SheepIt

As long as you’re okay if your Blender project is potentially shared with hundreds of other users on the internet, SheepIt is a great way to get your Blender renders completed quickly and for free.

I used it recently for a rush animation job.  The animation was for the debut of a live streaming broadcast.  Unfortunately I had to make some last-minute changes and I was running out of time fast!

My Blender render was taking a lot longer than I was hoping.  It was a 30 second show intro in HD 1920×1080 at 24 FPS.  That’s 720 frames, which usually wouldn’t be so bad. The scene had a lot of reflections and motion blur and I tried every trick that came to mind to lower the render time.  I lowered my render passes from 256 to 16 without much noticeable artifacting but still could not get the average frame render time below 5 minutes.

With the clock ticking I started my animation render, even using Flamenco with 3 machines on my local render farm, I was averaging about two minutes per frame.  720 frames at 2 minutes would take… A full 24 hours!

Yikes!  I had less than 3 hours before I had to deliver the animation and in that time I had to lay music and a transition over it.  Luckily, I had run up millions of credits on SheepIt so instead of lending my machine to render other peoples’ Blender projects, it was my turn!

I logged into SheepIt! and followed the simple instructions to submit a project and was happy to see within 15 minutes some monster processing power was being dedicated to render my project!  Within less than an hour, I got my PNG sequence fully rendered and ready for download.  SheepIt gave me so much time back I was no longer in “rush mode” at all.

If you expect you might need to leverage a render farm and you’re okay with the public openness about it, I suggest starting a free SheepIt account and lend your computer to build up some points that you can later redeem for your own projects later.  I’m certainly glad I was curious about SheepIt and was pleasantly surprised how things turned out.

If you’re not ready to render anything you can start banking credits on SheepIt by joining.  You will then download their client and it will take take of the rest. 

Though Blender rendering can be resource intensive, you can even restrict the use of your computer’s CPUs and memory in case you still want to be able to use your computer.  It’s also easy to pause or exit out of.


Aaron Belchamber photo

No matter any organization’s size, we only have so much time and resources to operate a business.  Most people agree that an effective website and web presence could make the difference between growth and stagnation, a sale or losing a lead or opportunity to a better-positioned competitor.  It could impact future growth to the point to be the difference between survival and going out of business.

My Elusive Search for Ranking “Video Production in Jacksonville Florida”

AI and our ability to have conversations with bots to get more succinct and detailed information has already changed the SEO landscape in very profound ways which at the moment are hard to measure.  That said, I am still operating my website under the premise that these bots are still using under the hood using some form of the search algorithm that we became so accustomed to.

Focus on search terms that will convert!

If a person in the Jacksonville area types in “Jacksonville video production”, “video production in Jacksonville”, or “Video production services Jacksonville” or something close to that effect, I would like to be found on the first page.  Even though I have global clients I edit videos and provide 3D animations for, this is just a local challenge for me.  The reason I will find this beneficial as a video producer is that it will enable me to work more closely with local businesses for on-site video shoots.  I have helped remotely direct shoots but it’s not the same as being hands-on and on site.  Also, closer proximity means being more accessible and available to local clients which can strengthen business relationships.

Search engines want businesses to not worry about their algorithms

Over the years I have learned a lot about digital marketing, content strategy, SEO (search engine optimization) and CRO (conversion rate optimization).  Something I had suspected about content strategy that I believe has been confirmed not only by paid consultants but from my own experience is that businesses should not focus too heavily on SEO and conforming to every little detail.  The act of being found in improving your web presence comes down to the quality of your content.  Videos are by far the most effective web content with the most proven impact.

Google definitely is the leader in search right now, so taking their advice is paramount to becoming successful.  One of the national leaders in search engine optimization and speaker at many Google Next events as a consultant repeatedly states that search engines do not want companies to focus heavily on SEO.  Search engines do not want to get in the way so they recommend focusing on creating useful content that will be valuable to your organization and web visitors.  Search engines recognize that being transparent will likely encourage more organic and natural content as opposed to influencing content creators to artificially “hack” the search engines ranking systems.

Content is king… still

It’s all about content and quality content is king!  It is possible to be over optimized which also partly weighs towards your overall SEO performance which can affect your search page rankings.  There are two reasons for this, one is an obsessive focus on SEO diverts resources from improving your website and making quality content. The other reason is that search engines are suspicious of companies with pristine SEO scores.

There is a real opportunity cost diverting your time, talent and resources massaging your content through SEO.

Do not fall into a profile where the search engines may subject you to higher standards and scrutiny.  You don’t want your web reputation to fall into the spam and click farm crowd, I have seen this happen.  I have also seen a well seasoned website fall and never recover once it is flagged as low quality or spam.

Dedicate no more than 10% towards SEO efforts

There is a real opportunity cost diverting your time, talent and resources massaging your content through SEO.  For your business by all means pay attention to the SEO basics but don’t let it divert more than 10% of the resources you would usually use to actually create quality content.  In a perfect scenario, no business would have to worry about SEO at all.  Perhaps AI is already changing that and will positively influence a movement towards complete invisibility.  However, until then, I prefer a balanced approach but if it comes down to time and resources remember CONTENT IS KING.


Blender Flamenco - Setup Your Own Blender Render Farm for Free, Aaron Belchamber Video Production Jacksonville FL

I was recently invited by nextdayvideos.com to create a Blender tutorial walkthrough video for Blender Flamenco and explain how to set up a render farm.

If you’re interested in creating your own render pipelines or just making your 3D production workflow more efficient by saving time and getting your renders done faster, check out the video above and please click the like button!

Aaron Belchamber photo

Reach me for a free quote

Contact Me!

 

If you are looking for freelance video production, video editing or 3D animation services I offer creative and quick turnaround!  My name is Aaron Belchamber and I started in media production as a graphic designer in 1995.  Since then, I’ve produced hundreds of videos, animations and other digital marketing materials for broadcast, events and the web.  For companies from Fortune 300 to small, local Mom & Pops. 

I have over 25 years experience with the Adobe Creative Suite, Final Cut, Autodesk 3Ds Max, Blender, among other tools.  I am a proud member of the Blender Studios community.  I leverage my senior cloud software engineering experience and set up my own render farms including Backburner and Blender’s Flamenco.