Pixels Animation Studios has released the a new network rendering suite, Renderfarm In A Box. Renderfarm promises unsurpassed power and flexibility for a rendering application. According to Pixels Animation Studios:
Tempest, Pixels Animation Studios next generation network rendering engine, was demonstrated at Siggraph 2000 in New Orleans to the public for the first time. The demonstration portrayed the blazing speed possible with Tempest and Total Impactis PCI based mPower boards utilized in conjunction with Total Impactis Power Box 10x PCI card expansion enclosure..
Pixels Animation Studios Tempest supports the RenderMan specification and is the first commercial rendering engine to integrate the REYES rendering algorithm with a ray server in one application. Tempest provides the power of micro polygon displacement with true raytraced reflection and refraction, an industry first. Tempest also integrates RIB parsing and Shading Language support, therefore it fits seamlessly into an established workflow.
Total Impactis mPower solution offers either 4 PowerPC G3 (750) or 4 Power PC G4 (7400) CPUs ranging from 366 to 500MHz on a single PCI based board for integration into PCI based computers. Up to 10 additional mPower PCI boards can be utilized in Total Impactis Power Box enclosure via a high speed PCI card to the host computer. Multiple Power Box enclosures can also be configured together for highly intensive computations.
The combination of the Tempest rendering engine with the Power Box enclosure, filled with mPower PCI cards, offers the worldis first true "Renderfarm in a Box" solution for high-end computer generated graphics rendering applications.
Pixels 3D Studio Pro is available for US$899. You can find more information at the Pixels Animation Studio web site.