Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 4, 2019. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
After Chaos Group was already able to experiment via early access and beta versions, the company has now officially introduced the “Chaos Cloud” cloud-rendering service for V-Ray.
Chaos Cloud Features
The new Chaos Cloud is “Software as a Service”, which allows you to transfer scenes (.vrscene files) to Chaos Cloud and have them rendered via a built-in function in the respective host program or V-Ray Standalone. After installing the V-Ray Cloud Client App, the feature is available for Cinema 4D, Houdini, 3Ds Max, Maya, Sketchup, Modo, Revit, Rhino. Depending on the scene setting in the 3D application, the scenes can be rendered in progressive or bucket-render mode.
Create a Job Submit
At the moment, Chaos Cloud renders all scenes with support for the V-Ray CPU and V-Ray GPU engines. The latter, however, can only be run with V-Ray Next Update 1 (4.10.x) and higher and can also only be used with bucket-render mode.After clicking the “Render in Chaos Cloud” button, a window opens in the respective software. Alongside job and project names, resolution, aspect ratio, render mode and frame range, you can also adjust the output mode (Still, VR or Animation).
Once everything is set correctly, the render job can be transferred via “Submit” – up to 100 active jobs can currently be rendered simultaneously. If a scene changes, “SmartSync” can also synchronize only the changed data to minimize upload times. You can find more information about this here.
Live View and the Web Interface
The render progress of the image or animation can be monitored, viewed, paused and canceled from any device. Once you have submitted a job via “Submit”, you can view the render process accordingly from a computer, tablet or even smartphone.
To manage render jobs, you can use the web-based user interface. The web interface lets you orgainze jobs into projects (status, pause or cancel active jobs, download), display the entire queue and check resources such as remaining credits.
Render Output & Download
The formats you can download after successful rendering in Chaos Cloud are always available as JPG and the format specified in the 3D software. If nothing is specified, Chaos Cloud generates an EXR alongside the JPG.
Prices & Examples
The pricing system is based on an “all inclusive” credit system. There are no additional costs for licensing, uploading, downloading, storage or starting the render job. Users purchase packages of Chaos Cloud credits that are available with volume discounts. At the moment, such packages start at 100 dollars for 100 credits; prices for larger packages are 55 cents per credit.
Instead of using the conventional GHz prices, the credits naturally make it somewhat more difficult to estimate how many credits a job requires and how the service is priced compared with online render farms.
However, Chaos Group has also assembled a gallery of examples to show how render times and credit costs vary depending on the scene and resolution. You can find all example scenes HERE.
The Chaos Cloud Client App is available for Windows 64-bit, Mac OS 10.9 or higher and Linux 64-bit. More about pricing in the FAQ.
More information & FAQs: On the Chaos Group website
