Join the render farm

ChunkyCloud / Join the render farm

ChunkyCloud is made possible by all the people that contribute their computing power for others to render their scenes on.
Under the hood, scenes get split up and rendered on multiple nodes in parallel and the resulting images are merged back together.

This guide explains how to add a PC or server (called a render node) to ChunkyCloud.

1. Get an API key

In order to add your node, you need an API key. Currently, this process isn't automated, so ping leMaik on the Chunky Discord.
The API key is used to identify users and give us a way to exclude malicious users. In the future, it will also be used to give you credits for rendering that you can then use to create render jobs.
Until this is ready, you can render as much as you want (but please keep it fair).

2. Download the render node software

Once you have an API key, you are ready to add your render node. Download the latest version from the releases page.
Make sure that you always use the latest version. If there are breaking changes, your node may not be able to connect anymore without being updated.

3. Launch the node

Open a command prompt in the directory that contains the .jar file and run the following command to start the node (change the filename accordingly).

java -Xmx8g -jar cc-rendernode-1.0.0.jar --api-key YOUR-API-KEY-HERE

You should adjust -Xmx to the amount of memory that you want to dedicate to the render node (in the example, it's 8 GB). Running out of memory might make your system unstable so make sure that you don't give it too much memory.

There are a few more options:
-t sets the number of render threads, e.g. launching the render node with -t 2 will only use two threads. If omitted, it will use as many threads as you have (logical) CPU cores.
--name can be used to give your node a name that will be shown on the stats page. You may want to set it to something that helps you or others to identify your node, e.g. --name "leMaik's PC"

This will create a few working directories, download Minecraft (for default textures), and connect to ChunkyCloud.
At this point, your node is ready and will be assigned tasks as soon as they arrive. Look back at the command prompt, it might already be rendering something!

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I stop the render node?

You can stop your render node at any time by closing the command prompt. If you were rendering something, it will be put back into the queue and get rendered by another node.

What exactly does my PC do when it's in the render farm?

Your PC connects to ChunkyCloud's RabbitMQ queue to get render tasks. When it gets a task, it downloads all required files from the ChunkyCloud server, renders the scene using Chunky and then uploads the render dump into another RabbitMQ queue.

Can I use Docker?

Absolutely! There even is a Docker image you can use, so it's as easy as running

docker run --name cc-node lemaik/chunkycloud-renderer:latest --api-key YOUR-API-KEY-HERE

You can also specify the API key with an environment variable: -e API_KEY=YOUR-API-KEY-HERE