It's ALIVE! FlyingArchitecture's new renderfarm
FlyingArchitecture was created in 2008 as a freetime project of an architecture student in desperate need of 3D assets for Rhinoceros software. Unable to find any (except for the obvious Savanna3D collection from McNeel), he decided to open up his own blog and uploaded some of his own 3D models. After that, thousands of enthusiasts all over the world joined... and this is how the very first (and so far only) Archviz community for Rhino was started.
As time went by, we added more features to fill glaring gaps we noticed in the industry: V-Ray materials, tutorials, forum and Rhino-based architectural visualization services. Besides that, we started to educate people not only via tutorials, but also on our own workshops led in various European cities. And we are still growing!
The next big thing missing in the Rhino world is... wait for it... a rendering service!
As an architectural visualization company, we work on large-scale projects and the scale of these projects has grown over the years. Current rendering machines get the job done, but you know... a little extra power wouldn’t hurt. ;)
So we decided to roll up our sleeves and build our first node, a hulking €5500 beast. I planned to call it Thor, The Mighty... but we encountered some minor issues while building our little darling and the project took on a life (and mission) of its own. We found out one of the coolers didn’t fit (by 3 mm!!!), so we had to dismantle 2 other PCs to get one that did :D So… Frankenstein, meet everyone. Everyone, meet Frankenstein ;)
“So it’s got a cool name, but what can it DO?” Simple. Pretty much anything! Have a look under the hood:
- 2 x Xeon E5-2650 V3 (10 physical cores, 20 logical... after adding both CPUs, that’s a total of 40 threads)
- ASUS MB Z10PE-D16
- Noctua NH-D15S
- Seasonic X series 1050W
- 128 GB of 2133 Mhz RAM ECC (not the ones in the photo - we switched them afterwards)
- GeForce GTX 960
- Fractal Design Define XL R2 Black Pearl
We will run Windows 10, Rhinoceros 5 and V-Ray for Rhino (always the latest version to get all features). We’re going to be using the farm for our own purposes at first, but once everything is tested and all the bugs have been zapped, we’ll be opening up access for all of you out there struggling with your complex 3D scenes or eternal render times.
We still haven’t decided on conditions, pricing, and other details, so we’d love to open up the topic for discussion to hear your thoughts on the matter. Frankenstein is ALIIIIIVE! Now let’s hear your ideas, comments, and questions on where to go from here.
Be well, everyone!
UPDATE:
Meanwhile we managed to upgrade our renderfarm with new nodes! What do we have?
2x Xeon E5-2650 v3 + 128GB RAM (Master) - 40 threads
2x Xeon E5-2670 + 64GB RAM (Slave 1) - 32 threads
2x Xeon E5-2670 + 64GB RAM (Slave 2) - 32 threads
2x Xeon E5-2670 + 64GB RAM (Slave 3) - 32 threads
That is 136 threads available for you :) Need to rent these beasts? Contact us!