Thursday, July 18th, 2013 Posted by Jim Thacker

Render Rocket readies LaunchPad


How jobs are currently submitted to Render Rocket. The cloud-based render farm has just announced LaunchPad, a new tool enabling users to launch jobs from within their 3D software.

Online render farm Render Rocket has announced LaunchPad, a new tool for submitting render jobs to its cloud from within 3ds Max, Maya or Cinema 4D. It will be launched alongside Throttle, a separate tool for managing how many nodes a job is assigned to. Both are expected to launch later this year.

And in keeping with the rise of multi-core machines, Render Rocket will be changing its pricing model for render jobs from cores-per-hour to nodes-per-hour. The news release below fills in the details, but that’s the tl;dr version.

PRESS RELEASE (Excerpts)
Render Rocket LLC, an advanced cloud-based rendering services company, today announced that it will showcase two new innovations at this year’s Siggraph – a new, open source cloud-rendering application called Render Rocket LaunchPad and a new cloud resource management tool called Render Rocket Throttle – as well as a new pricing model.

Once installed, LaunchPad allows artists to tap into the power of cloud rendering with one click-and-submit step. Accessed directly from within the menu of Autodesk® Maya®, 3ds Max®, or Maxon Cinema 4D, LaunchPad will automatically check, package up and submit a render job (or series of jobs) to the Render Rocket cloud. This helps artists launch render jobs faster, and removes the risk of render failures by ensuring that all elements of the scene file, all references and networks paths, are correct. Once submitted, artists can monitor their submitted renders from within the application in order to see which jobs are launched and rendering. LaunchPad will be available for Windows and Mac.

In addition, Render Rocket’s Throttle puts customers in the pilot’s seat with the ability to control render resources working on their project and the ability to manage their project costs and render delivery. With Throttle, users can now scale up or down the number of servers working on their renders on-the-fly in order to meet their deadlines and budgets. For high performance “need it yesterday” jobs, users can “throttle up” to hundreds of servers; or for projects where cost management is critical, users can “throttle down” the number of servers for significant cost savings. In addition, users can prioritize their render jobs using drag-and-drop functionality in order to best use their resources.

Starting on September 1, 2013, Render Rocket will also charge by the number of renders nodes per hour rather than by cores per hour. Each individual render node will cost $1-$4/hour, representing a 35% decrease versus current pricing. Loyalty discounts will now apply for studios that use Render Rocket’s services often to further reduce render costs. This lower cost combined with the increase in control with Throttle provides a far better experience and return on investment to artists, producers and studios who are working in fast-paced environments with constantly shifting priorities.

Both LaunchPad and Throttle are expected to launch in early Fall.

Visit Render Rocket online