Amazon cloud rendering - yay!

File: 2017-06-01-17-49-05-1173280908.jpg (11KB, 254x198px) Image search: [Google]

11KB, 254x198px

None of my coworkers or friends can appreciate this, and since I have to get this out of my system I came here!

For years I have been rendering my Sketchup stuff with an old Kerkythea copy on my laptop. Stills are fine. But even with an i7 and 32 gb of ram it has taken forever to render animations. Especially so with the 1080p res that clients want/need these days.

So one of those clients wanted a 1+ minute video @ 25fps, which would have taken 150+ hours on my laptop. I know because I did render the first draft for approval that way!!

That's when I started searching for cloud powered options, and stumbled upon Amazon EC2. Signing up and getting my account was tedious to say the least (including answering an automated call on my cell to punch in a PIN code shown on-screen during registration).

But when all that was done, wow. I can set up multiple virtual machines in a few minutes. Yesterday I had to render a new draft for the 1+ minute video in a hurry, so I launched a virtual machine with 64 cores and 264 gb of ram. Cost me $6.6/hr while it was running, but the client covers that cost so no worries.

Brought my rendering time down from 150 to about 15 hours. Holy cloud power, batman!

Normally I use a 16 core / 64 gb virtual machine, which is only about $1.5/hr. Fine for most shorter animation jobs, leave it overnight and presto - it's done when I come into the office the next morning.

Most importantly, my discovery of Amazon EC2 now allows me to use my laptop as normal 100% of the time, since none of its capacity is tied up with render jobs anymore.

This has opened a while new world of opportunities for me, since I'm now able to take on work I previously would have turned down because of excessive render times.

Anyone else using EC2? Are you as happy about it as I am? Because I haven't stopped smiling since I started using it a week ago!