Big and Ugly Rendering Project (BURP) is a non-commercial volunteer computing project using the BOINC framework for the rendering of 3D graphics that has been in hibernation as of 2020. The project website currently shows the status as "extended maintenance" until 2027. BURP utilizes the volunteer and grid computing software BOINC, to distribute computing tasks to volunteer computers. BURP is free software distributed under the GNU General Public License V3. Because BURP is used to refer to both the BOINC project and BURP back-end software, some confusion can arise when talking about other services running the BURP software. History The main BURP website went online on 17 June 2004. At that time the only supported renderer was Yafaray. That August it became clear that Yafaray was not the best choice, and focus was shifted towards Blender, a renderer with more features and a compact file format. By the end of October enough tests had been done to show that not only is the distributed rendering of 3D animations possible, it can achieve performance that rivals many commercial render farms. The current trend of increasing network bandwidth throughout the world will make it even more powerful. The rest of 2004 was used to improve and develop the website frontend for the system. Until May 2005, the Linux and Windows clients got major code overhauls and loads of tests were done to estimate and improve performance of several aspects of the data transfer systems. Most importantly, code for a mirrored storage and distribution system for the rendered output started to emerge. In May 2010, the project entered a beta stage, requiring users to agree to a new set of licensing rules based on the Creative Commons. High-frame-rate versions of the film Big Buck Bunny were rendered and released in 2013. Although many people have contributed to the source code since the start of the project, the majority of the BURP code base remains authored by Janus Kristensen, who continues as the head developer of the software. Open Rendering Environment (ORE) and Renderfarm.fi In 2007–2009, the Open Rendering Environment (ORE) project run by the Laurea University of Applied Sciences in Finland was created under guidance from Janus Kristensen and Julius Tuomisto, a team consisting mainly of undergraduate students started to do research on BURP for applications in Finnish small and medium-sized enterprises and third level education. For the project, an independent BURP server