[Radiance-general] Radiance Render Server

[Rob Guglielmetti]

Jeffrey McGrew wrote:

> First off: Before I replicate a bunch of work, is there already 
> something like this out there available? I know that Design Workshop has 
> a render server available via a web form.

The DW form is the only thing I've seen publicly too.

> Second off: Would it even be feasible to use e-mail as the way to submit 
> and receive jobs? The jobs would probably be rather large, so I guess 
> I'll have to figure something out. 

Well, it depends on what you need back.  The really large files tend to 
be the octrees, the ambient cache files, and the Radiance pics, which 
all get generated from your rad files which are relatively small.  Could 
you make do with jpeg versions of the images?  They'd be much smaller 
than the 32 bit Radiance images.  You could create a script that would 
take your uploaded .rad files (and maybe a rif file), runs the 
simulation, converts the pics to jpeg, and emails 'em back to you (or 
generates some html so that you could view the images online).  All the 
bulk of the simulation would still be on the RRS (Radiance Render 
Server).  Maybe the script could pack up the simulation as a tar.gz 
archive and a link to download the file could be added to the image html 
page; this would get around any email file size limits too.

Notice how there are no practical code samples here.  I'm good with the 
ideas, but not with the programming. =8-)  Keep us posted on your 
progress though!

----

      Rob Guglielmetti

e. rpg at rumblestrip.org
w. www.rumblestrip.org