We’ve been hard at work over the past couple of weeks since our soft-launch on Halloween of the LightForge Render Network.
The latest updates include new MacOS and PC builds of our LightForge Render Network Cloud-UI application and our LightForge Render Submission button/tool that runs directly in LightWave3D 2018.x.x and 2019.x.x. Support for the plug-in for previous versions going back to LightWave3D 11.x is in the works with 2015.3 first on that list.
Here are some of the updates we have made to the platform…
- Improved pricing model!
We’ve adjusted our minimum Render Credits purchase to 25 Render Credits down from 50 Render Credits. Furthermore, no longer you no longer have to buy in increment blocks of 25 or 50 Render Credits. While the minimum purchase is still 25 render credits, you can by 26 or 403 or 999 or any number of credits up to a total of $2500.00 USD. We may increase that USD cap in the future.We have also adjusted the rate of consumption to a lower number. This is pegged to be 1 credit per hour on an AMD Threadripper 1950x (16 cores, 32 threads) 3.4 GHz Clocked CPU. This translates to be a rate of use of just under $1.50USD per hour approximately for that kind of CPU rating which is measured using a metric called PPI. Some of our render cluster systems are faster, some are slower. This changes the rate of consumption obviously, but that’s our baseline standard for Render Credit consumption. This new consumption adjustment reduces our pricing by almost 1/3rd (which is a huge amount) than previously! - Full Radiosity Cache Support!
We now support radiosity cache uploads automatically and this has been seriously tested. Make sure they are in the same content directory as your project and that you have their selection set properly in your LightWave3D scene before submission. Tip: When you create your radiosity caches, do not include the .cache extension. Let LightWave3D do this on its own. Remember the golden rule of CG! A.B.E. (Always Bake Everything)Image Sequence support!
This is a feature we have supported since the beginning, but thought we would mention this again. Since quicktime is essentially dead on the PC with Apple not wishing to deal with the security flaws in it, we don’t support it whatsoever. Besides, it shouldn’t be used by anyone anywhere for CG rendering, so break free and kiss having to use it, goodbye.It’s a bad idea for rendering to or rendering from and it certainly is a silly idea to use in order to render on a farm or render service. It’s great for saving previews and stuff, but not for network rendering in any sense. We know of one popular render farm that forces you to use it instead of image sequences like normal. We don’t. - Render Manager (Wrangler) Accounts!
Render Manager Accounts can now be created directly from the website based DashBoard. This is great news for studio heads, department leads, and production accountants. This provides you with the ability to control the Studio Account’s budgets for rendering by assigning only certain artists or a rendering manager the ability to submit render jobs to the service and only the Studio Account’s Administrator (“administrator” is the default login user name in the LightForge Render Network Cloud-UI application in case you are wondering) can purchase Render Credits. Grant Render Manager Account privileges directly from the Dashboard or even revoke them. You can also change passwords for yourself as the Administrator or any of the Render Manager accounts from the website should you run into any problems within your studio. It happens. We know. That’s why it’s there. We would love your feed back and ideas on this. - Faster LightForge Render Network connection access!
Not only have we improved the start up of the LightForge Render Network Cloud-UI Application from inside LightWave3D if it is not already running in the background, we have also upgraded our primary connection. Depending on internet conditions, we can now receive jobs from our users at a whopping 3.33 x faster than our previous connection speed! Download speeds of images are also improved from our primary service connection as well.Many more improvements and features are being rolled out constantly and automatically update through the LightForge Render Network Cloud-UI Application. Make sure you sign up for an account and download the latest version though if you were part of the initial beta program.
Kray3 and Octane4 support are being tested heavily along with additional third-party plug-ins. We are always wanting to support the widest selection of LWSN compatible plug-ins on the service and encourage you to let us know if you want something added!
Remember, we built this for you – A dedicated LighWave3D first rendering service built by LightWavers for LightWavers. Closing the gap on the creative triangle, world-wide. Make wise use of it.
Video tutorials and written guides are coming very shortly. In the mean time if you have questions you can contact us through the support site at https://support.lightforge.cc
Cheers!
Kat