Update 7/29/2019: Omar's new scene is ready to render and already underway on SheepIt. If you're part of the CG Cookie Render Monsters team, we'd appreciate you launching the SheepIt app on your computer to contribute. NOTE: Make sure on your SheepIt account "Options" you enable Render my team's projects first. Thanks!
Update 7/18/2019: Omar is polishing new scenes.
Update 7/3/2019: Omar has 2 new files ready for rendering. Let's do dis.
Update 7/1/2019: We have finished rendering two of Omar's reel projects. Way to go community. Omar still has several to prep for rendering. I'm going to unpin this thread and re-pin once it's ready to render again.
Update 6/17/2019: Omar has updated his shared project folder with new scenes to render. It was accidentally uploaded as a new folder so if you've already synced the previous folder, you can delete that one (if it's still there) and you'll have to sync this new one. From now on we know how to avoid this so no more re-syncing.
The time to render is now!
Update 6/16/2019: We've finished Omar's first 2 scenes! Way to go People 👏👏 Thanks to everyone for contributing. Now we're waiting for Omar to setup and upload his next scene.
@theluthier Kent after comparing the original Cycles renders and Element 3D real time ones, I think you are right, rendering it out of Cycles is totally worth going the extra mile for. Although you and Lampel said it was great, that it's 95% there, for a second I saw a twinkle in your eyes saying "C'mon dude, you know it, I know it... there is no spoon." And then the twinkle continued "No one eats an Oreo and doesn't go all the way to the stuffing in the middle, the cookie part is just enough". I see what you mean twinkle.
I didn't want to bother people though, but I guess if I'm going to try this there's no way around that. I don't know how to use Drop Box, I've never used it before. Should I get an account? I hope it's enough space. I remember you kinda set things up in a similar way in the Rendering & Finishing A Blender Animation course. I should re-watch that. I have never done things through the internet so this should be a learning experience.
I, Kent Trammell, am commandeering Omar's original post! [evil laugh] I'm the one that encouraged Omar to reach out to the community for helping him render his demo reel. My computer just sits collecting dust most nights and I'm happy to lend some rendering power to this project while I'm asleep. I suspect that there are a number of CGC community members willing to do the same 🙏
If you want to help out, please follow the instructions below!
The status of the project will be stated and updated at the end of the thread title in brackets. When it says "READY TO RENDER" that means a project has been submitted to SheepIt for rendering. If it says anything else, the project isn't ready for rendering yet.
The status of the project will be stated and updated at the end of the thread title in brackets. When it says "READY TO RENDER" that means it's ready to sync the project folder and start rendering. If it says anything else, the project isn't ready for rendering yet.
STEP 1 -- Sync Omar's project folder to your Google Drive.
If you have a gmail account, you have 15 GB of free Google Drive space. Just click the link and when you're redirected to the Google Drive website, right click on the "Demo Reel Files" folder and choose Add to My Drive.
If you're on Mac or Windows, use the official Google Drive app (personal version) to sync your Google Drive to your computer's file system.
Render_Scenes_1_Packed.blend
If you're on Linux like me, there is no official app. I've had some success with Open Drive but it seems to have stopped syncing on my system. I'm currently using Insync and it's working beautifully. It's $30 after the 15 day trial period, which I will likely pay.
STEP 2 -- Open one of the render-ready .blends with Blender 2.8
After the project folder has finished syncing *entirely* to your computer, launch Blender 2.8 and open Demo Reel Files > Blend Packed Files > Render_2.8-Scene_1_Packed.blend. Then follow Omar's instructions in the file for CPU or GPU rendering, whichever your machine is best equipped.
Enable viewport rendering to double check the scenes look fine (no pink from missing textures). I've tested these files myself and they should be ready to render without problems.
STEP 3 -- Render the Animation
The files should all be setup properly so anyone that opens them doesn't have to do anything but click the Render button.
That should be all you need to do to contribute rendering to Omar's project! Note that these scenes are heavy and can take an hour or more per frame, even on a high end machine, which is why Omar needs our help.
When the rendering is all done (or you need to stop and regain your own GoogleDrive space), simply navigate to the Google Drive website, right click on the folder and choose "Remove".
Kent be our mighty captain, Neil. We currently don't know his whereabouts, the whole gang has gone their separate ways until we're called upon again.
My apologies for the radio silence! I've was on vacation last week - I must not have mentioned that during any of my streams 🤔
WOAH our sheepit team is ranked #10! That was fast. Way to go everyone 👏
dostovel What's the status on your reel scenes? If you have any ready to render you can feel free to submit them to sheepit and change the topic thread to "Ready to Render". I.e. no need to wait on me.
However what I do need to do is post an article about SheepIt and our team so this info isn't buried in this thread. I'll try to do that this week perhaps 🤞
@theluthier I've been taking a break myself, I got a bit of a scare recently.
January this year I stopped doing freelance to focus on a portfolio to try and make a major life change, so I've been working literally non stop, doing my 8 to 5 sentence at the office and then getting home tired and continuing to sit in front of the computer to work on 3D to try and make up for the hours lost, and then weekends it's the only chance you have time to really focus and push hard. Literally months just driving in my car back and forth to just sit and try to get things done as fast as possible. There's no other way when you're an employee, what would otherwise be your free time to rest is what little time you have available to work on your personal stuff, even though by then your job has sucked all the energy out of you. So lately I've been feeling this pressure at the back of my head and this weird headache that doesn't go away for days and I said ok, it's probably time to stop.
I hope the gamble pays off soon and I can get a job doing 3D for real and work 8 to 5 on that and then the time left is leisure time. And I always think to myself, man what about the people that have three jobs just to make ends meet, just to stay afloat, and each one of those jobs is two times worst than mine, and they can't even stop or they wont make it. No wonder people are just dropping left and right.
Omar I can relate to your problem because I am doing exactly the same. I work a full time job and then spend what little time I get at night working on my portfolio and also doing a good bit of freelance work . It's stressful and crazy. Most nights I work till 12am and then am up at 6.30 for a 10 hour shift and then its baby duties when I get home and then 3d work from about 9 till 12 again.
But stick with it man , because one day it will all pay off and you will look back and be so glad that you did not give up. You have a huge amount of talent and easily have the skills to land a job in CG.
But yes, maybe a break is a good idea. If you burn yourself out you could lose heart and that could be disastrous.
If you ever need a chat about it give me a shout :) or I'm sure any if the amazing crew and community here can also relate to the struggle and will be happy to chat about it.
The futures bright man :)
frikkr Thanks Matt. I used to think most of the people doing 3D were in similar situations, but I remember there were a couple of things that started to form a different picture in my head, including a poll Kent made were he asked if people did 3D just for fun, as a hobby, or they were in it as a means of making a living out of it. Turns out it might be most people do it just for amusement, which blows my mind. They're not looking to do freelance or anything, not to have a client, not to make money out of it, just for entertainment. Which reminds me of the Robin Williams joke
"Michael Jackson was taking Propofol to sleep, which is like doing chemotherapy because you’re tired of shaving your head"
I've had my apartment rented for two years now to a husband and wife, they're great people and great tenants, the thing is they were also looking to get a job abroad, he does coding in Python and they finally got hired, in a corporation in Europe, they're leaving next month. So that gives me hope, that it can be done, they gave me a couple of good advice on how they managed to do it. So lets see, fingers crossed.
For anybody who has more than one GPU in their computer , it turns out that it is surprisingly easy to render on Sheep-it with them all. Simply open several instances of the client , one for each GPU you wish to use and select the required GPU in the settings of each one. Below you can see that I am rendering with 3 of my four cards, saving the main display card so that I can keep working on the computer while the others are rendering.
@theluthier , you suggested a way to run a script to do this a few weeks back , but it turns out that it is a lot simpler than we thought and I've left all four GPU's rendering like this for 48 hours straight several times without any issues so it seems to be stable enough simply opening the Sheep-it client several times.
What in gods name is human-skeleton rendering? it looks like there was a dude on display in a museum with a nice red carpet. He came to life, left his pod and built some high-tech scaffolding to jump from the roof and escape? He looks determined to go with it, I want to see how that turns out.
frikkr I'm kida worry for the guy, I hope he makes it out and the next screenshot is him on a nice tropical island.
Hello everyone.
After many many months of not being able to work, due to a combination of life really getting in the way and my laptop going dead, I finally got a friend to lend me his computer for at least two weeks so I could finish assembling a small demo reel, to at least have something to show since the footage I got over the months with everyone's help could be enough. I'll try doing some extra stuff with the time I've got.
The thing is my laptop suddenly died on me a couple of months ago, and here in my country there aren't many places that can fix it, so I took the opportunity that my father was visiting the country and asked him if he could take the laptop to New York where he lives. Once there he sent it to Dell, I had to pay 300 dollars but they fixed it, turns out the motherboard died, so they replaced it. All happy and good, the laptop is like new but now it's stuck in New York, since sending it back to my country is a lot of money and no one is coming to visit any time soon. So the only thing I can think of is to sell it, but I have no idea how to sell something in the US and A.
@theluthier Kent, I remember Dennis once told me he sold laptops or something like that. Could you ask him if there is a way he can point me to the right direction? How is it that he sells laptops, online? If someone is interested, does that someone have to be in New York? I mean isn't it the same problem if someone in another state wants the laptop, shipping and stuff would be costly?
I don't know for how much to sell it either but it would have to be cheap, since it is a 2 year old laptop, I took out the hard drives since it has my data, so no hard drives on it, it already went into the computer doctor and I sent it to New York without the charger, I have it here, so people would have to use one of their own or buy it separately. If I should post pictures of it, I could ask my father to take some.
phoenix4690 Phil will remember this laptop as the one that even ants love.
The laptop specs are:
-Alienware 17 R4
-2.9 GHz Intel Core i7-7820HK Quad-Core
- 17.3" 2560 x 1440 120 Hz G-Sync Display
- 16GB DDR4 RAM
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (8GB GDDR5)
Here's the link:
Man, sorry to hear about the technical woes you've run into. Generally speaking I would sell a used laptop like yours on Ebay in the US; Craigslist if I didn't want to deal shipping and sell it to a stranger locally. But I'm not sure if ddbrown is privy to other laptop selling techniques I'm not aware of.
@theluthier Thanks Kent, I had heard of Ebay but not Craigslist. Weird name, sounds like a man named Craig just made a list one day and that was it. Maybe ddbrown knows some other person that made another list somewhere. Here's hoping.
Ok, here are a couple of videos that, given I only have a few days left with this computer, will just have to be the final result. They are apart, but after a couple of different scenes rendered, I'll make just one video edit of it all.
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4
Cool Wireframes
Very nice work Omar , very nice indeed.
Sorry to hear about the laptop :( , hope you manage to sell it ok.
Thanks Matt. Yeah I hope I can get at least something out of the laptop. Frankly I don't even know what to but next, if to buy anything at all. I bought a laptop because I had given up on desktops, I had no luck with those, they all kept going bad one after the other, it was such a headache all the time, so I bought a laptop because they weren't an inconvenience. But it was all in vain, this laptop died the same as all my other desktops did, worst even, because with desktops at least you could buy just the component that went bad, with the laptop it feels such a waste, when it dies, everything goes to the trash. In my case I was able to send it to repair but again, now everything goes out to sell.
I feel bad that I wasn't able to finish the reel when it had all the hype and help from everyone, instead it will be a very slow walk to the finish line now.
I think you have the building blocks for a really good reel there! You just have to put it together now. If by chance you still have things for render, we are still here at the ready bud.
Sorry for the late reply!
Selling on eBay is a decent choice, but the amount of people visiting eBay has reduced significantly over the years. I've found that when you sell through eBay, you end up selling your item for a price less than what its worth. These days, I will sell everything including systems on Amazon. Reason being, the price received is extremely fair, you can sell at the price it's worth, at an exposure time longer than a week, and fees are similar but with better exposure benefits.
If the laptop lost a lot of value over time, Craigslist is your best choice, where you don't have to worry about too many competing prices, and you can sell your item with a flashy description at a higher price, but you're limited to the local area (though no better place than New York). Exchanges can be risky, and ask for cash only (lots of rubber checks).
Those would be my top-two depending on the value. I hope that helps, and best of luck! 🍻
Alrighty, thanks Dennis. I don't trust computers anymore, I haven't had any luck with them in years. I think I'll be buying a tablet next and just don't have any computer at all.
@theluthier Finally it is now what it could be considered as final. After all this time I'm too tired of seeing it, I can't see its mojo anymore, all the hype is gone, but nonetheless thanks so much to everyone for helping making it, and thanks Kent for guiding me all the way and always coming up with new solutions to problems. I hope fresh eyes can tell me if it's worth it.
I made another version without the character since I didn't model it, just in case, that's why he is barely seen, but I wanted to have something like that in it.
I'm waiting to see if I get the Visa, I think mid February I will know, if so it will be time to see if the reel is up to the task of job hunting in another country. Fingers crossed.
Any feedback is welcomed.
Thanks so much everyone.
Wireframes is always a must. People frequently ask how did you do that, the wires often help.