Author: Whitney Krape

Blender 2.5 Network Rendering: Part 01 Systems

This post is an outline for setting up an offsite render network mainly for Blender Rendering but also for After Effects and possibly Premiere. I had started a series on this before but ran into a number of problems, which have now been sorted out. The network has been in use for a few weeks now and consists of all of the major platforms; Linux (Ubuntu,) Windows (XP/7,) and OS X.

The main objective with this setup is to have a remote render farm where work is offloaded from the main workstation and left to work without constant management; however, variations based on individual needs this setup should be easy to do. I will be covering everything from the OS setup for easy remote management to Blender install and setup to terminal commands. I won’t be covering hardware setup, OS installation or general use for each program; there are any number of guides these so no sense going over them again, I’ll be sticking to what you need to manage renders in Blender.

(more…)

June 21, 2011
Blender Network Rendering: Quick Update

I’ve noticed in the past few weeks the site getting more traffic and most of it to the Blender Network Rendering post, there will be an update on this soon. I wanted to point out that the tutorial series isn’t dead but it did end up going though major revisions when put into practice; the changes are mainly due to LuxRender being a bit too heavy for animation use and my workflow switching to Blender 2.5.

March 7, 2011
Animatic Builder v1.40

The new version of Animatic Builder is up. This update includes a whole offline system taking advantage of HTML 5’s manifest and localStorage for offline use anywhere. To complement the new offline functionality is a redesigned UI which now scales to mobile platforms as well, specifically the iPhone. The are a number of speed improvements allowing well over 200 frames in a sequence without impacting playback performance. (The SQL updating and the uploading for the demo are disabled.)

June 15, 2010
Dynamically generated HTML5 manifests

In the specification for HTML5 several methods for storing data locally are outlined including localStorage and manifests. While building out the offline storage for Animatic Builder, I attempted to keep the stored data dead simple; as in the case of the shot information which is stored as one long JSON string. In this way the shot data can be pulled into any other use by reading the string. Keeping the images stored proved more difficult due to the number, potentially hundreds, and their format as many separate files. As well as making sure the storage is universal on mobile and full client systems. (more…)

June 3, 2010
Animatic Builder now available for download!

A short sweet post here. Up on the Animatic Builder page are two downloads, a nightly build and the recent stable version. Have at least PHP 4 and MySQL 4? then your all set to go! Animatic Builder

February 11, 2010
Animatic Builder Development Continues

The Redesigned Animatic Builder timeline.

During the past few weeks I have been diligently updating Animatic Builder with new features and a completely new interface. Overall the main idea of the App hasn’t changed; building and maintaining a sequence over a range of any internet connected devices. What in the release makes that goal easier? Quite a bit.

From the start the whole App has been rebuilt with an AJAX, or asynchronous, connection so the user can modify the sequence without the delay of reloading page each time a change needs to be saved. Every on page change is made once a user focuses away from a changeable element. As well, each change effects the sequence immediately so a duration takes effect right as it is made.

The playback system has changed drastically as well. The most obvious alteration is the introduction of a self-centering elastic layout which keeps the current frame in the center of a browser window and when the browser is re-sized the whole layout expands around it to any size. (more…)

December 1, 2009