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—Pedro de Azambuja Varela
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Home » 2015 (Page 2)
Yearly Archives: 2015
Designing comic characters—interview with John Garrett
John Garrett writes and draws at Hypertransitory.com
It’s been one year since we started interviewing talented people form the 3D industry. Each one revealed a unique connection between their work and Blender. The moment has come to find out where does Blender stand in relation to comics.
John Garrett has been drawing comics since he was five. Today, he speaks about the things he learned along the way. If you read carefully, there’s a lot to learn about character making and how serious making science fiction stories really is.
The startup wave of the movie industry
If you’re an indie, you know how difficult it is to get financing for your movie. The internet is booming with webinars, books and articles that want to teach you the secret sauce of getting the money for your production. At the same time, the checklist that you need to complete in order to have a shot at actually getting any money is getting longer by the day. The investors are looking for more and more insurance for their ROI and the big studios are hard to reach. And once you got a meeting with a potential investor, you’d better have a production manager, an accountant and a lawyer at your side. You’ll need these guys for answering all the questions related to the business plan that you’ve prepared in advance and to negotiate the profit distribution in the happy event that there is one. There are also the options of doing crowdfunding, or pre-sales, and they all come with their own challenges.
Image by Tamara podolchak
Our users say: “Thanks for your awesome service”
”Thanks for your awesome service! Especially baking simulations and then rendering with cycles is a killer feature :)”
—Phil Gosch
saphirestudio.at
Bassam Kurdali: ‘I see open source as a movement for social good.’
Blender is the software of choice for many 3D artists. For some, it was love at first sight, for others it’s just a program they use to deliver the work. For Bassam Kurdali open source—‘libre’ as he calls it—is more than a tool, it is the result of the evolution of human nature that achieved a new level of interaction and cooperation.
In this interview, I’m talking to the director of the first animated open movie ever made. Which is kind of cool, as his Elephants Dream might someday be mentioned in textbooks. Bassam is a wayward on his own pace, following his dreams. I wanted to discover him better, but what I got was a new puzzle. A comprehensive mind that holds so many surprising things to come.
User quote: “You’ve really nailed the product quality and customer service”
“I have to hand it to you – you’ve really nailed the product quality and customer service aspect of your business down.”
—Ken George
RenderStreet One is now live!
We’re very excited (and exhausted after these past weeks of full speed preparations) to announce the opening of our newest program for unlimited rendering!
One month ago we started the registrations for our flat fee rendering program, RenderStreet One. The new program is designed to make rendering more accessible to every artist, and we believe it will be of great help to those who need a permanent external rendering resource, on a budget.
Sarah Laufer, la virtuosa de 3D
The interviews we’ve been hosting on the RenderStreet blog for a while now gave me the opportunity to meet new people and learn a lot from them. With Sarah it was the other way around. I had met her before and even worked together on a project, so I already knew this was going to be a pleasure.
After switching to Blender, Sarah Laufer co-founded Pataz Studio, and specialised in character animation. In 2010 her movie was nominated for the Sundance Film Festival. Then Sarah worked for The Tube open movie. Back in Costa Rica, she was also teaching Blender to kids from poor neighbourhoods in San Jose. Pataz Studio is one of the 12 studios chosen to produce the Gooseberry Project, so now Sarah is based in the Blender Foundation’s Amsterdam HQ. And because she is the first Blender lady we are featuring here, let’s give a warm welcome to Sarita Laufer!
RenderStreet—rendering figures for 2014
As 2014 is done with, we drew the line to see what happened, what are the relevant figures for our service and what went different from 2013. We’re sharing them here, as we think we’ve got some interesting results that speak about the work that we’re doing behind the scenes and our stubbornness to surpass our standards.
Here are the RenderStreet stats for 2014:
- 99.89% uptime. This means 9 hours downtime in the entire year. It’s two hours more than last year, because of platform migrations we had to implement.
- Over 15,000 jobs, with a 99% success rate in job delivery. Only 1% of the jobs had issues that prevented them from being successfully finished. And, as you might have experienced, we make every effort to deliver. This is an improvement over the next year, and one we’re proud of, especially considering the increased rendering volume.
- 85% of the animations were delivered in under 71 minutes in average. A good figure, showing constant performance over the year.
- Highest acceleration, compared to the client’s machine: 533x, or 1.5 hours compared to over 1 month (the comparison base was a 2012 iMac).
RenderStreet ONE is now open for registrations
We’ve been trying to understand how different users do their work, in order to come with better solutions for their rendering needs. One common feedback suggested that it would be nice to be able to render the project several times while in development, without any added rendering costs. So we started thinking about how this could be done and came up with a plan.
RenderStreet ONE, our newest all-you-can-render, flat fee tier, is now open for registrations. The program is designed for people who have constant rendering needs and want an always-on resource they can offload their work to. This will ensure close, precise, control of the results, making the 3D renders more available throughout the process.
Customer story: “The best solution that I’ve found for my Blender rendering needs”
“I first used RenderStreet with a project that I knew I would have to outsource to a farm for. We reached out early on to see if the services that RenderStreet provided would mesh with our workflow. Not only did RenderStreet offer the services that we needed, but their staff made the whole process extremely approachable. There were moments when I had issues with my renders (problems that stemmed from my own inexperience), and RenderStreet reached out to me with answers to my problems before I had a chance to check them myself.
The workflow provided by RenderStreet is ideal; it is literally a one click process for me to get my render started on their servers. If I have a more complex setup, or if I have any questions regarding the process, I know that I would be able to contact them with my concerns, and they would respond in a timely manner with a well formed response to my comments.
RenderStreet offers the best solution that I’ve found for my Blender rendering needs. I look forward to working with them in the future.”
—Kyler Alford
Best notebooks for 3D rendering. Part 2: Recommended configurations
In the first part of this series I talk about the technical considerations for buying a new laptop for 3D work / rendering. I also tracked down the two NVidia mobile cards from the latest generation that are in the performance area. If you want to see how GeForce GTX 970M and 980M tested out in Cycles, you can see the figures here—their rendering performance is quite impressive.
Next, I’m going to make a few recommendations for specific notebook models, which I consider suited for particular usage patterns. Let’s get started.
The road warrior. If you are spending a lot of time on the road and need a light but powerful notebook, this one’s for you.
High-end configuration 15″: Clevo P650SG/P651SG (Sager NP8652)
Sager NP8652 official image and source
Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M and GTX 980M performance in Blender
In the first article from the notebook review series I am recommending two NVidia cards: the GTX 970M and GTX 980M. They are the top two performers from NVidia at this moment, and they are most likely to successfully keep up the pace a few years from now.
When doing my research, I tried to find some benchmarks to show Blender’s rendering performance. I wasn’t able to find any data, so I turned to the online community for help. I knew that in the notebook community there are users with vast knowledge on the subject, and with access to the newest hardware. I found the reviews made by HTWingNut from the notebookreview forum very thorough and informative over the time, so I approached him with my request.
GeForce GTX 970M and 980M rendering performance in Blender Cycles. Figures courtesy of HTWingNut.
Word from our customer: “It’s so much better than render farms I used in the past”
“I really love your service.
It’s so much better than render farms I used in the past.”
—Wout Fierens
