POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.newusers : Small Home Cluster for Rendering? : Small Home Cluster for Rendering? Server Time
28 Jul 2024 20:34:06 EDT (-0400)
  Small Home Cluster for Rendering?  
From: Culley
Date: 16 Oct 2007 11:30:00
Message: <web.4714d83cfd2e05aeae6f2c1e0@news.povray.org>
Howdy folks, I'm relatively new here, thus the post in the newb list.

I'm generally a hardware guy along with being a sysadmin, but my wife is a
drafter  and we've been thinking of starting up a side business. While she
uses AutoCAD at work, we've been getting in to Chief Architect (CA) for
much more detailed home remodeling 3d renders. While this can be done in CA
it takes most of a day for a good sized resolution and the lighting isn't
great. Most of the folks on CA's forums seem to recommend POV-Ray as the
best 3rd part rendering software (outside of mucho $$$).

Now here's where I come in.

I've managed to scavenge up 10 P4's all roughly 2.4-3.2ghz and I've been
playing with clustering. It works, I can do it, now I need a way to use the
power.

Can anyone point me in a direction that has some info about clustering
POV-Ray? I found http://pvmpov.sourceforge.net and
http://www.instant-grid.org/. Anything else out there I should be looking
at? Also, is there anyone who has done this on a small scale (under 20
systems) with recommendations?

On the flip side, any recommendations for a much more large scale cluster?
How well does it scale with huge numbers of varying processors? This is
where it gets fun, a friend of mine has a warehouse of nearly 1000 PCs, a
few AIX, and a pile of older HP servers that he has managed to scavenge up
to build a wannabe super computer with. Depending on the scalability of
POV-Ray with multiple systems I could probably snag time on it
occasionally.


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