Software updates roundup August ‘20

Hey Everyone!

August was the month when we celebrated the 10th anniversary of our online render farm! We've been in business since 2010 and we're planning to stick around for another 10 (and thrive). There were special attractions related to it, a live stream with our team members, interviews with Tomek our CEO, Michal - General Manager and Lucas - Director of Operations, and a short article (definitely you should give it a read, you'll find really cool photos in it!). As part of the celebration, we have doubled the limit of nodes on each priority and this promotion continues until the end of September, check our render farm price list.

But not only were we busy celebrating. Our developers, as always, we’re working on improving our online rendering software.
Here’s a list of new features we added to our plugins in August 2020.

renderBeamer

Added drag selection for upload, download, log entries (select an entry and drag the mouse to select multiple).
Added "show hidden" button in the download panel.
Saving "show hidden" button state after application restart.
Added download progress info for downloading plugins.
Fixed non-clickable area below the disclosure node.
Fixed CPU usage after minimizing the plugins tab.
Improved log panel performance.
Added support for the Korean language.

Cinema 4D

A new major version has been released!

The plugin has been rebuilt from the ground up, and it contains only 2 modes now - cameras and takes.
Now, scenes are uploaded only once, no matter if the scene contains multiple cameras or takes. This solution reduces the time of project preparation and sending by several hundred percent, especially for projects which contain multiple cameras or takes.
Strips - this is a switch added to the plugin. It should be used to render single frames in hi-res, and multiple node renderings at once. Strips switch can be used for cameras as well as takes projects. The only condition is to render a single frame - not render range.
Web Manager settings are also updated. Now, the plugin saves selected “mode” (camera or takes) and forwards it to the web manager. User can switch between those two modes “on-the-fly”, directly on Web Manager, without having to resend the scene.
There are also many under-the-hood improvements, like extended info about all outputs in .gfs and faster plugin workflow.
Cinema 4D plugin v69 is the minimal version required.

3ds Max

Fixed issue with X-Refs assets with hidden flag not uploaded/rendering correctly.
Fixed issues with plugin workflow on V-Ray 5.x renderer.

Blender

Fixed issues with image sequence not relinked in compositor nodes.
Fixed issue with VDB cache assets (upload & relinking).
Fixed issue with IES assets not uploaded nor linked.
Fixed issue with file output node with relative path.
Fixed issue with unsupported characters in camera names.
Added checker for nodes in compositor for strips mode usage.

LightWave3D

Added support for the 2020.0.2 version.

Modo

Fixed plugin random crashes on older Modo versions (801).

Xesktop - V100 machines upgraded

There was a hardware upgrade in Xesktop - our GPU server rental service. We have upgraded our V100 machines with Quadro P1000 graphic cards. This upgrade allows launching software that requires recent OpenGL versions, for example, Blender or Houdini. Since this upgrade, only the newest v037 mother-based images are able to boot on these machines.

Another great news for all those interested in renting GPU power online - we have reduced the prices of our servers permanently! Check GPU server rental pricing here.