BlenderNet

If you’d like to jump in on some pre-Beta testing, come join us on IRC at #blendernet on irc.freenode.net. We’re either sleeping, or working hard on the latest features for the website, so be patient if you don’t get an immediate response.

For those who don’t know what IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is, you can find more information on Wikipedia here.

Development is still cracking away at code, as new and exciting features are emerging.  I’m sure you’ve already seen the design changes to the front page.  Today I’d like to share some of the “behind the scenes” features that we are currently implementing.

Render Node management has seen a LOT of development over the past week.  Registration for new nodes is now completely done through the front-end.  All of your nodes can be managed from one page as well.  Adding, Removing, Remote Rebooting, and Remote Shutdown are all working.  Node Clustering and Cluster management is working as well.  These are huge features for node management, and I would expect to see other’s added as time goes by.

Project Management and the Member Interface workflow is being (re)designed.  We’ve got a lot of the core functionality done, and now we’re “simplifying” the process of managing your render projects.  The UI elements are being designed with complete Ajax functionality, so uploading and downloading your project files is a breeze along with previewing your renders.

Queue Status Monitoring is emerging from the code as well.  Let’s face it, waiting in lines is inevitable.  But at least you’ll be able to monitor where your projects stand.  With the addition of new nodes and hardware upgrades (which you’ll hear about later), the queue will hopefully become a thing of the past.  We are truly aiming to get your jobs done as quickly and productively as possible.

I’ll be keeping all the readers up to date on things happening behind the scenes on a regular basis.  We’re working on the code every day, so things are constantly being added and improved.  One thing is certain, we are very close to launching the public beta.  To keep up to date on the latest news, subscribe to our RSS feed.

The activity backstage is still pumping away, gearing for what we hope to be the most successful distributed rendering solution in the world. We have a lot of ambition to build you a rendering solution that is powerful, reliable, easy to use, and more importantly, fit’s in your pocket (cheap!). Nobody wants to break the bank to get their animations rendered, and we don’t feel you should have to. Pricing hasn’t seen any set-in-stone numbers yet, but we’re very heart set at blowing away our competition. And to be honest, we haven’t really focused much on actual prices for anything right now. We just aren’t at that stage yet. Everything happening behind closed doors is focusing strictly on functionality. Every piece of code that powers our services is thoroughly planned, designed, tested, pushed until it breaks and redesigned again and again, improvised and done all over. Without this, our Support Forums would get flooded with users complaining about our services because basic bugs that could have been prevented weren’t caught in time. That’s very bad business.

So with that in mind, we also don’t want to keep everyone waiting to test out our services. The Beta Invitational program is being designed to allow you to experience everything for yourself. You can submit your animations and put them through the ropes, from step one to step done, and get a taste of what BlenderNet has to offer. This is not an announcement for the Beta Invitational, so be sure to stay tuned with the latest news for more information. You can do this by subscribing to our RSS feed, which will give you the latest news about BlenderNet almost as instantly as it happens.

I also want to thank you for your patience.  We’ve been working very hard on creating a service that we are confident you will find both productive and enjoyable.  And we look forward to continuing great business with you.