BURP Project

[Buga1]

Anything related to BURP.

BURP Homepage

Description:
BURP aims to develop a publicly distributed system for rendering 3D animations.
Currently this is an alpha project which means that certain restrictions apply. Not all uploaded sessions will actually be rendered right away - and sometimes you will not be able to contact the schedulers for short periods of time.

Team attach: Calm Chaos
BURP - BoincStats

Project = Active | WU Availability = Sporadic | WU Time = Short


Rick

[Gavin Shaw]

01 Apr 2009 AEST:

We are happy to announce that BURP along with all user accounts
has been sold to General Motors. The GM spokesman explains
the purchase as follows:
"Our cars have sophisticated computer systems protecting you during accidents, we want
those systems to also do something useful when you are not performing an emergency braking procedure.
Drive safely and make the world a better place by letting your car render 3D graphics."
As a consequence we will no longer be supporting the Windows and Linux operating systems and will instead
focus all development on the custom processors in the Cadilac and Chevrolet series.
Please note that the current version of the GM-compatible client may need as much as 30 secs to pause
and resume computations. This is not an issue as long as you avoid situations that require use of the brakes
or the stearing wheel during those 30 seconds. The radio will remain unaffected.

-------------------------------------------------------------

April Fools joke I think...

[Gavin Shaw]

02 Apr 2009 AEST:

A tiny spelling error in yesterday's news item made it look like GM had acquired BURP. The correct wording (without the spelling error) was naturally:
"Happy 1st of April!"

[Gavin Shaw]

31 May 2009 AEST:

This monday will bring extended downtime while the renderqueue is cleaned and a thorough system backup is taken. New sessions will not be accepted before the end of the maintenance (although you can naturally still enqueue them).

[Gavin Shaw]

05 Jun 2009 AEST:

A few days ago the number of active developers increased dramatically - a big welcome to Brian and Matthew!

[Gavin Shaw]

24 Jan 2010:

This Friday (the 29th) the site will be offline while migrating to new server software.
Also, account creation has been closed again due to spammers.

[Gavin Shaw]

10 Mar 2010:

Chat with the devs. At 11.15 UTC there's going to be a 1 hour IRC session with questions/answers about BURP in the #blender.fi channel.

A movie tutorial. Recently a video tutorial was posted describing the entire process of uploading and downloading scene files and data to and from the servers - as well as how to use some advanced postprocessing effects available in Blender. The video may be of general interest - even to people who would just like to have a look at some of the tools used by 3D animators.

A new rendering priority. A new technique named "Background priority" is being tested on the scheduler at the moment. 368 and 380 have both been selected as test-bunnies for this feature. Background priority scheduling is for optimizing total throughput on lengthy sessions as much as 25% to 50%. More details can be found the forum thread.

[Gavin Shaw]

12 Mar 2010:

Chat with the devs. At 11.15 UTC there's going to be a 1 hour IRC session with questions/answers about BURP in the #blender.fi channel.

A movie tutorial. Recently a video tutorial was posted describing the entire process of uploading and downloading scene files and data to and from the servers - as well as how to use some advanced postprocessing effects available in Blender. The video may be of general interest - even to people who would just like to have a look at some of the tools used by 3D animators.

A new rendering priority. A new technique named "Background priority" is being tested on the scheduler at the moment. 368 and 380 have both been selected as test-bunnies for this feature. Background priority scheduling is for optimizing total throughput on lengthy sessions as much as 25% to 50%. More details can be found the forum thread.

[Gavin Shaw]

14 May 2010:

Today there was a weird smell of tuna in the server room and shortly after 14:35 UTC the main server suddenly went down. Quick tests showed that the 12V pin voltage on the PSU had dropped out of acceptable range. Half an hour later the system was back online with a new power supply installed.

No data was lost during the incident and (since we aren't rendering anything right now) the impact on the service has been minimal.

[Gavin Shaw]

04 Jul 2010:

Recently the project migrated to a new and more open development environment. It is now possible to follow the development and code changes up close by going to the development portal.
The most recent development activity will also be made available on the front page of the project.

This is one step in the direction of allowing the community to more easily contribute ideas, documentation and changes back into the BURP project.
Later when the development platform has been properly phased in the current read-only status will be lifted and user creation will be made available for people interested in making contributions.