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I have an idea that may have been done already but I cant find it anywhere. Can you set up a render farm on a VPN tunnel? Say, have a computer here, there, across town, around the corner...alll of them be connected to a VPN tunnel and have certain nodes be used for rendering and others for production?

Hey All, I'm trying to get a list of cloud-based rendering farms. I have used a couple, Rebusfarm and RenderNation... but I was looking for something in the United States. The additional VAT and extra credit card charges are killing my budgets for personal projects (...on client projects, they pick up that bill). I just ran across RenderCore... but are there anyone else with 3DS Max and Vray? Thanks ahead, Chris

I'm working on a script that, among other things, needs to submit jobs to be rendered by third party services. I have a decent amount of personal experience doing manual submissions, namely with Rebus Farm, but I'm trying to find a service that has some form of API support for custom submission processes. Things that could work: 1. native API to be called externally from 3D applications in languages such as Python 2. Application-based APIs to be called from within 3D applications (MaxScript for example). I can sacrifice plugin support, but 3DS Max + VRay support is a must-have. Anyone have any experience with this approach? I'm looking at several different potentials right now but I'd hoped someone might be able to offer up some personal experience to help me make a shortlist of possibilities. Thanks in advance

Hello everyone, my name is Alex, I am the owner of CGIFarm.com and I want to make this the official topic for CGIFarm issues or questions. Our farm supports 3DS Max only for now. We are focusing on getting the best workflow possible for this software before moving to support Maya, C4d etc. Our users claim that we have the fastest workflow for 3ds max and it's like our software is 20 years forward in time compared to other renderfarms. These are not my words, one of the guys working on a studio told this to me when he was comparing us with other renderfarm services that he worked with. Having this said, the user also stated that we are not the cheappest farm on the market either, but not the most expensive. We are open for business and offer some good deals for studios that use our service a lot, or have big jobs to render. Here are some of the features of our platform: 1. Ability to upload a package containing one or multiple .max files and reuse the package for creating different jobs like: a. Test jobs to sample the render time and the frame range to make sure that your scene renders fine b. After test jobs are completed and you are satisfied with the results, you create another job with the full frame range. 2. The ability to customize the render settings for already uploaded 3ds max scenes. We call this "Post-upload settings". We achieve this by using our 3ds max plugin to export the render settings for Corona or V-ray in a Json file and post it on the create job window. This takes about 10-15 seconds to update pretty much anything you have available in the render setup dialogue. Most important things are resolution and settings that affect render time. Along with this ability to export render settings, we also introduced the region/crop/blowup rendering. You can create any region in your 3ds max instance and export that with our plugin, even if your uploaded scene was set to render on "view" . This allows for very fast tests on high resolution images to make sure that your image is going to be clear at a certain passes level. I am sure there are much more advantages to this and I invite you to test it out and find out what kind of things you can do with it. Here's a video going over the full settings exporting workflow: 3. In order to support multiple job creation from the same package, we had to develop and advanced yet simple dashboard for the users to customize their jobs. This comes as the 3rd listed feature, but I would say that's the most important one. There you can see previews of your rendered jobs, get how long it took per frame or per job to render, upload multiple packages at the same time, without the need of installing the 3ds max plugin. You can choose to upload any .rar, .zip, .tar file that you receive from your designers and let our system figure out what 3ds max version to use to open the files, what plugins are used in the scene, state if we are missing assets or plugins etc... After the package processes, you get a full report on the files that got repathed and relinked to avoid having any missing assets. Watching this quick intro video will give you a brief overview on how things works on our farm: You can try our cost calculator to see how much it will cost to render your projects: https://www.cgifarm.com/renderfarm-cost-calculator . We recently opened another location called "priority location" where we can customize the number of cpus and ram to render any type of jobs we might receive from our users. The system prooven to be working 100% and I invite you to give it a shot with your hardest scenes. There's much more I could say about our system, but I invite you to check our website : https://www.cgifarm.com and our tutorials section : https://www.cgifarm.com/renderfarm-how-to-use-tutorial If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach me out: Skype: CGIFarm Facebook: CGIFarm or Alex Gradea The website chat: cgifarm.com . I wish you the best and thanks for your time to check this new topic! Alex

Hi there, My name is Alex, I have a renderfarm service called CGIFarm . I am offering $20 worth of credits when you create an account and there are some cool features which I think that you will love. Our team is continuously upgrading the workflow, 3DS Max being the main focus at the moment. Would be great to get your feedback about the workflow and learn about your troubles using our farm or other farms so we can create a better service for you. My goal is to create a service that would embed into your workflow like adding some extra machines in your office (or simpler than that, as you don't need to take care of software installation and management). With your help, this can be achieved in a few months if we keep pressing on. here's a quick start video that I've put together. In a few days I will be updating these videos, releasing some extra features, like being able to change resolution and frame range of the package you uploaded, number of passes or noise limit for your progressive renderings. Checkout the 3ds max plugin as well, we got a lot of people saying that they love the workflow, straight forward installation, scene checkings + automated fixes, scene packing and submission. The webdashboard is where the magic happens, being able to create multiple jobs from the same package, change frame range, camera you want to render and more options are coming soon... https://www.cgifarm.com/renderfarm-quick-start-guide The platform can be customized however we want, adding options to change multiple properties of the same uploaded scene before rendering. Getting your feedback to understand your workflow is the most valuable thing, so we know what to focus our attention on. Create an account today, it takes 30 seconds and you earn $20 bucks. Best paid 30 seconds of your day. https://www.cgifarm.com/customer/account/create/ Leave any questions, comments or suggestions by replying to this topic on sending a ticket on the website. I look forward to meet as many rendering enthusiasts as possible. Have a good and productive day! Alex

Hey! I am selling a Boxx RenderPro 2 I purchased a year ago from Boxx Technologies. It is in brand new condition and has been used 20-30 times. I am selling for $3,500.00 plus shipping. The original sale price was $4170.00. I am only shipping to the United States (From Birmingham, AL). Please let me know if you are interested. Thanks, Les Configuration DUAL XEON E5-2630v3 2.4GHz, 20MB cache, 8.00 QPI (Eight-Core) 32GB DDR4-2133 REG ECC (8 - 4GB DIMMS) 240GB SSD SATA 6Gb/s Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Edition 64-Bit (Not sure if I can sale? BOXX Premium Support 1 Year (Years 2 and 3 Standard) - US and Canada Only BOXX 3 Year Limited Warranty Model Specifications Dual Intel Xeon E5-2600v3 Processor Intel C612 Chipset with QPI up to 9.60GT/S Up to 256GB DDR4 2133Mhz DIMM REG ECC 1 x Intel i350 Dual-port Gigabit Ethernet Controller 2 x SATA 6Gbps Ports 3 x USB 2.0 1 x PCIE x 16 Low Profile Slot 1 x ASPEED AST2400 BMC 1 x IPMI 2.0 (Intelligent Platform Management Interface v.2.0) 1 x 350 Watt Power Supply

We are looking to implement an in-house render farm. We have been requested to design a portal that artists can submit their renders through to our in-house farm. This would need to include the ability to automatically collect all 3ds max assets (zip this file or use the resource collector), send to the network and open this file for rendering. This needs to be a clean looking interface and the user should only get a prompt (similar to qube, or even open the qube submit) to "render". We would also like a possible option to send to external render farms this way. Have it automatically pack up all of the assets and send to the "external" farm to render. We are working with designers (who we all know need basic steps to make life function). If you are a developer and this kind of project is in your skill set, fire me a message with some previous examples of work. There will be some other additional things we need to work around and can work those things out once we have found a suitable candidate.

I'm planning on building an in house render farm and i'm looking for a good render manager software,. I've seen some videos of boxx technologies , about their render manager software, where one can just submit it to network render.

Typically the best value is found somewhere in the middle ground, but where exactly?; Which items are worth buying in bulk when starting to build a bang-for-buck home built renderfarm from scratch, with economical future expansion being a key consideration? Its far easier to compare apples with apples, but we have to look at the sum of the parts here. Starting from scratch, would you build many or few machines, and with what type/quality of components? If we put our heads together, we could probably save many people in this arch-viz community from investing in hardware set-ups that don't expand well or represent good value. A concept for a scale-able farm isn't always straightforward, for example, we can ask ourselves: (assuming that space and aesthetics are not a concern, but that good value raw render power is paramount) CPUs Considering the context of the overall hardware configuration: What presents better value computing capability, e.g. lots of i7s, multiple pairs of Xeons?; Bottom of the range, Middle, or Top? GPUs Considering the context of the overall hardware configuration: Discreet graphics are probably good enough - right? Probably depends on the motherboard? PSUs Considering the context of the overall hardware configuration: Lots of cheap ones, or one really powerful PSU?; Which makes more economic sense? MOTHERBOARDs Considering the context of the overall hardware configuration: Are two single Motherboards ultimately better value than one dual CPU board? SSDs Considering the context of the overall hardware configuration: One OS for every CPU/or two, does not seem very practical. CASEs Considering the context of the overall hardware configuration: One huge/or custom case or lots of separate boxes? AND... then there is COOLING as well! Finally, what is the best value private render farm solution you've seen? and/or propose? (The concept is key. The exact specs are secondary).

Hi everyone, Just got this new machine. Looking for nice people to work with.

Hello all, my first post here (although I was silently observing this forums for a while - creepy, I know) I am currently working on new Render Node spec for a small office I am working for. We currently own 3 years old i7 workstation (will post exact spec tomorrow morning, when I'm in the office) which renders a final frame in 3ds + Vray ~4-6 hours. As for modelling and postproduction, this spec is enough most of the time. It's slightly too slow for previewing, which tends to be very time consuming. We mainly work on architectural visualisation we make for ourselves. Since the workstation is enough to work with, but not enough to render, we are considering expanding the set with a new render node. My first shot was creating something similliar to Boxx Render PRO1. Something like this: Single Xeon E51650v3 3.5 GHz, 15 MB cache (6core) 16GB DDR4-2133 SODIMM ECC no graphic card/integrated 240GB SSD SATA Gigabit Ethernet set up on our own though - I don't really believe in BOXX service working well in Poland, and price can go down something around 50% down BOXX vs. similliar custom build. Our budget varies, we aim possibly in rendering a single final frame in under one hour time (preferably 15 mins ). Atm we are aiming at something between 2000$-3000$ but we can invest more if we can expect surge in working conditions for our graphic dude I hope this illustrates a situation. Now - I am no computer guru, we are about to consult with local service. But I would like to get some feedback from people who actually work in architecture and have some experience with hardware. So here are my current concerns: 1./ Main issue I am having is - is it worth it to invest in Render node and leave Workstation significantly slower then Node or should we rather change old unit into Node and buy a new workstation (then we will upgrade the node eventually, when we think its worth it)? My logic is - if WS is enough for our workflow in every aspect except rendering, then its worth it to buy a node and save money (GPU, HDDs, optical drives, power(?) etc. ) and delegate all rendering tasks from WS to it (including bigger previews). 2./ It is important to us that this solution is scalable. Meaning, I would like to be able to replace processors, add GPU, eventually add more nodes of similliar type to the whole system later (in what case is it justified to set up a rack server instead of standalone units?) 3./ What local network solution would you recommend? Do we actually need separate LAN/disk space just for this purpose? What bandwidth can jobs of this scale require to work seamlessly? We currently run a Windows Server on 2 mirrored RAIDs. Local network is built on LAN: WAN --- router --- switch --- clients (including server). This seves not only for 3ds but also for other CAD applications we're working with etc. 4. / Is it worth investing in Dual Core MoBo in price range 2000-3000$? Any contribution will be welcome, hope I don't ask for too much information The idea is just forming its shape and I am really not sure, were it is going to lead us Regards, jakub

Hi, I use Rhino and vray as my main tools for modelling / rendering. I have a relatively new main workstation and a small farm consisting on a Asus G73 laptop and another 2 less powerful desktops that I had around. However my laptop died (motherboard is gone) and I'm looking for an extra system to replace it. My main workstation right now: Intel I7 4770K o'clocked at 4.6 Mhz and very stable MB Asus Z87M-PLUS 32 GB Ram NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 4GB SSD 256GB + 3TB HD Corsair CMPSU-650AX 650W Gold AX PSU Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler New machine budget $1,500 tops My thoughts: 1.- Getting another laptop as fast as possible to replace the dead one so that I can also use it as my portable station when I need to (not very often but always useful to have the option if I travel) or ..... 2.- Build a rig faster than my current one listed above to be used as the main station using the good video card and big hard drives from my current workstation. I'm interested mainly in the processor power and the 4770K still is a great processor as rendering slave and a small hard drive and a cheap or even on-board video card will do. I know that for the same money a desktop buys me more power so maybe I should forget the laptop option for the times I'll be needing to have something portable ... I any case, what would be the best $/GHz rendering rig that $1500 can buy me, i7? Xeon ? single? Dual ? taking in account that I could use some of the components as I mention above. I get easily lost with so many opinions ... Thanks

Hey guys! First post!!! I love you all and aspire to learn what you know!!! I have started my own office, and have a client base which is growing beyond my capacity, asking for more and more! I love it, but right now I can't keep up. I'm looking to expand my office, and hire some new talent... but I don't have any computers for them to work on... After doing a lot of reading and researching it looks like I can build 1 or 2 Workstations at around $1500 each, and then have a render farm linked to my office server with a few i7 nodes. My reasoning is that I can scale if need be and everyone can share the power of the farm, each on a medium strong workstation, instead of dropping $4000 for each workstation. and also keep adding nodes to the farm if I need it. Two questions... 1. Does this strategy make sense to you guys? 2. Are there confirmed threads on how to build a farm, and what the best practices are... Or an IT company that does this work in the NorhtEast USA that would be good to call? Thanks!

Hi, Occasionally I just need one frame rendering that would normally take 12-24 hours but so far, ALL the render farms I've seen would cost the entire project budget just to render one or maybe two stills! Any tips on where to look?

Hi Guys, I'm a complete newbie to the rendering world, so apologies if anything I'm asking is obvious to most or seems stupid. I'm looking to buy my first computer to be used for creating 3D interior models and renders, honestly I'm not tech savvy and have never built a PC. Because of this I think my best option is to buy a used pre-built dedicated unit, eventually adding nodes as it's required. Anyway. a friend is selling this unit and wanted to ask whether it would be adequate? PROCESSOR: Intel core i7 4930k - 12 hyper threads GPU: Nvidia K4000 3GB (768 Cuda Cores) MOTHERBOARD: Asus X79-Deluxe CASE: Siverstone Raven Version 2. There are four 10 inch fans with dust filters. PSU: Corsair AX860 RAM: Vengence 16GB Quad Core CMZ16GX3M4X1866C9 COOLING: Corsair H80i enclosed water cooler. 256SSD OCZ Vertex 3 (Windows 7) 90GBSSD OCZ Vertex 3 (used as a scratch disk) 500GB Western Digital Black Hardrive 500GB Western Digital Black Hardrive Thank you all so much in advance!

Hi Guys, First of all thanks for the help. This is my first post, till now the forum has been a great help and it is the first time where I am actually going to use it for a personal issue. So for all this time thanks to all that make the forum so useful. I am a bit on a rush here and cannot figure out well what its going on and how to be more efficient. I am very new to Vray so excuse me if I ask things that seem too straight forward. I am trying to render the scene that I post, which came out of a render farm. I have two main isuues. The first one is that seems that my settings are making it take too long (in my computer) and I dont know how to make it so that, without loosing render quality the timing its more efficient. To calculate the light cache and I.map takes about 2hr. for a resolution of 1920x1080. The second issue comes when I send it to the render farm. They seem to ask for the GI settings. Does that mean that I have to render it first in my computer so that later I can upload the saved files for the light cache and the I.m? Also, how much quality would I loose in the GI if I run it in my computer at a considerably lower res? note that the render is not what it is supposed to look like, it should have more of the background elements Thank you very much for your help! best, Fernando

We’ve all been there: the deadline is looming and your project isn’t done yet! Not to worry! With the new Renderfeed On Demand service, you can render your C4D files at any time of the day, any day of the year, and at costs as low as 35c USD per core hour! Pay as you go - simply purchase as many credits as you need for your project, install our easy to use plugin, which has recently been upgraded to Cinema 4D R15 and VRAYforC4D 1.8, and you are good to go! For more details, visit us at Renderfeed: http://renderfeed.com/signup/. Thanks for listening, CGArchitect community! Keep up the awesome work and we look forward to helping you get your jobs done quickly and easily in the future! John Tucker

Hi everyone, Having increasingly grown sick and tired of backburner and fusion's own flaky render manager, we are thinking of switching our office render management to deadline. The price tag is pretty high for all the machines but it seems to be pretty solid. Just wanted to know if anyone is using it for architectural animation specifically with fly-throughs and pre-calculated IR maps. Scripted dependencies are a huge issue for submitting to backburner, and we have a pretty good workaround for that but submitting fusion and ae jobs is a huge plus. The other contender right now is smedge but not really sure about that one yet.

Quick question regarding render farm set ups. We recently set up a render farm at my company. We have several 3ds Max users in house. The way we have it set up is that each user has his own workstation. Then we have a station with the master render farm computer which is of course hooked up to all of the slaves (which are housed in a different room). There is nothing on these computers but 3ds Max and the Backburner programs. Everything works and renders fine. However, every time we fire up 3ds Max on the Master Station we receive the Max Trial splash where it says we have x amount of days to register the product. The Master Station and subsequent slave computers had Max and Backburner installed from my original 3ds Max 2012 product discs (which is licensed and used on my main workstation). So, the question is this: Does the render farm need it's own license to work correctly? I was under the impression that the render farm could be set up with existing software and no additional licenses were needed. Our engineer thinks we need a license of Max for each one of the computers involved with the render farm. I am fairly certain this is wrong. But, I am wondering if I need to buy a separate license for the Master Station computer. I tried researching Autodesk and the Area - but frankly I can't find the answer that I am looking for because it is all forum driven (I miss human based customer service). So, I thought I would see if anyone out here has run into the same issue and had an answer. Thanks, Andrew

Hello everybody..... I have a problem with my backburner renderer. Backburner took job properly also divided frames as per task submitted. After 100% job completion, when i checked the folder, i got around 10 to 15 frame missing which actually show "complete" status in Task Summary. I changed task size to 1, still it didnt work. Please help Plz help me... thanks in advance.... Hrishikesh

I do residential architectural design work - exteriors with grass and a lot of trees, and interiors. I have a large task list of renderings ahead of me, justifying a hardware upgrade. I have a dual 6 core xeon system and I was going to let that become my render node and build a new i7 3930 or 3960 overclocked workstation for setting up the renderings and working in REVIT, etc. When the render is ready to run, I want to send it over to my node and keep working. Here are my questions: 1) Would I ever need more than 32 gb memory in my V-Ray workstation. (I will let the workstation work along with the node for over night rendering.) I am considering 64gb memory. 2) Should I consider a Tesla GPU to run RT while I am setting up my renders, to see in 'real time' what is coming together? I feel that a 3gb GTX card will not fit most of my scenes. I know some are using RT for production, but I feel like it has a lot of maturing to do. Is ANYONE in architecture using it to simply boost productivity? Thanks in advance for your suggestions/advice!

We had a request from client on wednesday saying that we need to have final animation of the office interior by monday. If we don't have it we don't need it. We never used a render farm. could you advice is it safe to use render farm from outside? Is anybody use it? How often? and what companies you used. thanks

I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for an internet based rendering farm service. I am using 3dsMax 2010 and Vray. I have a simple diagrammatic animation, a white cityscape animating the main concepts for a development project, but it is going to take 90 hours to render on our machine! yikes! (No gi, and relatively low anti aliasing, DMC settings) Any good services? Any places to avoid? Any tips, tricks for having a smooth render farm experience?

I've been looking into incorporating a render farm service into my workflow, and wanted to get your opinions on what render services you prefer and why. The two render farms I've been checking out are http://www.renderrocket.com and http://www.rebusfarm.net. They both look like excellent services, although I'm leaning more toward rebusfarm based on being able to integrate the 'REBUS Farminizer Software' directly into Cinema 4D for easy upload/download of project files. Has anyone used these services, what are your thoughts? Can you recommend any other render farms?

We are currently upgrading all the machines in our office and I am trying to make sure we'll be able to have an operating render farm for use when everyone goes home in the evening. I've done some research on Backburner and setting up the server and everything looks doable and clean. I plan on doing two kinds of outputs when the render farm is available. Animations, and high quality renderings. I will be using Mental Ray for the animations as iRay is unbiased and not really ideal for animations. However, I like to use iRay for my renderings and I was hoping I could use the farm for iRay. I looked in the render setup under the commons tab for the icon that says "Net Render" which apparently lets me use Backburner for the task. Under the iRay rendered, this icon does not exist. Does this mean I can't use Backburner to help render out my iRay rendering? I was hoping to have the computers work on different segments of the image using the "Split Scan Lines" option in Backburner. Thanks for any input