"Render Farm" Software

[MrMiracle77]

I remember using Animation: Master some years ago, and they separately sold a stripped-down version of their software for running 'render farms'. Basically, you pass off the file to a separate computer to do the rendering, freeing up your main computer to work on a different scene.

I know that smithmicro's licenses let you install the software on up to three computers, but my main computer and laptop already take up two of those. I've had some feature-heavy renders take 3+ hours to finish, and I've often waited until the end of the day so they can be completed overnight. I'd pay a modest sum for a 'render farm' license that just lets me offload the finished work to a separate computer.

[synthsin75]

Since you still have an install left, you can always use the Moho Exporter on the render computer, even while using Moho on another, as they are two different programs (installed by the same installer).

[Greenlaw]

I'm not aware of network render managers that natively support Moho, but at my work place we use Deadline Render. A custom Submit To Deadline (button) script had to be written by the programmers and I'm reasonably sure they referenced the Command-Line Renderer information from near the end of the manual to do this. A custom script also had to be written for the Deadline side. Sorry, exactly how that was done is beyond my skill/knowledge level...I'm just confirming that it can be done. Also, I'm almost sure you need a Moho license for each machine you want to include in the render group.

If you just have one or two extra computers on your network, a more straightforward approach is what Wes describes...just use Moho Exporter on each computer. Moho Exporter lets you batch all your Moho projects at once, including automatically breaking out any multi-pass renders you've set up using the Layer Comps window.

[Greenlaw]

Sorry for going off on a tangent but, IMO, Moho Exporter is a very useful feature, but it's also clunky and unfinished. What makes it especially frustrating is that it needs just a few UI adjustments to become a truly great tool.

The one thing I really dislike about Moho Exporter is that it makes incorrect assumptions about how animators/studios typically set up their project directories on a shared network, and it is irritatingly inflexible about it. (This is one of the reasons the programmers where I work had to develop the alternative system described above.)

In my personal work at home, I have a few cheap tricks for working around some of these Moho Exporter's limitations. When I have time, I'll post a walkthrough.

Whenever they start working on Moho Pro 14, I hope the developers can focus only on improving existing Moho features, like Moho Exporter, the Style and Actions windows, the Freehand and Blob Brush tools, and the new Paint tools.

We really don't need more features, just better ones.

[SimplSam]

You can also invoke the Render (Exporter) from the command line - without the Moho GUI. Which is what I tend to do for long-running 'fire and forget' renders.

The full instructions are towards the end of the Help manual: "Command Line Renderer". For my PNG renders I use the following - which places the sequence files in a predefined folder:

(on windows)

Code: Select all

"C:\Program Files\Smith Micro\Moho 13\Moho.exe" -r "somefile.moho" -f PNG -o "c:\\mypath\\somefolderame\\"

where: -r / -render, -f / -format, -o / -output

You can also specify Start Frame, End Frame, Quality, Layer Comps etc.

[arglborps]

Yeah I recall the way back when I was dabbling in Cinema 4D they had a pure rendering app you could run on other machines on the network and they'd become render nodes.

Apple's Compressor can do that too, i.e. flick a switch and your machine can become a node, or if you initiate the process on your machine it would automatically recognize nodes running on other machines and then do a distributed render.

I'd love to see the Moho exporter to become such an app just for rendering that you could install on several machines and whenever you hit render on your machine it would discover all nodes on the network and do a distributed render using them. One can dream…

[rafael]

Since you still have an install left, you can always use the Moho Exporter on the render computer, even while using Moho on another, as they are two different programs (installed by the same installer).

That is a handy piece of info I knew nothing about. Thank you!

[tommybit]

Great discussion! I agree that having a native render farm solution for Moho, like Cinema 4D or Compressor, would be ideal. Until then, Wes' suggestion of using Moho Exporter across multiple machines seems like the best workaround. Has anyone recently tried Deadline with Moho? Curious if the setup has become easier.

[Greenlaw]

I'm glad this topic was bumped. I'm not using a render farm for Moho, but I optimized my Moho Exporter workflow while making shorts and tutorial videos for our YouTube channel.

Moho Exporter still isn't perfect, but I'm getting a lot more mileage out of it now. I'll schedule a tutorial video about this topic if anyone is interested.