来源：Multicoin Capital博客
原文链接：https://multicoin.capital/2021/12/21/rendering-the-metaverse/
编译：胡韬、链捕手编译；
RNDR渲染网络校对
在过去的一年里，《堡垒之夜》通过音乐会（Travis Scott和Ariana Grande）突破了大规模同步在线虚拟世界的界限。事后看来，这些音乐会将被视为完全成熟的元宇宙的第一个主流先驱（向模拟人生和第二人生致敬，因为他们在世界准备好之前就尝试了这一点）。
Over the last year, Fortnite has pushed the boundaries for large scale synchronous online virtual worlds via concerts (Travis Scott and Ariana Grande on Fortnite). In hindsight, these concerts will be looked back on as the first mainstream precursors to the full blown Metaverse (shout out to The Sims and Second Life for trying this before the world was ready).
但是《堡垒之夜》音乐会存在很多问题。一些最显著的缺点包括：
1. 体验完全由一个实体控制，即Epic Games，《堡垒之夜》的创造者
2. 可以在一个空间中互动的人数上限为 150 人左右，因此绝大多数观众都参与了不同版本的共享体验
3. 事件本身的 IP 以及任何衍生输出也归 Epic 所有
But there are a lot of problems with Fortnite concerts. Some of the most notable shortcomings include:
The experience is entirely controlled by a single entity, Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite (though to be clear, we are big fans of Epic)
The number of people who can interact in a single space is capped at ~150, so the vast majority of audience members are participating in different versions of what would ideally be a shared experience
The IP of the events themselves, and any derivative outputs, are also owned by Epic
我说这些话并不是为了指责 Epic。事实上，我为 Epic 开创这些努力而鼓掌。Epic 首席执行官Tim Sweeney曾谈到关于建立元宇宙的必要性，他一再强调元宇宙不应该被企业控制，而应该是可信的中立。
I don’t say these things to fault Epic. In fact, I applaud Epic for pioneering these efforts. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has spoken at length about the need to build the Metaverse, and he has repeatedly emphasized that the Metaverse should not be corporate controlled, but rather should be credibly neutral.
通过中心化各方对这些虚拟世界的调解本质上违背了开放元宇宙的精神。围墙花园造成平台锁定、中介成本，最重要的是，使资产和体验更难通过以下方式进行互操作可组合的加密原语。这些中的每一个都限制了我们在元宇宙中期望的新的、雄心勃勃的媒体的创建、参与和货币化。
The mediation of these virtual worlds via centralized parties is inherently against the ethos of the open metaverse. Walled gardens create platform lock-in, intermediary costs, and most importantly, make it more difficult for assets and experiences to interoperate via composable crypto primitives. Each of these limits the creation of, engagement with, and monetization around the newer, ambitious kinds of media we expect in the metaverse.
为了真正将元宇宙扩展到数十亿人，我们仍然缺少一些关键的技术基础设施。至少，我们需要：
1. 针对DeFi进行优化并保持可组合性的可扩展区块链（如Solana）
2. 可扩展的公共数据存储，用于以数据为中心（而非以金融为中心）的应用程序（例如Ceramic与Textile Threads）
3. 对公共数据集和用户数据流（例如Fluence）执行大型信任最小化计算的能力
4. 大量的链外计算以高保真度渲染数万亿数字对象（例如RNDR渲染网络）
5. 永久性文件存储，用于存储资产的数字表示（例如Arweave）
6. 实时索引+查询系统，可按需检索数据和文件
7. 强大的 AR 和 VR 模式。
In order to really scale the Metaverse to billions of people, we are still missing some key pieces of technical infrastructure. At a minimum, we need:
1. Scalable blockchains that are optimized for DeFi and that maintain composability (e.g., Solana)
2. Scalable public datastores for data-centric (as opposed to finance-centric) applications (e.g. Ceramic and Textile Threads)
3. The ability to perform large trust-minimized computations over public data sets and user data streams (e.g. Fluence)
4. Immense amounts of off-chain computation to render trillions of digital objects in high fidelity (e.g., Render Network)
5. A permanent file store to store digital representations of assets (e.g., Arweave)
6. Real time indexing + querying systems to retrieve data and files on demand
7. Robust AR and VR modalities.
区块链和其他 web3 系统是元宇宙的基础。这些问题我们思考了很久，并且已经在很多场合写过关于Web3 堆栈的文章。堆栈正在成熟，变得越来越有能力支持元宇宙体验。
Blockchains and other web3 systems are the substrate for the Metaverse. We have been thinking about these problems for a long time, and have written about the Web3 Stack on a number of occasions. The stack is maturing, becoming ever increasingly capable of supporting Metaverse experiences.
今天，我很高兴地宣布 Multicoin Capital 领投了 RNDR渲染网络（Render Network）的 3000 万美元融资，以解决上面列举的第四个问题。我们在 Alameda Ventures、Sfermion 和 The Solana Foundation 的朋友也参加了本轮融资，还有天使投资人 Vinny Lingham 和 Bill Lee。
Today I’m excited to announce that Multicoin Capital led a $30M round into the Render Network, to solve problem #4 enumerated above. Our friends at Alameda Ventures, Sfermion, and The Solana Foundation also participated, along with angels Vinny Lingham and Bill Lee.
渲染数以万亿计的对象
创建 3D 或全息数字媒体是计算密集型的。今天创建的大多数数字艺术，包括大多数 3D NFT，都需要数小时的专用 GPU 时间。渲染需要这些资源，在原始场景文件中编程模拟光线穿过表面、纹理和材料以生成逼真图像的过程。渲染的计算需求非常重要，并且随着分辨率和帧速率标准的提高而呈指数级增长，以创建高保真虚拟世界。
Creating 3D or holographic digital media is computationally intensive. Most of the digital art created today, including most 3D NFTs, requires multiple hours of dedicated GPU time. These resources are required for rendering, the process of simulating light rays across surfaces, textures, and materials programmed in raw scene files to generate photorealistic images. The computational demands of rendering are significant, and grow exponentially as standards for resolution and frame rate increase to create high fidelity virtual worlds.
十多年来，OTOY一直处于渲染软件的前沿。他们的旗舰应用程序Octane是第一款GPU加速、无偏、物理正确的渲染器，被广泛认为是同类中最好的。包括迪斯尼在内的所有主要电影制片厂都使用 Octane 进行VFX，还有数以万计的数字艺术家，包括Beeple、Pak和FVKRNDR。《西部世界》的片头、Lil Nas X为蒙特罗制作的音乐视频以及弗里兹（Frieze）洛杉矶线上展厅展出的作品都是用Octane 渲染的。苹果在Metal主页上折叠信息的上方作为热门应用着重介绍了Octane。
OTOY has been at the forefront of rendering software for over a decade. Their flagship app, Octane, was the first GPU-accelerated, unbiased, physically correct renderer and is widely considered to be best-in-class. All the major movie studios including Disney use Octane for VFX, along with tens of thousands of digital artists including Beeple, Pak, and FVKRNDR. The title sequence of Westworld, Lil Nas X’s music video for MONTERO, and the collections at the Frieze Viewing Room in Los Angeles were all rendered with Octane. Apple features Octane above the fold on the Metal homepage.
十多年前，OTOY的创始人兼首席执行官Jules Urbach在2008年创立OTOY时，对元宇宙提出了愿景。在过去的13年里，OTOY构建了内容创建工具和渲染引擎，这些工具和渲染引擎能够创建数万亿个对象，这些对象将构成虚拟现实。
Jules Urbach, OTOY’s founder and CEO, developed a vision for the Metaverse over a decade ago when he founded OTOY in 2008. Over the last 13 years, OTOY built the content creation tools and rendering engines that are enabling the creation of trillions of objects that will comprise the metaverse.
为了构建元宇宙，仅靠内容创建工具和渲染引擎是不够的。元宇宙将需要天文数字的计算能力：比世界上所有数据中心可用的总和还要多几个数量级。
In order to build the Metaverse, content creation tools and rendering engines alone are not enough. The Metaverse is going to require astronomical amounts of computational power: orders of magnitude more than is available in all of the world’s data centers combined.
获得这么多计算能力的唯一方法是利用全球消费者拥有的数亿个潜在 GPU。RNDR渲染网络于2017年推出，旨在利用这种潜在供应。RNDR渲染网络允许在大型分布式对等网络上分发和处理基于 GPU 的复杂渲染作业。这使创作者能够以前所未有的规模和价格进行计算，并提供比任何现有云提供商更强大的隐私保证。
The only way to access that much computational power is to tap into the hundreds of millions of latent GPUs that consumers have around the world. The Render Network launched in 2017 to tap into this latent supply. Render Network allows complex GPU based render jobs to be distributed and processed over a large, distributed peer-to-peer network. This gives creators access to compute at a scale and price that is unprecedented, along with privacy guarantees that are stronger than any incumbent cloud provider.
在过去的几年里，我们一直在投资于无限可伸缩的Web3原语，最引人注目的是Arweave和LivePeer。这些原语中的每一个都专注于一个非常具体的功能任务。Arweave提供永久存储。LivePeer将视频转码过程去中心化。
We have been investing in infinitely scalable Web3 primitives over the last few years, most notably, Arweave, and Livepeer. Each of these primitives focuses on a very specific functional task. Arweave provides permanent storage. And Livepeer decentralizes video transcoding.
RNDR渲染网络经过优化，可以运行有界（非开放式）、高度并行化的任务，这些任务不需要同步网络连接。满足这些标准的最常见工作负载是用于机器学习的数字渲染和训练模型。
The Render Network is optimized to run bounded (not open ended), highly-parallelizable tasks that don’t require synchronous network connections. The most common workloads that meet those criteria are digital rendering and training models for machine learning.
今天，RNDR渲染网络支持主要的数字内容创建工具，包括Cinema4D、3DS Max、Unreal Engine和Unity。在不久的将来，除了Octane之外，它还将支持 Arnold 和 Redshift 等渲染引擎。该网络的最终目标是支持符合网络ORBX场景数据标准的任意工作负载，并与任意数量的信令和市场平台无缝连接，以促进丰富、沉浸式数字内容的创建和维护。
Today, the Render Network supports the major digital content creation tools, including Cinema4D, 3DS Max, Unreal Engine and Unity. In the near future, it will support rendering engines such as Arnold and Redshift in addition to Octane. The ultimate aim of the network is to support any arbitrary workload that conforms to the network’s ORBX scene data standard, and to plug in seamlessly with any number of signaling and marketplace platforms to foster the creation and maintenance of rich, immersive digital content.
每次增加数据和带宽产品改进、许可证扩展和订单匹配增强，都会增加RNDR渲染网络的潜在市场。在苹果2021年10月的主题演讲中，RNDR渲染网络制作了Gene Roddenberry（吉恩·罗登伯里）星际迷航档案、Beeple的日常生活和星际迷航场景(29：19-29：38)的物理精确渲染，比使用现有的云提供商速度快得多，成本效益也高得多。RNDR渲染网络已经上线，并且正在为世界上一些最大和最高配置的渲染工作提供支持。
Each incremental data and bandwidth product improvement, license expansion, and order matching augmentation increases the addressable market for the Render Network. The Render Network produced physically accurate renderings of the Gene Roddenberry Star Trek archives, Beeple’s Everydays, and the Star Trek scenes (29:19 - 29:38), as seen in Apple’s October 2021 keynote, exponentially faster and more cost effectively than using incumbent cloud providers. The Render Network is live, and is powering some of the largest and highest profile rendering jobs in the world.
RNDR渲染网络还存储系统用于为要完成的作业构建源渲染图的所有资产的哈希值。这种原始数据与 Arweave 等永久性存储基础设施相结合，有可能彻底改变我们对数字对象的起源和所有权的集体理解。
The Render Network also stores a hash of all assets the system uses to build the source render graph for the job to be completed. This has novel implications, and creates another layer of provenance prior to tokenization. Such a primitive, combined with a permanent storage infrastructure such as Arweave, has the potential to drastically alter our collective understanding of genesis and ownership of digital objects.
数十亿美元的套利机会
众所周知，从任何主要的云提供商（AWS、GCP、Azure 等）租用 GPU 都很昂贵，而且通常不可能大量租用。
It is widely known that renting GPUs from any of the major cloud providers—AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.—is expensive, and it’s frequently impossible to rent in large quantities.
资本主义要求云提供商应对市场需求做出反应。然而，他们没有。这是怎么回事？
Capitalism dictates that the cloud providers should respond to market demand. And yet, they don’t. What’s going on?
云提供商没有错。相反，问题出在硬件上：NVIDIA不会允许他们的旗舰消费显卡(例如2080或3080)与云提供商一起部署。相反，他们销售的是特斯拉(Tesla)或Quadro品牌的工作站卡，价格高达10倍，但计算能力只高出20%-25%。
The cloud providers are not at fault. Instead, the issue is hardware: Nvidia will not allow their flagship consumer graphics cards (e.g. 2080 or 3080) to be deployed with cloud providers. Instead, they sell their workstation cards, under the Tesla or Quadro brand, which are up to 10x as expensive, but only provide 20-25% more computational power.
因此，RNDR渲染网络利用了数十亿美元的套利机会。通过解锁数亿个潜在的消费级 GPU，RNDR渲染网络可以显着降低基于GPU的计算成本，增加渲染总数，并减少完成渲染作业所需的时间。
The Render Network therefore capitalizes on a multi-billion dollar arbitrage. By unlocking hundreds of millions of otherwise latent consumer grade GPUs, the Render Network can dramatically reduce the cost of GPU-based computation, increase total number of renderings, and decrease time required to complete rendering jobs.
展望未来
RNDR渲染网络于2017年推出，但很少有加密货币投资者听说过它。直到几个月前我才知道。在过去的几年里，RNDR渲染网络一直处于封闭测试阶段。Octane 和RNDR渲染网络社区多年来一直在优化系统，以确保为创作者提供最佳体验。
The Render Network launched in 2017, but very few crypto investors have even heard of it. I hadn’t until just a few months ago. The Render Network has been operating in somewhat of a closed beta for the last few years. The Octane and Render Network community have been optimizing the system for a few years to ensure an optimal experience for creators.
在11月初Solana的Breakpoint会议上，RNDR团队宣布他们正在将 RNDR 通证和网络的主要部分转移到Solana区块链。这种迁移将在2022年期间发生，随着第三方开发人员使用RNDR渲染网络构建更高级别的应用程序，这将带来大量惊人的机会。
At Solana’s Breakpoint conference in early November, the Render team announced that they are moving the RNDR token and major parts of the Render network to the Solana blockchain. This migration will occur over the course of 2022, and will unlock a ton of amazing opportunities as 3rd party developers build higher level applications using the Render Network as a composable crypto primitive.
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