Before developing the iR Uploader tool, I was quite surprised that the majority of Render farm service providers have integrated Google Driver or Drop Box for transferring files to the Cloud. To be honest, by failing to simulate customers’ directory structure to the Cloud is a big minus point, which forces artists to pack their projects before rendering, and you will have 2 choices: adapt it or die, including a whole bunch of other obstacles such as: asking customers to create accounts before continue using their services (in case they don’t have), which causes lack of initiative on integrating with 3rd parties, and so on.

Upon further investigation of the business, I realized the main reasons of using those methods for transferring files at many Render Farms because of their technology and infrastructure which were not adequate to move large files up to Terabyte stably, they have no option but to use services from 3rd-party providers.

Some of the big render farms are attempting to provide many other uploading tools, but still depending on the power of browsers. If they do not build an independent uploading software and clients still have to move their files from web browsers, their performance will be really bad. Let’s imagine when you upload from 5 to 10 files with a total capacity of upto 800MB or 1000MB, web- browser will lag so much. It will be worse if you close the browser by accident before finishing uploading, of course you have to start it over, which is inconvenient and dependent.

It has emerged in this game a famous render farm, they use the transferring file service of IBM Aspera and I recognized that they are surely good and impressive, but there are some problems that we are able to do better.

* Controlling connection access from Website to their own Uploading App, which runs well on Chrome is relatively difficult when using with other browser.

* I also realize that the app runs only if user logs in to the website to control Uploading, File Explorer , etc, which means the uploading application can not work separately.

As you know, we have dozens of open tabs on web browser in fact, therefore it becomes fatigued and annoying to monitor and control all of them at once.

Actually, I want a standalone and direct uploading software (or through website if desired) to easily build a repository during my working process, so that I only have to log in to website for rendering.

In conclusion, we decided to make iR Uploader in that way:

1. It is completely independent with the Web-based platform, interact directly on it or from the Web, it’s up to you.

2. Run on multiple operating systems or devices and web browsers that you are familiar with.

3. It is reliable, powerful and supports multi-threading for uploading large projects up to TB, always makes use of full bandwidth to get the fastest internet upload speeds.

4. It is informative, convenient and visualized, similar to File Explorer on your Window OS.

It will be greater if having an additional function of automatically synchronizing all files changes to the Cloud, or on the specified folders as well, but that’s a story for another time.

Thank you and hope you have a cheerful day!