With the official start of summer, now is a good time to look back at news from the Render Network this spring — with a recap of network updates, releases, and Render Network Proposals (RNPs) that have advanced Render’s decentralized platform over the past few months.
In addition, this week’s BTN will explore key metrics of network growth during the first quarter of the year.
Render Network Metrics
The Render Network saw year-over-year increases in key metrics, with substantial gains in network compute capacity when comparing the network’s available GPU power in Q1 2024 with Q1 2023. Trends show more intensive GPU rendering jobs being submitted to the network, with the growth rate of RENDER used outpacing frames rendered, even as the number of frames processed substantially increased during this period.
Frames Rendered
- Year over year growth was 17.7% with 2,495,084 frames rendered in 1Q 2024 compared to 2,119,813 frames rendered in Q1 2023.
Token Usage *RNDR peg adjusted*
- Year-over-year peg adjusted token usage grew 60.28% in 1Q 2024 to 816,602 RNDR artist side tokens used compared to 509,469 in 1Q 2023. *Using RNDR compute peg for matching year-over-year metric with 1Q ‘23
While the number of jobs created declined 19.4% year over-year with 45,966 jobs created in 1Q 2023 compared to 37,049 in 1Q 2024, these changes are due to the decrease of small frame rendering jobs. Average RENDER used per job, therefore, increased substantially.
OctaneBench Growth
Growth in OctaneBench more than doubled year-over-year with a 111.69% increase in average OctaneBench on the network in Q1 2024 compared to Q1 2023 — with an average of 1,665,339 OctaneBench in 2024 and an average of 786,706 available OctaneBench in Q1 2023.
Peak OctaneBench, representing higher capacity periods, grew 136.51% year-over-year, with 2,091,922 peak OctaneBench in Q1 2024 comparing to 884,505 peak OctaneBench in Q1 2023.
Average and peak OctaneBench compute power per-job also grew 114.38% and 137.26% respectively, representing higher performance across the network for artists leveraging Render’s decentralized GPU compute power.
Finally, in March 2024, the Render Network saw the second monthly reading of over 1-million frames rendered in a month in the network’s history. Similarly, during March 2024, over 400k RENDER was used, which was the second reading of 400K or more RENDER used during a month in the network’s history.
Key Milestones
In the backdrop of the largest GPU computing and AI event of the year — NVIDIA’s GTC — the Render Network released a series of groundbreaking announcements, highlighted by Emad Mostaque joining the Render Network Board of Advisors and authoring RNP-011: PIWA Creating Millions of 3D Training Assets.
The proposal leverages decentralized networks to shape the future of 3D AI, developing a new generative AI model trained on scenes processed using the Render Network. Notably, RENDER compute rewards are proposed to go to artists and Render nodes for providing the data inputs and compute work needed to build the model, showing the future of decentralized, community owned AI infrastructure.
In conjunction, Render Network Founder Jules Urbach provided an updated vision about the convergence of 3D graphics and AI in his annual NVIDIA GTC talk “The Future of Rendering: Real-Time Ray Tracing, AI, Holographic Displays, and the Blockchain” discussing transformations in 3D graphics, AI, GPU computing, spatial media, and the creative economy.
The talk was followed by a major expansion to the Roddenberry Archive for Apple Vision Pro — featuring an all new life sized recreations of the U.S.S. Enterprise: Discovery and The Promenade from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — with all fully immersive spatial rendering created on the Render Network.
Continuing the expansion into generative AI, two new Compute Clients — Prime Intellect and Exabits — were introduced to the Render Network via the RNP process, expanding the networks reach in AI, partnering with leaders in accelerated computing and decentralized AI infrastructure.
New Render Network Features
Through the RNP process, the Render Network significantly improved core rendering workflows, enabling greater use of the platform across 3D pipelines and applications from VFX and motion graphics to next generation visualization, virtual production, and spatial rendering.
RNP-012: Render Network Wizard for Maxon Cinema 4D was passed by the community, with a simplified workflow for submitting rendering work directly from the most popular OctaneRender DCC, Cinema 4D, to the Render Network. The Wizard includes checks for common rendering issues, preempting job failures that increase network congestion and node error rates. Not only will the Wizard enable more robust automated operation of the network, but more importantly it provides a more frictionless use of the network by a wider range of 3D artists.
The Network Wizard has been expanded to support an all new integration of Blender’s Cycles on the Render Network, which was passed in RNP-014: Integration of Blender’s Cycles in the Render Network. With Cycles coming to Render and a Wizard supporting simplifying job submission between Blender and the Render Network, millions of users of the largest open source 3D ecosystem will have an easy way to access Render.
At BCON LA, Jules Urbach introduced RNP-014 in a wide-ranging keynote about the future of spatial media and emerging forms of generative AI that enhance creative workflows and protect artist rights. As part of the keynote, Jules announced that Blender users will have free access to the Render Network from Octane Prime, giving millions of users access to high performance on-demand decentralized computing.
Other New Features
Downloading to third-party storage providers like Dropbox has also been introduced, enabling studios to incorporate professional storage solutions directly from Render. Dropbox is the first third party provider to be supported, with support for all major cloud storage providers coming soon.
A Beta of the Render Network Redshift integration has also been introduced for beta testing and development continues to advance.
Finally, automated Render Network node payments and a Render Network Dashboard were released in the first part of 2024, advancing the full implementation of the Burn-Mint-Equilibrium (BME) passed in RNP-001. As part of this work, io.net compute client integration into the BME continues to advance and is expected to release over the summer.
Best of the Metaverse — Render Edition
- Octane X was featured at WWDC — during Apple’s release of the M4 and Apple Intelligence, the company’s next generation AI product suite. Both events showcased the future of large-scale mobile AI on the next generation of 3nm Apple Silicon. With Octane X optimized for the M4, and seamless access between Octane X and the Render Network, artists using next generation Apple hardware can access near unlimited high performance decentralized GPU compute on Render.
- WAI-000 VR at NAB — Render Foundation Grant recipients Gryun Kim, Taehoon Park, and Woosung Kang presented a groundbreaking VR short film, WAI, at NAB, the largest annual broadcasting event — showcasing the future of spatial media. Rendered entirely on the Render Network, WAI VR is one of the most impressive 3D experiences released to date for Apple Vision Pro.
- Render Network Used for MSG Sphere Experience — Render Power user, Brilly, shared an all new experience for the MSG Sphere rendered entirely on the Render Network, showcasing the future of immersive advertising and spatial rendering.
- Render Network Featured at Consensus & Token 2049—The Render Foundation took part in a wide range of high profile talks and events at two of the leading blockchain events of the year, joining panels with the Solana Foundation and leaders in DePIN and decentralized AI.
- Render Foundation Grants — expands its growth, supporting multiple new grant classes with larger grant budgets for ambitious projects pushing the boundaries of 3D rendering, spatial computing, and AI. Apply at: https://renderfoundation.com/grants
- AI Focused X Community Channel Released — Render is growing its channels on X, and with new presences on LinkedIn and Facebook.
