First, we’re the first render farm to support Blender 2.63 with both Cycles and Blender Internal.  This is the first official version of Blender to support BMesh and it promises to knock your socks off.  BlenderCookie has a great tutorial to familiarize you with how it works.

Next, we’re supporting version 1.0 of LuxRender.  This is also a major milestone release for the Lux team, finally moving out of the 0. realm into an official 1. designation.  Congratulations to the development team and the user community for creating a great rendering solution.  We’re proud to continue to work with them to deliver a comprehensive rendering solution tailored to the strengths of Lux.  You can grab 1.0 right from luxrender.net

Now, we’ve simplified our support of Yafaray by supporting it directly from the Yafaray addon enabled within Blender.  All users need to do is upload the blend file with the Yafaray addon enabled to BlenderRenders.com with the Yafaray rendering settings in place, and we select the correct rendering engine and automatically render the file.  Yafaray also supports automatic splitting and stitching using our proprietary automatic splitting and stitching process.  Your gigantic single frame renders can make use of our whole farm!

Finally, we’ve included support for the EXR file type for our users as well.  This is long overdue and we’re happy to have included it.

That’s a lot of stuff!  We look forward to working with you soon,

Aaron

With this 2.62 release, BlenderRenders now supports our automatic splitting and stitching algorithm with Cycles!  We’re proud to be the first render farm to support this feature and look forward to working with you to support your projects.  Any large-scale single image rendered with Cycles can now make use of the full power of our farm!  We can’t wait for you to check it out.

Download 2.62 from Blender.org and get started now!

2.61 is a major update to Blender with motion tracking, Cycles and other new features and we’re excited to be the first render farm to support it.  Get it here.

We’re looking forward to more updates and continuing to work with you!

We look forward to continuing to work with Blender users around the globe as we send congratulations to the Blender dev team on a job well done.

Looking forward to seeing what’s on tap this time.  Check here and on the LuxRender forums for information about the contest entries and winners.

Check out the log of changes published at blender.org for version 2.59.  Truly impressive.  You can download the latest version here.

As always, you can count on us to bring you the best possible rendering service at the lowest cost.  Contact us at info@blenderrenders.com with any questions or suggestions.  We love hearing from you!

We’ve listened to our customers and have re-vamped our implementation of LuxRender so that you will have another option instead of LuxRender’s native network rendering functionality.  While the network rendering within LuxRender is great for LAN-based farms, it is difficult and in some cases impossible to utilize over longer network paths.  Our customers in Europe were basically unable to use our service for more complicated scenes.

This is all changing now with our new implementation.  While you still choose the number of slave machines and the length of time they will run, you now have the option to assign these slaves to lxs scene files that you upload to your ftp space.  This means you need upload your textures and scene supporting files and directories only once to our farm, no matter how many luxmachines you choose to start and stop.

Also, all the logs are stored within your ftp area as well, giving you the insight you need into forgotten materials or texture files.

Our FAQ has a description of how to get started, and I personally will strive to be available as much as I can via our support chat at blenderrenders.com over the next few weeks as you get accustomed to the new features.

We look forward to providing great service and working with each and every one of you.

Aaron

See below for more from the FAQ

Now you have two choices as to how to use your LuxMachines. To run them as typical network renderers, in your LuxRender application, enter your LuxMachine IP addresses into the Server field on the Network tab, then click the little plus icon.

If the LuxMachine IP address is not showing or is blank, just click the Refresh button in the Running LuxMachines area. It takes about 30-60 seconds for the IP address to show.

Or, now you have a second choice for LuxRender processing! Upload a correctly exported .lxs scene file along with your textures, supporting files (.lxm, etc.) to a folder in your ftp area. Once you have started a LuxMachine, just click the little Assign button next to the machine in the Running LuxMachines area. A dialog will come up asking you to assign your newly uploaded .lxs file to that machine.

Just navigate to your file and hit Assign again! Now that LuxMachine will begin processing your .lxs file within 30 seconds. You will see the first copy of your FLM and PNG files in your lxs scene directory within a couple of minutes, and you will also have access to the luxLog in your folder as well.

Remember the same rules that apply to our Blender service. Make sure you are using relative file paths (sometimes the exporters have trouble with this), and make sure all of your supporting files are uploaded! You should be all set.

Since the output is stored both as FLM and PNG, you can actually run multiple 8 core LuxMachines, and assign each one to process your uploaded .lxs scene. When you think they’ve run long enough, we also provide a facility to merge those FLM files together, so that you only need to download one!

Just choose Merge FLM files from the left menu and the wizard will lead you through a two step process. It couldn’t be easier. Just navigate to one of the flm files, and the wizard will do the rest.

We’re excited about this feature and can’t wait for you to start using it. While the network rendering facilities within LuxRender are great for LAN-based rendering, it sometimes is too slow for offsite rendering. That’s where our new feature kicks in. You need only upload your files one time and multiple machines can begin rendering your lux scene immediately.

You can download the latest version of blender at blender.org.

Feel free to email or call us with any questions about our service at info@blenderrenders.com or 1.888.588.6348

We look forward to working with you soon!

Check out the new features and functions by downloading this version at http://www.blender.org.

If you have any questions about rendering with our service, you can check out our faq, look for us on live chat on our home page, or email info@blenderrenders.com.

Look forward to seeing you!

Aaron

This feature is available by using our regular ‘create a job’ function.  We will have more detailed instructions available on our FAQ soon, and we encourage all of our LuxRender users to give this new feature a try.  Just remember we’re always here to help and use Exclusive mode when setting up your LuxRender job!