Not only does this MacBook look happy to be rendering frames, it is happy to be alive at all. Having a steady not-for-profit job is just icing on the cake. Although battered and bruised, this little guy is perfectly functional and can help get the job done.
Just using OS X’s built-in Screen Sharing functionality, some AppleScript tools, and some clever render setup it is easy to get renders offloaded from the main workstation.
Look how happy these frames are!
So, not really a “farm”, but I can guarantee this MacBook puts forward more effort per frame than other nameless render farm nodes. . .
(Peter Moxom wisely points out its closer resemblance to a garden rather than a farm)
[andoru.labs]
Quick update to RenderQ to v1.2 to work with latest 32/64bit release of Nuke (make sure to Reset Preferences). Also added system sleep and maya project settings…
RenderQ_v1.2
[andoru.labs]
I just figured out what this odd contraption is for!
Rolling on a great tip off from the one and only David Bagsby, I am participating in Bill Plympton’s shot for shot remake of “Guard Dog”, a 2005 Oscar nominated short. I liked the dog, and it’s barking and what not so I will be working on shot 51 of the film. Check it out when it’s all put together later this year!
And speaking of animation, I just added 2:1 templates to my set of storyboard templates, and I have started to create dedicated pages for more of the tools under /labs.
[bill.plympton] | [david.bagsby]
Probably the most valuable couple of megabytes on this site, my storyboard templates have continuously been one of the top sources of traffic. For me, storyboarding is simultaneously the most rewarding and frustrating part of the film making process. It is very rare that a scripted scene survives the storyboarding step unscathed. While you really don’t need anything special to produce a great sequence of storyboard panels (choices range from the lowly diner napkin to the highest end Wacom Cintiq), we live in a world where people offer up all shorts of wonderful options and tools free of charge, and you would be silly not to take a look at them. I never found anything I really liked to draw my panels on so I put together some of my own a little while back.
Recently I updated them just a bit and while I tend to do most of by story boarding on one of these beauties. . .
. . . I also put together some .psd versions for people that like to work digitally from start to finish. Working in Photoshop also gives you the ability to mask off panels and shuffle things around easily.
You can checkout some examples of these templates in use on my current Floating World project page.
Demo:
QuickTime Version 1280×800 (26MB)
iPhone Version (8MB)
Download: andoru.LABS 2010 Storyboard Templates (1.54MB .zip)
Log:
[feel free to use and distribute these in accordance to the CC license presented at the bottom of this site]
-2010.8.06 – Updated for 2010 and simplified
-2010.8.06 – Added .PSD templates for digital storyboarding
Like I already mentioned, there are many ways to create a storyboard. Being arguably the most important part of the film-making process I recommend doing it with some class. . .
If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. Also, these templates are free but feel free to donate if you find them useful.
[andoru.labs]
Full steam ahead. Dried Up (a film some good friends of mine made) received the Silver Medal in Animation at the Student Academy awards on June 12th in Beverly Hills. Even better the award was presented by Henry Selick.
From Right. Henry Selick, Isaiah Powers, Jeremy Casper.
If you haven’t already make sure to check out the film:
Congratulations to all those involved. Very well deserved!
[dried up] | [isaiah.powers] | [jeremy.casper] | [stuart.bury]
Remember all those render droplet apps I was always going on about? Forget about them. I haven’t told any of them yet, but their services are no longer required. Each app performed it’s job perfectly well, but I am all about teamwork here, and there is no “Q” in team. . .
Which has nothing to do with RenderQ, the latest update to the render droplet apps; which not only combines the functionality of MayaRender, AERender, NukeRender, and all of their Q counterparts, it does them all one better by using a little bit of intelligence. RenderQ is a drag and drop render queue app that will send Maya, After Effects, Nuke, C4D, and Shake renders to Terminal and queue them up for easy and efficient local rendering. It is now very easy to set preferences for the version of each app you are using, as well as enabling and disabling additional flags for each filetype. RenderQ will also automatically detect the filetype and submit the job accordingly.
Also included is RenderQ maitre d’ to pause and resume renders and will also show which render engine is currently active and the last job submitted to the queue.
Demo:
QuickTime Version 1280×800 (92MB)
iPhone Version
Support for more apps could very well be coming in the future. A $0-25 donation is customary. I prefer to keep this sort of thing on the honor system rather than setting up some sort of direct cost. If you use this tool at a facility I suppose a site license will cost you $0-$1000.
Download: RenderQ download page…
Enjoy! If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. One thing I didn’t mention in the demo is that there is also a simple app included to reset the RenderQ preferences. It is quite possible there could be a few little bugs or improvements that could be made so don’t be afraid to contact me. Also, this app is free but feel free to donate, as many hours of work were put into it.
[andoru.labs]
