What is cloud rendering

Maybe lots of person wonder if I need to use a cloud rendering in my projects, today, as a famous , Fox Renderfarm will let you know the advantage and disadvantage of using cloud rendering. The advantage of using 1. Save Times The top render farm companies have at least 3000 rendering nodes, like Fox Renderfarm, can fire up to thousands of rendering nodes instantly, can powerful supports CPU & GPU. It could definitely save your time on the rendering process. 2. Cost Effective Compared with the self-building render farm, would be much more cost effective especially for the big project. You don't need to spend too much money to purchase hardware and maintain the network, and don't need to hire people to manage it. 3. Easy to Use Some render farms has its own system, which has a lot of great features, such as automatically analyze and render the project, download the rendered frames with a few simple clicks, customized etc. 4. 24*7 Customer Service and TD Support Around the clock customer service and technical support could always be a lifesaver if we met any problem when rendering but don't know how to solve it. The professional service team could totally help you on that. Besides the advantage, now it is the disadvantage’s time 1. Security Some small render farm will not sign the Non-Disclosure Agreement with customers, so you'd better find some high reputation company who had worked with big producing companies on famous films, if ever worked with OSCAR winners would be the best, like Fox Renderfarm, it is compliant with MPAA security standards for content protection, data confidentiality and encryption. Also, it is ISO 27001 certified to keep your assets and information secure. 2. Software, Render and Plugin Compatibility Different people would have different habits, so the more software, render & plugin the render farm supports, the better, like Fox Rendefarm, supports most popular 3D software, renderers and plug-ins all over the world, like 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Sketchup, Blender, LightWave, Softimage, V-Ray, Redshift, Mental Ray, RenderMan, Corona, etc. But if the can even support custom's own plugin, it would be a great added-value service. 2. Paid Service The company need to buy hardware and rent persons to manage it, so there is no full-free render farm, but you can get free $20 on Fox Render farm when you register.

A friend asked me before, how to make LightGroup in Arnold 5.1 version, because with LightGroup, we do not need to divide the Light Render Layer. The method of Arnold 5.1's LightGroup is not the same as the previous version. I remember that the LightGroup property was added to the light at the beginning. This method only works for the alshader's shader, and then the light property bar is added in the AOV Light Group column, add LightGroup1 by ourselves in the AOV attribute, and apply the L.'LightGroup' command. After the Arnold 5.1 version, it was found that this method has failed. Even if you add the L.'LightGroup command to AOV, still not working. Next, let me talk about how Arnold 5.1 makes LightGroup. The first step is to create a light. In the AOV Light Group property column of the light, give it a name that you want of this LightGroup, I name it LGT_A here. The second step is to add the RGBA ( note that, it is must in uppercase) channel to the AOV channel. Why should we add the RGBA channel? Because I found that only the RGBA channel has its Light Group List property bar showing its effect. If you add a LightGroup channel, you will find that this property is in the closed state, and this RGBA must be uppercase, quite fucking. Then enter the RGBA channel properties and select the LightGroup you added to the Light Group List option. My scene made 3 lights, so there are three. LightGroup appears after the rendering below. Here is the rendering of test:

Yesterday, I found that the Arnold of Maya 2018 has a directional error for the motion vector blur method made in the AOV channel. The motion blur method I wrote earlier applies to Maya 2016 and earlier versions, so I spent a little time studying it today. The problem has been solved now, and will use a small case to explain the production steps. Step 1: Creating the ball as a simple animated scene. Step 2: Turn on motion blur: Render a reference to motion blur. Step 3: Follow the method given in the official Arnold documentation: Change the camera's Shutter Start and Shutter End to 0.5 (why changed to 0.5 because my motion blur type is Center On Frame). Step 4: Create a channel for AOV motion blur: Here I will create two motion blur channels: The first is the motionvector channel that comes with Arnold. The second is to use the custom motion vector AOV of motion vector shader (giving the aiMotionVector material in the AOV channel). note: MBlur is named according to your preference. The setting of aiMotionVector was wrote in the previous article. Step 5: Render this image to see two motion blur conditions. It can be seen that both the motionvector and MBlur motion blur channels in our AOV channel are in the wrong direction. Step 6: Next I will officially explain how to solve this problem: From the beginning. A: Turn on the Motion Blur button in the render settings: I chose the Center On Frame mode here. B: Change the Shutter Start and Shutter End in the camera Arnold attribute to 0.5, respectively, corresponding to the Center On Frame mode. (Note: When rendering the motion vector AOV, the camera Shutter Start and Shutter End should be the same value.) C: Create a new MBlur_2 channel in AOV (to compare with the previous MBlur.) D: Open the material editor and find the two nodes aiMotionVector and aiVectorMap under Arnold's material panel. 1) Connect the outColor of the aiMotionVector node to the input of the aiVectorMap node. 2) Then connect the outValue in the aiVectorMap node to the DefaultValue in the Shader property of the MBlur channel in AOV. Change the XYZ mode of the Order in the aiVectorMap node to YZX mode and remove the hook of the tangentSpace. 4) In the aiMotionVector node, enable Encoding Raw Vector. E. After the above steps are completed, start rendering the image and view it in Nuke. As shown in the figure: Maya's default motion blur is basically the same as the MBlur_2 channel we made in AOV, and the motion blur adjusted by Nuke is basically the same. Of course, I also found a bug in the Arnold renderer, its motion blur channel does not solve the shadow of motion blur, there can be seen in a big picture that attached below.