Beeple Studios Opening and a Render Network Technical Update: March 17th, 2023 [Behind the Network (BTN)]
A Creator Spotlight on the Beeple Studios Grand Opening, alongside technical updates for the Network itself!
March 2023 has been an eventful month across the 3D world. From landfall moments for the world of digital art as a whole to background updates to the Render Network that will improve the experience of users, March has had almost too much for any one person to keep track of. With that in mind, this week’s BTN serves as a primer for some of the highlights from the first half of March.
Beeple Studios Grand Opening
Render Network advisor and digital art revolutionary Beeple (aka Mike Winkelmann) continued his trailblazing streak this past weekend with the grand opening of Beeple Studios on March 11th. The event, a collaboration between Beeple and Christie’s auction house, saw the first major brick and mortar gallery opening based around digital and Web3 art. Based out of Charleston, SC, the gallery’s debut event saw a massive turnout which included many of the featured digital artists alongside, 3D industry pioneers like Jules, web3 technologists, and even actors impersonating common Beeple Everyday characters like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Kim Jong-Un and Andy Warhol.
The opening was highlighted by a live 1-hour Everyday (#5793) that Beeple created (using OctaneRender) while audiences watched the process play out on the gallery’s immersive screen. In classic Beeple style, as he was creating the Everyday, an NFT release (literally, with printed works dropping from the rafters) took place over the course of the hour. Fifty of the printouts had codes to claim a unique NFT which represented a snapshot of Beeple’s process during the hour-long Everyday creation window. Some call it the first ever Beeple “Airdrop”, and it’s assembled in the Beeple Everyday: Artifacts collection. Interestingly, the live NFT artifacts created as part of a larger finished Everyday mirrors work that the Render Network is doing to enable new forms of NFT collections to be created directly from the Render Graph for next generation emergently created, real-time remixed, or generativity scripted 3D art.
For those that have been following the Render Network for the last few years, the list of featured artists would read as a who’s who of Render Network users and contributors, such as FVCKRENDER, BLAKE KATHYRN, SMEARBALLS, SMECCEA, RAOUL MARKS, BRILLY, DAVID ARIEW and PAK. However we would like to showcase another featured artist from this event, an Octane user and Render Network newcomer: Justin Maller.
Maller, a native of Australia, has had a similar experience to previously featured artists like Brilly, who cut their teeth in the world of art before exploding onto the scene and working with some of the biggest brands in the world such as Nike, Under Armour, Verizon, ESPN and more, alongside establishing a distinct brand of art that has become instantly recognizable through its ubiquity over the last two decades plus. However despite his huge personal success, Maller has never lost the passion for innovation, which has drawn him to consistently reinvent his approach to how he creates and presents his pieces. Like with his FACETS II series, a sequel to his 2013 FACETS which established a brand of geometric pieces created everyday (or as they’re coined now “dailies”) for the full year, FACETS II began in 2022 and “comprises several unusual Web 3 mechanisms including Series based Rewards and Leaderboards, Collector controlled editioning of every piece and much more.”
In Maller’s own words he was “honoured to be invited to exhibit at Beeple’s Genesis Event…” where his featured pieces a “curated selection of works from THE SECOND STORM, IN WAVES, SHRINES and FACETS, all of which were created using Octane.”
[As a content warning, the following contains references to sensitive subject matter, including death and mourning.]
THE SECOND STORM
I created the majority of “The Second Storm” in Australian hotel quarantine, after flying from Los Angeles to see my mother at the end of her battle with cancer. I was escorted by the military from the airport to a hotel room where I would spend two weeks alone in confinement. Around the same time I landed, mum checked in to hospital for the last time.
I spent those two weeks creating this body of artwork as I sought to come to terms. To terms with mums life ending. To terms with being locked in a room with so little time left. To terms with life and death and grief and love and everything in between. The collection released exactly a month after her passing, during the week where NFTs would start to explode into the public consciousness.
IN WAVES & SHRINES
These collections were released following the unimaginable response to THE SECOND STORM. Dealing with such unexpected success and the accompanying pressure to create more whilst still being in the earliest stages of processing the grief of mums death was overwhelming. IN WAVES was an attempt to visualise the massive waves of sadness, joy, grief and creativity that washed over me in the six months following her loss. SHRINES was a follow on to that, as I worked to reward my earliest collector’s investment in my work whilst honouring the intent of the original collection. Collectors were allowed to trade in any three pieces from THE SECOND STORM to receive a shrine for free. All pieces sent in were transferred to a locked vault wallet — taken out of circulation whilst remaining on the blockchain as a digital shrine to her memory.
The power and emotion that come through in these pieces is evident and the Render Network team would like to thank Justin for his candor in sharing his inspiration behind these pieces and the intention that they were created with. With their showcase in the Beeple gallery, may that message and memory be passed on to all who are lucky to view it in person and online.
Technical Upgrades to the Render Network
The Render Network has seen some significant improvements in recent weeks that may have slipped under the radar, and while these changes may not have made a huge initial splash, the ripples they will cause could shake-up the Network experience on multiple fronts for the better. Without further ado, let’s dive into these new changes:
Easier Exports for the Cinema 4D Plugin
The Cinema 4D plugin for OctaneRender 2022.1 recently went through a round of revisions (dubbed R8), which made a number of improvements that can be viewed in full here. Most notably for Render Network creators, a new ORBX export command has been added to the live viewer specifically for Render Network jobs! Dubbed “Animated package for RNDR (orbx)”, this new export creates a direct, easy to understand export function for users of one of Octane’s popular plugins to then expand out onto the Render Network. Even more impressive, increased export speeds of between 2–20x the current export rates have been reported in testing for these same functions!
A visual guide is now up on the Knowledge Base for any user that would like a step-by-step on how to use this new function!
Improved Purchasing through Stripe
For many Render Network creatives, Stripe has become a preferred payment method for the Network with the ease of the transitionary RNDR Credit system. However, since its inception some professional studios and businesses who have incorporated the Render Network into their production pipelines have expressed some frustrations with the information provided in these payment services invoice mechanics, which can make expensing RNDR Credit purchases difficult in certain areas. The Render Network Devs and Mod team have been hard at work and recently released an upgrade to Stripe purchases that should alleviate this issue.
During Stripe checkout you are now able to toggle a checkbox if you are purchasing as a business entity, where you will now be able to enter in your Business’ Name and VAT information (if applicable to your region) in compliance with tax/business laws. In addition, invoices now include more detailed information such as invoice number, receipt number, date of payment and method of payment. A visual guide can now be found on the Knowledge Base as well.
For all studios and large organizations using the Render Network in production pipelines, this move should help RNDR Credit purchases fit that much easier into existing purchasing and accounting workflows.
Check out the Render Network Community at NFT.LA (Outer Edge LA)
Outer Edge LA, formerly known as NFT.LA, returns starting March 20th! Featuring all-stars like William Shatner, former NBA legends Baron Davis and Metta World Peace, Erick Calderon, Yat Siu and more, the event promises to be a smash for all Web3 enthusiasts in LA! With that in mind, the Render Network team wants to know: what events are you, the community, most interested in?
Let us know which events to be on the lookout for in the tweet embedded above, and follow the Render Network on Twitter and Instagram, where events will be shared all week.
What’s Next
Be on the lookout next week for a series of Creator Spotlights featuring some of the amazing women creating on the Render Network and a showcase of the Render and Octane artists featured in Sotheby’s Natively Digital: Oddly Satisfying auction, which is live for the next week!
Join us in the Rendering Revolution at:
Website: https://render.x.io
Twitter: https://twitter.com/rendernetwork
Knowledge Base: https://know.rendernetwork.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/rendernetwork
Render Network Foundation: https://renderfoundation.com/
