Hello Guys,
Are there any renderfarm service which supports frost 2.0 and vray?
Regards,
Jignesh
Hi Jignesh,
Since the Frost plugin does not require a license for network rendering, I cannot provide you with a list of render farm services that are our customers for Frost - we simply don’t have them on file as they did not have to purchase a license… 
So you might have to do some research yourself. For example, start by looking at all render farm services supporting V-Ray using
rentrender.com/vray-render-farms/
Unfortunately, Frost is not part of the sorting criteria of that page, but you get over 70 V-Ray farms.
Then you can visit their individual websites, and see if they mention Frost. For example, the very first one I checked out was Rendernation in the UK:
rendernation.com/software/
Lo and behold, they list Frost as a supported professional plugin!
Then I clicked on Ranch Computing, and they had Frost listed, too…
ranchcomputing.com/en/featu … ins/3dsmax
Some others I checked out did not list Frost though, so you might have to do some clicking to get a longer list.
Also, some of them might be happy to install a free plugin if you ask nicely, for example myrenderbox.com/render-suppo … n-support/ supports V-Ray and XMesh Loader, but does not list Frost. However, that page encourages you to contact them about adding more software, so you could try…
You will have to contact the individual services to confirm they have rolled out v2.0 though…
Let us know if / when you find a farm so we know what you went with and how well it worked.
Thanks Bobo! That ranch computing one sounds good. I will ask my client if he agrees to render on farm. Otherwise I can render with my spare machine, if Frost support on network rendering.
As long as the MAX file is saved with a commercial license of Frost, it will render on any number of network nodes if they have the Frost plugin installed, no additional licenses required.
Wasn’t it(license) required before with prior version of Frost 1.3 or 1.4?
The render licenses have always been free (assuming non-workstation mode iirc). Bobo can likely comment better on what’s possible during render mode as I’m not sure if meshing end render nodes is something it’s capable of doing.
Here are the licensing rules of Frost. They have been this way since v1.0 in 2011.
- If no workstation license has been found, and 3ds Max is running in Workstation (UI) mode, Frost will create only a wireframe in the viewports (thus no material or modifiers support), and will not render at all in the production renderers. Saving a scene containing such an instance of a Frost object will not render on the network.
- If a workstation license has been found, and 3ds Max is running in Workstation (UI) node, Frost will create a full mesh in the viewports and in the renderer. Saving a scene containing such an instance of a Frost object and sending it to network rendering under the control of Deadline, Backburner etc. will render correctly using 3ds Max in network (UI-less) mode without any additional licenses.
- If the Deadline job was submitted with Force Workstation mode checked for some reason, the 3ds Max copy will be launched in Workstation mode and the Frost object will once again look for a workstation license. It might not render if no license could be found.
This is an alternative explanation of the license behavior documentation available here:
docs.thinkboxsoftware.com/produc … nsing.html
Note that XMesh Saver can be run in both workstation mode on the local machine, and in slave mode on the network. XMesh Saver switches 3ds Max into render mode and requests the render state of the Frost object, so in a way it acts as a production renderer, except that it does not produce images, but cache files. So it is possible to save the geometry of a Frost object on the network without a Frost license as long as the scene was saved with a valid Frost workstation license. An XMesh Saver license would be required though. The loading of the cached geometry can once again be performed for free using the XMesh Loader which does not require a license in neither workstation nor network mode on any of the supported platforms (currently 3ds Max, Maya, and NUKE). The drawback of this approach is the amount of XMesh data that has to be synced over the network…
Thanks Bobo for support!