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 Node Token

In order to add your node, you need an Node Token. You can create a Node Token in your Account.

The Node Token is used to identify nodes and give us a way to identify and exclude malicious nodes. 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 a Node Token, 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 -jar cc-rendernode-1.0.0.jar --api-key

Available parameters

Use these flags to customize how your render node connects and stores temporary data.

Option	Default	Description
`--api`	`https://api.chunkycloud.lemaik.de`	ChunkyCloud API endpoint.
`--api-key`	`unset`	Render-node API key.
`--api-key-file`	`unset`	File containing the render-node API key. Useful for container secrets.
`--cpu-load`	`100`	Maximum Chunky CPU load.
`-t`, `--thread-count`	`2`	Number of render threads used by Chunky.
`--job-path`	`./rs_jobs`	Directory for temporary per-task data.
`--texturepacks-path`	`./rs_texturepacks`	Directory for downloaded resource packs.
`--cache-directory`	`./rs_cache`	HTTP cache directory for downloaded scene resources.
`--max-cache-size`	`512`	Maximum HTTP cache size, in MB.

The node will create 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!

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:

docker run --name cc-node lemaik/chunkycloud-renderer:latest --api-key

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