Implementation of a distributed rendering environment for the TeraGrid

This paper discusses the implementation of a distributed rendering environment (DRE) utilizing the TeraGrid. Using the new system, researchers and students across the TeraGrid have access to available resources for distributed rendering. Previously, researchers at universities and national labs, using high end rendering software such as Renderman Compliant Pixie were often limited by the amount of time that it takes to calculate (render) their final images. For example, a short animation project may be about two minutes in length. At 30 frames per second (fps), this is 3600 frames. An average rendering time for a fairly simple animation can be approximately 2 minutes, resulting in a total of 120 hours just to render a simple 2 minute animation. The amount of time required to render introduces several potential complications in a research setting. For example: 1. Many researchers do not have access to an individual machine dedicated for rendering 2. During local rendering, machines become unavailable for other research use, often for extended periods of time 3. Researchers may potentially lose render data due to local hardware failure, or manual rebooting of their render machine 4. Due to the complexity of renders, they are prone to errors, often requiring multiple renders of the same material In contrast, a typical animation studio has a render farm, consisting of a cluster of computers (nodes) used to render 3D images, known as a distributed rendering environment. By spreading the rendering across hundreds of machines, the overall render time is reduced significantly. For example: using a DRE of 200 computers to render the example animation above would take only 36 minutes for full render. Unfortunately, most researchers do not have access to a distributed rendering environment. Our university has been developing a DRE for local use. However, because we are a TeraGrid site, we recently modified our DRE implementation to make use of Open Source rendering tools and grid tools such as Condor, in order to make the DRE available to other TeraGrid users. By taking available local university resources and sharing them with external researchers, the problems listed above can be addressed.