at the Norwegian Sami Parliament (there is a Swedish and
Finnish Sami parliament as well...).

Being Sami, and living in a very remote part of Norway is actually a
great boon for our startup (only sami people in it), since we can tap
into a lot of financing for different stages of our work both on
national, regional, district and Sami levels; not to mention a couple
of Nordic and Barents Sea councils.

The startup is going to aim for a 3d feature animation based on Sami
legends and characters. During the 3 to 5 years this development might
take we're going to produce 5 to 13 minutes animations for children
for the NRKs Sami language broadcast which is co-sent on the national
television networks of Norway, Sweden and Finnland from next summer
(only in Norway this year).


TO THE POINT:

I'm therefore trying to find out what kind of software and hardware to
aim for in some areas: audio, video and 3d. The timeframe is 6 months
until start-up, so I hope I'm starting my investigations early enough,
even though the summer can effectively be counted out (june and july).

We're aiming for 4 people working full time on our projects. We're
aiming for a 10-20 node rendering farm, though I'm curious about how
some special purpose hardware like ART VPS and the specialized render
engines which also use GPU resources (Gelato, and I also noticed a
more well known renderer had this, though that link is at work and not
here at home) . How is this affecting render speeds? Should we think
about including PCI-Express GPUs in the server racks?

For video editing and post-production I'm aiming for Macintosh, then
we can use the Apple (Final Cut Pro, Motion? and Shake), Adobe
(AfterFX, Photoshop) and Discreet (combustion) software

For 3d modelling I'm sad to say that we're more versed in 3d studio
max than in Maya, even though Maya have had their learning edition
available for free for several years...

For sound editing I'm again thinking Macintosh (Logic Audio, perhaps,
but definetly Steinberg soft), and either Zen with Windows for
GigaStudio and FX Teleport (I need to test this) or dual boot the
whole render farm when we're needing the extra processing for audio
work or extra room for sample playback channels for sampled
instruments.

For score writing I have to go with Sibelius (which I know and love)
from Sibelius software, which will run on Macs as well.

Now, have in mind that it is a very far from Karasjok to Hollywood.
Our budget for investments is less than USD 400K, or even less, if the
dollar gains some strength again. Ah, and we have 25% value added tax,
so it's actually more like 320000. That's for audio, video and 3d.

My specific questions are as follows:

What renderer do you use, why do you like it, what don't you like in
it? This is not a renderer war, it is just a gauge of what the users
think.

If we choose a render engine like Mental Ray (though Brazil is
favoured by my IT guy...) is it worth investing in more cluster boxes
or more ram per box? John Hearns suggested dual opteron 2 GB ram
solutions, which seems to be a good price/performance solution. But,
should one go for 1 MB or 2 MB L2 cache on those computers? As an old
IT-student I'd say bigger cache wins, but price/performance do matter,
and is the win that big?

I'm also thinking middle of the road opterons, since the price jump
for a couple of hundred extra MHz often is way out of proportion from
the gains in processing speed.

Do you guys on this list use Linux exclusively, or do you more or less
use linux for rendering farms?

Is there a need for accelerating Shake or Motion? I know After FX can
be very slow even with rather simple nested comps, 20-30 cell animated
Illustrator imports and rather large backgrounds 16k by 800 with
animation (literature boasts it will utilise any GPU but I doesn't
feel like it)?

What kind of rendering solutions do you use? What are your experiences
in building a render farm for 3d/video work?

What do you view as the greatest pitfall?

Finally, before I spend a dime on buying stuff I'm going to try to
travel to some effects and animation outfits in London, try to get a
feel for workflows they are using. Of course I'm going to travel to
Oslo as well, but from the other GFX artists in NRK I don't have an
impression that cheaper solutions like Combustion is used much there,
some After FX, but most of the work is done on equipment which would
eat most of our budget.

Best regards,
Paul


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