Online Rendering

[Scrubs]

I have been giving some love to the Mecabricks rendering mode in the past few weeks:

• The user interface has been standardised across all settings panels.
• The project viewer has been redesigned to include more detailed information about live rendering
• The rendering system has been updated to support animation
• Projects can be canceled
• Intel Open Denoising Image based on Artificial Intelligence has been added as a denoising option with 3 qualities available. It works very well for very low samples.
• Projects can be composited as many times as you need to test multiple settings without re-rendering images.
• Depth of Field setting is available for free renders.
• Background image setting is available for free renders
• Free renders do not include any watermarks

Edited May 17, 2019 by Scrubs

[M2m]

Very impressive!

[Kai NRG]

Looking into some digital building tools and Mecabricks has always impressed me with its rendering... is it possible to render a model without signing up?  Just experimenting right now.

[Scrubs]

No, you need an account. This is not to track you but just for technical reasons. The system needs to know who to deliver the result to as it runs in the background and you don’t need to have your browser open while rendering. That said it only requires 3 things to create an account: a username, an email address  and a password.

[Kai NRG]

23 minutes ago, Scrubs said:

No, you need an account. This is not to track you but just for technical reasons. The system needs to know who to deliver the result to as it runs in the background and you don’t need to have your browser open while rendering. That said it only requires 3 things to create an account: a username, an email address  and a password.

Okay, thanks!  Makes sense!  So my design would actually be rendered on Mecabricks' computer and then sent to me?

The Blender Lite add-on is for use with Blender (obviously) and basically just renders a 3D LEGO model that's been built somewhere else, right?  It doesn't include the design software, does it?  Am I right that building using Mecabricks has to be done online - if I wanted to work off-line I'd have to use another program such as LDraw or Stud.io?

If for instance I downloaded the add-on and then built a design online can I download that design and use the add on?  Do I need an account to download the design file?  (I don't object to getting an account, I probably will - just want to know.  )

And one last question; the Blender Advanced add-on does the same thing that can be done online with credits, correct?  So basically it's a one-time cost for the software to do advanced renders right?

[Scrubs]

The online rendering mode is using a special system that I designed (hardware and software) and which is hosted at home. You have access to 60 threads of CPU coupled with 5 GTX 1050ti GPUs which I may upgrade soon. So it is likely to render much faster than your average home computer. That is one of benefit among others. Instead of waiting half a day for a decent high resolution image it only takes a couple of minutes.

The Blender add-ons work with any models exported from Mecabricks. Just build or open a model online in the Mecabricks workshop (Mecabricks doesn't have any offline mode), export it as a 3D file and import it into Blender. That is very easy to use, but you need some basic Blender and 3D knowledge to set up the camera, the lighting, the depth of field, compositing, etc. You can try the workflow with the free version of the add-on anyway to get an idea.

The Advanced add-on materials are the same as the rendering mode with roughly the same options. However in the render mode, you don't really need any particular knowledge as everything is done for you (samples, light paths, denoising, etc.). What you see is what you get. You also have access to high resolution geometry for the minifigure with mould marks in order to increase realism. To tell you the truth, everything I do now is made using the render mode. I also plan to add much more easy to use options like volume scattering (fog), animation support, external 3D mesh and decoration, etc. That is a good compromise for people who don't want to spend too much time learning technical stuff but want to get professional looking images of their work.

Just give it a try. It is mostly free unless you want to use the special options.

Hope it helps.

 

Here is an image I made yesterday only using the Mecabricks render mode to showcase the new rat element I modeled:

Apocalypseburg Cafe by Nicolas Jarraud, on Flickr

Edited May 19, 2019 by Scrubs

[Kai NRG]

Awesome, thanks for the in depth reply!  Looking forward to doing some rendering then!

[Scrubs]

I actually added a new component to the rig today. There is now a nvidia RTX 2070 GPU in one of the rendering nodes. From what I tried, this card is pretty much 4x faster than the other GTX 1050Ti that I have.

Edited May 19, 2019 by Scrubs

[Calabar]

@Scrubs

Just out of curiosity, is your 2070 capable to use the RTX cores during the rendering process or RTX cores are locked or useful for real time ray-tracing effects only?

Edited May 23, 2019 by Calabar

[Scrubs]

Currently, only the cuda cores are used at render time by Cycles. Like you suggested, the other functions of the RTX card may be used in the future by Blender for real time rendering like for the viewport or eevee but I don't think it will make a difference for Cycles anyway. Nonetheless it is a very powerful GPU.

Edited May 21, 2019 by Scrubs

[Scrubs]

I have been rewriting a big part of the Mecabricks app in the past couple of weeks to make the platform ready for the future. Building on these modifications, I am happy to introduce volumetric lighting in the render mode. The new box object is available under the lamp menu in the tool bar.

Here is the first image ever made using this new tool:

volumetric Lighting by Nicolas Jarraud, on Flickr

 

Edited May 29, 2019 by Scrubs

[Scrubs]

I have been working on improving the Mecabricks material system for the past couple of weeks and I put everything online today.

New features include:

• New Glitter and Speckle Materials
• Improved material appearance in the viewport and at render time thanks to a new type of texture (materials map)
• Custom roughness parameters crafted for each part and used at render time for increased photorealism (WIP as each element has to be manually assessed)
• Full rendering support of multi-material decorated parts and transparent elements with colour gradient.

Rendering improvements are already available for the online render mode and will be rolled out to the Advanced Add-on for Blender shortly.

Here is an example with the Batman Minifigure (image has been made only using a browser and Mecabricks). You can see that the parts all have a different surface finish like the helmet which is not as smooth as a normal brick in real life.

LEGO Batman by Nicolas Jarraud, on Flickr

 

 

P.S. as a nice addition, the render farm now includes a new GPU NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti which was gifted by NVidia. The PhysX team has been playing with Mecabricks models  

 

Edited June 24, 2019 by Scrubs

[Calabar]

Great result.

Is the light from batman eyes obtained placing a light source inside the helmet or using some kind of light-emitting material?

I've taken a look at the linked video from nVidia guys, the assembly of the models remembered me the videos from Coby Basset (like this one). Is mecabricks capable to do something similar automatically or with few manual assistance?

PS: what do you think to add "using mecabrics" to the title of the topic, to make it more clear?

Edited June 24, 2019 by Calabar

[Scrubs]

I put 2 area lamps with the mesh option ticked. Only transparent and glow in the dark elements can emit lights in Mecabricks.

No it is made in their software. All real time with ray tracing in 4K.

Yes of course the title can be updated.

[Calabar]

Thanks for the answers!

As dream is free... do you think to add a feature like this one in the future?
The one that "explode" the model seems quite easy to realize, but the one that assemble the model "calling" the bricks from the outside seems much more challenging.
Anyway animated renderings like these are very attractive, it could be a great feature for mecabricks.

[Scrubs]

No it is probably event easier. They just fall from the top. It is basically just animating a translation along the Z axis with staged start time based on the final Z position.

Everything I do is made to prepare my animation mode. So having this kind of effect would be easy enough to add once it is ready. Making the animation mode is the tricky bit. That won't be ready before 2020 I guess.

[Calabar]

That's a great news, I ever loved the animated assembly.

Just a little note: looking at the video I linked above, it seems that while the great part of the bricks fall from the top, some bricks placed vertically (such as windows' glasses) came from the side. Other desirable options would be to choose directions for each brick (changing the default one) and change the camera position during the animation (including automatic translation "from here to there") and zooming.

Ok, I'm running with my imagination, but if this option will be added, it would be really great!

[Scrubs]

Sorry I thought you talked about the nvidia one. I cannot see your link. I have a nice message from youtube telling me that the video is blocked in my country for copyright reasons 

[Calabar]

Oh, it could be due to the music inside the video. Wait for a moment... I'll look for the "silent" version.

Ok, here it is. Not exactly the same video but a similar one, A bit sad without music
Try here.

[Philo]

On 6/24/2019 at 12:17 PM, Scrubs said:

Here is an example with the Batman Minifigure (image has been made only using a browser and Mecabricks)

All I can say is "Wow!!!!". Amazing...

[Dilvish]

Since this is a thread about "Online Rendering", I would just like to add that in the past I have used Microsoft Azure to set up a virtual machine to do POV-Ray renderings. You could do the same with Blender or whatever. It's as easy to set up as any other Windows programming environment. Windows comes pre-installed. All you have to do is install POV-Ray and copy your model files over. Google has its own equivalent service that works about the same way.

While not a render "farm", there are compute engines available with 64 cores, which is a lot. I'm not sure how the price compares to MecaBricks, however, since I used the $200 in free credits you are given for creating a new Azure account. Maybe someone can work out the math.

My 2 cents.

Edited June 27, 2019 by Dilvish

[Scrubs]

@Philo Thanks 

@Dilvish That is a solution if you have the knowledge. But if you really want power, you shall go for special render services with 1000s of CPUs and GPUs available. 64 cores remains very small. On my little rig alone I have 72 cores and 5 GPUS including top of the line RTX 2080 Ti.

What you get with Mecabricks even for free, that is a start to finish system and one button to click. All the 3D complexity is handled for you.

[Leewan]

It took me some time to get a nice result, and it's still far from being perfet, but I've managed to make two renders with the volumetric lighting. The images resized by Flickr don't really do justice to the original renders, unfortunately, so I'd suggest checking them in full size by clicking the links below each picture.

(Full size)

 

 

(Full size)

 

For those who are interested, there's more renders of this MOC on Flickr.