we need a render server for maya. till now we worked with IRIX, but their machines are sadly too expensive. so I have few questions:
can we buy sgi's linux pack and install it on a hp, dell or any other intel based workstation? as far as I know the maya linux render only runs with this package!?
as we come from the unix side, we don't want to handle with nt or w2000 if possible. will the admin of the linux OS be very difficult? we have no system admin....
is the installation of linux on a dell, hp workstation difficult? should we better buy an out of the box solution (linux prinstalled)?
any opinions to the following workstations:
dell poweredge 2400, $3500 dual pIII 733MHZ, 256MB RAM PC133, 36GB SCSI disk Intel Pro 100 onboard Ethernet PCI, Red Hat Linux 6.2
as you see we're not sure which way to go. we definitley would like to stay with SGI and buy a Origin3000 server, but that's far too expensive at the moment. should we wait for the pIV or the next AMD processor... (forget the name)? everything would be so easy if SGI would make some affordable computers... they still want $10K for a O2 with R12K!!
If you are under a service contract with SGI with support you should be able to deal out a SGI Linux PC based upgrade or exchange/lease of some sorts without too much problem.
A good way to avoid punting the bill for sgi is to just lease the damn things to begin with.
I'd personally avoid linux for any production work at this point and time... the support isn't there yet [which explains that linux maya is registered to run on only sgi linux machines].
That all being said.. for a network controller/render manager linux should be fine. Although it would be a good idea to pick up a systems guy if you plan to do so.
Another thing to note... be aware of mixing different CPU types for rendering. Different familys of cpu exceute FP operations slightly different then one another.. the end result is procedural data will evaluate differently between a Alpha, Xeon or a R12000. This will be appearent with procedural shaders. I remember this being a headache back in my lightwave days [when the company I worked for had mixed pentium pro and alpha rendering machines... both sets of machines generated slightly different renders] So for a workaround we avoided using procedural shaders for the most part.
There is no way that CPUs could produce different floating point results from the same input values. That's math, and a processor cannot have its own idea about what the result of an equation should be. Maybe the Pentium CPU was using MMX and rounding, vs. the other chip using the FULL FPU? That would most definitely have to be a software issue.
As for the systems. If you are making raw render boxes, buy components! 2 800MHz CPUs, MSI 694D mobo, RAM (256 or 512 depending on your files), a HD, cheap video card and NIC.
Linux is not as "user fiendly" as IRIX, you have to think more to get it running. You might want to contract out to a 15 year old Linux guru that can get everything up and running. Once it is, you probably won't have to get him in too often, it tends to run
I have years of experience with this. It does happen. Try taking mantra / maya / lightwave renders... use lots of procedurals and effects heavy scenes and render them across different architectures to see for yourself.
There is a difference.. anyone else who works in fx/features will agree with me. Which is why on the projects I work on all the rendering is done on one platform type as opposed to splitting rendering across say.. Mips and Intel.
This isn't exactly news.. ask any lightwave user that had to work with alphas and intels and amigas.. I had to.. I had to end up using the Dec Alphas for render only and used the PC to model/animate and the amiga to dump stuff to tape.
Even if you avoid using procedurals.. you'll still run into other issues like gamma evaluating slightly different coming from different cpu types.
