Wreckamovie.com

We're excited to announce that new integrated functionality between Renderfarm.fi and the communal movie production website Wreckamovie.com has been launched. Users of Wreckamovie.com are offered a simple way to create an account on Renderfarm.fi, synchronize the accounts and add their own sessions from Renderfarm.fi as "shots" on Wreckamovie.com. As this is planned to be the first stepping stone in integration, we hope that the future will bring users of both services many more cool features.

Wreckamovie.com - started some three years ago by the same people who gave life to Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning (the most viewed Finnish film of all times) - is a free to use web service that brings people together in order to create movies. The service recently achieved a milestone as the first full-length feature film to incorporate the concept of using community manpower from the beginning to the end of the production, Snowblind, was finished. Renderfarm.fi is a free community based rendering service that first opened to the public in summer 2009. The service aims at making accessible distributed rendering available to anybody who needs it, anytime they need it, regardless of their geological location or financial background.

Assembly 2010: Independent movies, Blender and Renderfarm.fi

The producer of Snowblind, Kalle Max Hofmann visited the Renderfarm.fi stand and presented about the creation of Snowblind with #blender.fi community member Hannu Hoffren at Assembly 2010 computer fair in Helsinki, Finland between 6th and 8th of August 2010. As BURP (the open source back-end technology used by Renderfarm.fi) head developer Janus Kristensen was also visiting Helsinki for the fair, we got interviewed for AssemblyTV about Renderfarm.fi, BURP and community based independent movie production. The interview was carried out by Brendan Ratliff (also known with his scene alias Syphus), who we thought did an excellent job in capturing the essence of the underlying technology and concepts. You can now watch the video on the Renderfarm.fi Youtube channel:

Julius Tuomisto, Janus Kristensen and Kalle Max Hofmann on AssemblyTV 7th of August 2010

Kalle Max's visit helped to encourage us about the willingness of independent movie makers to open up their productions to publicly distributed rendering. It now seems quite evident to us that there indeed is demand for a service like Renderfarm.fi in independent movie productions. These productions often have very small budgets in which additional costs related to using traditional cluster computing methods for achieving high quality renders can become a major obstacle.

The introduction of the world's most popular open source software, Blender, and the open community based rendering power of Renderfarm.fi promises to offer independent producers and freelance artists the tools to incorporate visuals of a complexity level previously only seen in high budget film productions. The mix of Blender, the openly available rendering power offered by Renderfarm.fi and the talented indie movie community of Wreckamovie.com has potential to break new ground in film making. We also believe that the added involvement and sense of community that people experience in the making of the movie makes them more likely to be interested in the final version of the production.

Vampyre Princess 3D and Materia: The Awakening first to be featured

Among the first collaborative movie productions hosted on Wreckamovie.com that will use the new integration features are Kalle Max Hofmann's new full feature length stereoscopic vampire movie Vampyre Princess 3D and Samuli Jomppanen's Blender short movie production Materia: The Awakening. Although Blender was already used in the making of Snowblind, Kalle Max's previous production, this time it is set to take center stage with many more effects shots planned to be implemented using the open source software. Samuli Jomppanen's Materia: The Awakening, on the hand, is a Blender short movie production whose part one has so far reached over ten thousand views on Vimeo.

In light of this cool bit of news, I'd like to now invite all Renderfarm.fi users to check out Wreckamovie.com. While you're doing so you could join some movie productions, swap ideas in them and finally donate your computing resources to them. As last week saw the first Wreckamovie.com integrated shot being rendered on Renderfarm.fi, you can check out how the shot looks like on Renderfarm.fi and how it looks like on Wreckamovie.com.

A welcome to Wreckamovie.com users

For users of Wreckamovie.com who've joined us on Renderfarm.fi, I'd like to warmly welcome you all to the community. In case you have any questions or opinions about the technology or concepts, check out the About and Frequently Asked Questions pages. Also please don't hesitate to ask on the Forum. For starters, you should go install BOINC, join the service and start helping in the creation of 3D art.

As Assembly 2010 draws closer I thought It would be appropriate to publish our initial program for our stand. For those wondering what Assembly is about, Wikipedia (in its seemingly infinite wisdom) offers this description of this fine event's history:
 

The first Assembly was held from July 24th to July 26th 1992, in Kauniainen. It was organized by the Amiga demo groups Complex and Rebels, and the PC demo group Future Crew. The staff grew into a large non-profit group of individuals known as Assembly Organizing. Through the 1990s, Assembly grew so large that even exposition halls no longer sufficed, and only the largest of sports arenas met the partygoers' needs. In 1999 they rented the largest sports arena in the country, Hartwall Areena in Helsinki, with over 5000 visitors and 3500 computers on the ice rink.

The Renderfarm.fi / Laurea University of Applied Sciences stand will be entertaining some very interesting guests this year, as during the extended weekend we will actually host both Janus Bager Kristensen (alias jbk, Main Developer for our back-end, BURP) and Kalle Max Hofmann (of Snowblind and Vampyre Princess 3D fame). Apart from this meaning a lot of good development work with BURP guru Kristensen, we're also excited about having a established movie maker like Kalle as our visitor. Well what is he doing there, you may ask? You'll need to stay tuned for more news - we've been slowly working away on some nice stuff that will be announced at the event. Finally, but not certainly not the least we will also be hosted in the ArtTech 2010 seminar held yearly in conjunction with Assembly 2010.
 

Enough said, see all related info and the full program and a bigger version of the official poster on our Assembly 2010 page!