Render Farm Blog

The Making of 'PL Apartment!' by Thanh Nguyen

Focusing on beautiful and appealing lighting with a specific way of thinking while designing and rendering a space, Thanh Nguyen, a Vietnamese interior designer and 3D artist, recites the way he materializes his images. Enjoy!

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RebusFarm 2.0 - ControlCenter

Wednesday, September 24th, 2014 by Margarete Kitel

The next generation development of RebusFarm is coming soon! The new RebusFarm update will make your render workflow much easier and faster. Monitoring of your renderjobs and the communication between your computer and RebusFarm will be LIVE!

RebusFarm 2.0 consists of three components:

• The well-known „Farminizer“ Plug-in for your 3d software
• The new web-based „ControlCenter“ for monitoring your jobs
• The new smart cloud-software „RebusDrop“

To make the conversion to our new system as smooth as possible for you, we will start by presenting new features and updates as they are released. Here we would like to present the ControlCenter to you, which is already implemented in RebusFarm.

The new ControlCenter is a web-based application that will soon replace the Manager Software. For a short time both systems are available for you to manage your jobs. This way you can get used to the new features provided by the ControlCenter and see the benefits in comparison to the Manager Software:

• No more installations of updates are required.
• You can access your jobs from anywhere with any device.
• The updating of your renderjob status is now LIVE!
  
• End-to-End encryption between your workstation and Rebus Farm Data Center.

The ControlCenter provides better opportunities to manage your jobs. Now you can edit uploaded jobs even if you are uploading a different job at the same time. The ControlCenter avoids waiting time and makes the monitoring of your jobs more comfortable.  We hope you like it!

New RebusFarm App!

Wednesday, September 24th, 2014 by Margarete Kitel

The new, intuitive design provides you with easier, faster and more effective usability.

The app will now display adjustable notifications on all of the significant stages of rendering of your job. A substantially improved communication between our server and your mobile enables us to show all status reports LIVE!

You can easily get in touch with our customer support through the app via Ticket, Live-Chat or the Rebus-Hotline. The RebusFarm App now also supports the newest Windows version 8.1. 

New CostCalculator!

Wednesday, September 24th, 2014 by Margarete Kitel

Recently we introduced a new CostCalculator which is based on Cinebench benchmark values. This means that we can determine your CPU performance more accurately and give you a better cost estimation for your render.

The CostCalculator will determine your CPU performance automatically. If your processor is not in the database yet you can go to “Submit Benchmark”, run Cinebench on your computer and submit your Cinebench score together with a screenshot of the result. After the score has been checked by an admin, the new benchmark will be added to the CostCalculator and you will get a credit voucher of 10 Renderpoints added to your account.

A brand new feature is the integration of the CostCalculator in the Farminizer plugin, so you can now calculate your render costs in your 3D application before you export your render job. This makes it faster and easier to estimate your renderjob and avoids annoying and time-consuming steps.

Animation Movie - The Mega Plush II

Friday, August 8th, 2014 by Margarete Kitel

Do you think that fluffy plush animals and pure action don't fit together? This short animation movie „The Mega Plush II“ will show you the opposite.

The second episode of the action animation short movie, created by Matt Burniston, a 3D & motion graphics freelancer from New York, came out recently. Between client work he is working his passion project, on The Mega Plush.
Matt Burniston comments: „ ...The Mega Plush. A series of short films/webisodes about a group of four plush toy vigilantes, who are struggling against the uprising of the SOC (Society of Chimps) army. Good vs evil. Bear vs sock monkey. And asking the question, "who has the stuffing to survive?" I have completed two of the four episodes, and so far they have been a big hit...“

With this extraordinary movie idea he won two Vimeo staff picks and a nomination for 3D world Magazine's CG Animated Short of the Year. We asked Matt some questions to find out more about the technical creation process and of course of finding the idea for this Plush action. 

How did the idea arise for this movie and the passion behind it?
„The Mega Plush story started around 6 years ago, when a friend came to me with some sketches of the characters, a plush bear in a mid-air action shot, holding two big guns. As soon as I saw them I was hooked, and knew it would make an awesome 3D animation."

"Ever since then I have been working on some capacity on the project. I've always dreamed of making a short film and I thought this might be the perfect time to chase that dream. So over the last few years I have been developing back stories for the characters along with the crazy little world they all live in. One of my biggest goals was to try and merge these two quite opposite ideas... Plush toys & violent action movie, I felt like it was something that I hadn't seen before and would be fun, not only for me to make but for people to watch.„

How many frames have you had to render and how long was the render time?
„The second episode of The Mega Plush came out to around 7500 frames, which I'd say about 90% of which was rendered on the Rebus Render Farms.” “I'm not sure on the exact render times, but setting up all the shots and getting them all rendered took about 2 solid weeks, then a few days of tweaks and re-renders after that. Compared to the first episode which i rendered in my home studio, which took around 2-3 months, I saved a lot of time using RebusFarm this time around.“

How long did it take to create The Mega Plush? The Story is elaborately narrated, definitely a lot of work for one person.
„It took me about 6 months to complete the fist episode, working alone. And the second episode around 3 months, with the help of my (now) writing partner Kyle DeBoer. We have a script for the 3rd and 4th episodes, and I am now trying to assemble a small team to help me get them fully realised in a shorter amount of time, but for this we need some funding, which we are currently trying to find."

"We have plenty more stuff in the pipeline though, and encourage everyone to keep their eyes peeled for more coming from The Mega Plush.„
We will for sure keep our eyes open and hope to see more of The Mega Plush action soon!

RebusFarm meets Siggraph 2014!

Wednesday, July 9th, 2014 by Margarete Kitel

Siggraph is coming soon!

This year you can visit us at the Siggraph exhibition in Vancouver!

The exhibition takes place from August 12th to 14th in the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Visit us at booth 833 and get a 50€ voucher for FREE!

Take part in our Siggraph raffle and take your chance to win prizes to the value of approx. $16.000!

Check out the prizes here:

We are looking forward to meet you!

Quickly to Venice – Animated Video

Friday, May 30th, 2014 by Margarete Kitel

Take a look at this great 3D animation video, a project of the 3D Artists Guido Pagotto and Giovanni Grauso of the company Claim.
They used Autodesk Maya with Maxwell Render for this project. One Frame needed about 45 minutes to render on their local machine, so the 2500 frames of this project would have taken approx. 78 days to get rendered locally. Due to the use of RebusFarm it was rendered within one day.

Giovanni and Guido created this video for a new transport service in Italy, which provides transport to Venice. It's a lovely, good mood video with an extraordinary look, that invites you to escape briefly from daily like. Take a look and enjoy!

RebusFarm wants you!

Thursday, May 15th, 2014 by Margarete Kitel

RebusFarm is constantly expanding and therefore we are looking for qualified employees, who wants to join our team. 

Online Supporter / Render Wrangler

Responsibilities:

• customer support via phone, mail and chat
• Troubleshooting of render jobs
• supervise the processing of data
• Maintenance of hardware

We are looking for:

• 3d Software skills (V-Ray and Mental Ray should be known)
• good language skills in english and german
• Technical skills and interest
• independent working
• Third language (optional)
• Programming skills (optional)

Web Developer / Web Designer

Responsibilities:

• Manage the ongoing design/development of www.rebusfarm.net
• Creation of new site layouts and user interfaces
• Routine daily maintenance of existing site
• Introducion of new techniques i.e. responsive pages, etc.

We are looking for:

• 5+ years of experience as a Designer/Developer or related role
• 5+ years of exposure to Web-based technologies HTML5, MySql, JavaScript, CSS/CSS3, PHP, node.js, etc.
• optional C++, vbscript and Qt
• good language skills in english and german
• Experience with SEO techniques/strategies, analytics and content management
• Online portfolio of website, mobile and/or tablet experiences (examples required)

If you think one of the above described positions are a job for you and you would like to become a part of our team, please send your detailed CV in electronic form to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Reviewing the Movie 'ENTITY'

Monday, April 14th, 2014 by Margarete Kitel

One minute after a technical failure of her spacecraft, an astronaut finds herself ejected into space from her cockpit. She tries to contact the base to obtain help...in vain.

A horror vision that everybody has probably thought about. The movie „ENTITY“ shows what could happen in such a situation, with dramatic scenes, amazing animations, special effects and of course a fantastic view out of space.

ENTITY was directed by Andrew Desmond and produced by ROSSPROD, a French production company founded by Frédéric Rossignol and Laurent Fumeron, specialized in short films. They are currently developing feature films that are in pre-production. ENTITY was rendered at RebusFarm.

It is the first French short film mixed in Dolby Atmos. It is currently selected in 8 festivals since February and has just won Best VFX at the Hollywood Horror Fest in LA. In the following interview you will find out more about the creation process of this movie.

We asked Laurent Fumeron about the work that has been put into this movie:

What was the idea? What was the process of forming the idea?

“Andrew Desmond and Jean-Philippe Ferré started this project two years ago with the will of doing a small SF movie taking place in space, that would be 5 minutes long and really fast to do… Then we started working on it and… it took us a little bit more time :)”

How long have you worked on this project?

Overall we worked on Entity for 2 years, from the idea to the delivery of the film. Jean-Philippe our VFX Supervisor did a full previz of the film before the shooting that took place 1 year ago. We shot in a studio for 2 days filming only the face of Alias, our actress. Then It took us one year to do the editing, VFX, conforming, color grading, music and sound effects. It was a very challenging project!

Tell us something about the rendering process, for example how long was the rendertime?

I don’t remember how much frame we rendered but quite a lot.
2 shots of the spaceship (around 1000 frames each) and 30 shots of the astronaut (from 100 frames to 1500 frames) For the first shot of the film, I calculated that on our machine it would have took 25 days to render (without crashes of course) and It render in about 30 minutes on rebus farm.
For us it was really helpful, the longer part was the download process as we used multi passes render but rebus farm made it possible for us to deliver the film on time. If not we would not have done it. I was very happy about it especially because we were working with my team in two different locations and we could launch the render from one place and download it for the other which also saved us some valuable time.

Tell us some technical details/ Which software was used?

Our workflow was very complex. We shot the film in 4K using the Sony F65 that we processed in Linear Aces.
When we started working on the previz before the shooting, we worked in RGB so we had to put everything back in Linear which was quite a lot of work to get the result we wanted.
All the compositing work was done in After-effects. For the 3D shots we used different software’s: The Spaceship was done in C4D using VRAY for rendering and the astronaut was created in 3DSMAX also using VRAY. We composited everything back in After-Effects. Then when all the CGI were finished we rendered each shot in several layers to send it to our partner Technicolor for conforming and color grading. This technique allowed us to have great flexibility but was very intense as we had so many layers to work on! We used Smoke and Lustre for this final stage which was particularly helpfull as the two softwares work well together!

What was your biggest challenge during this project?

Everything was quite challenging on this project! Our team was very small so it took us a lot of time and as we’re very meticulous we wanted everything to be perfect.
Also when we started the project we worked in After-effects for the previz and as Jean-Philippe did some really nice looking shots in it and was in an advanced stage we decided not to change our workflow. Going back to Nuke would have made us waste a lot of time. That was also a challenge because I think we pushed AE to the maximum of its capabilities specially in term of 2D compositing.

A big thank you to ROSSPROD for taking the time to give us this interview and good luck for upcoming competitions !