renderfarm: yes or no?

[nelpiper]

Hi guys.

I was wondering what are your opinion about this. Having a renderfarm can be expensive not just to maintain but to upgrade as well but whenever you need to render something, it's there and is all yours. On the other hand, not having can save you much money 'cause you don't need to maintain or upgrade.

So, my question is: let's suppose you're doing a big project and you have to do lots of test renderings, what would be the way out? Would this justify having your own renderfarm or just a spare fast and robust workstation and then rely on an online renderfarm?

Thanks.

[mbowers]

Nelpiper,

 

If you have the NEED for a dedicated renderfarm (dedicated means a center farm that is not using your co-workers workstations) and it makes you money then you should do it. But be prepared to spend some coin for hardware and maintenance. Multiple 64 bit quadcores with LOTS of Ram is ideal.

 

If you occasionally do renderings for projects then i would cobble together some old workstations that aren't being used and test it out. One problem is that if your rendering movie files, then your renderfarm will only be as fast as your slowest machine. Rendering stills shouldn't be an issue but you'll be limited to the horsepower of your machines. One more tip would be to make sure that your machines are all running the same OS, spreading a renderfarm across multiple machines running different versions of windows, or even different OS's can be a nightmare.

 

I haven't used the online rendering farms, but there are many in this forum that have and they may be able to give a better view.

 

Hope this helps.

[amer abidi]

I have had my own dedicated farm for the past 6 years. It's so great spending all that extra time you're suddenly given on ACTUAL modelling, texturing, lighting and test rendering..than having to cut everything short and worry about how you're going to post-fix your outcome when it finally comes out days or weeks from now!

 

I havent personally used online farms, but i wouldn't think they would be considered a viable option for "test renderings". I mean they charge you per Ghz.. whether its test or final. Its all cost to them.

 

I say get a small farm.. like matt said, a couple of dual quads with plenty of ram..and then get one more with every other big project you get.

 

Just remember, with a render farm, more is NOT always better! You might only need a few quads to be able to handle your workflow efficiently.. but IMO you'll have to start with 3 or four atleast to really reap the benefits.

[Brian Cassil]

Since I don't know completely what your situation is I won't say what would be best for you, but I will let you know what my situation is and what we have in place.

 

I work for an architecture firm with about 100 people in our office. We do mostly high resolution stills and a few animations. We have 3 full time visualization artists.

 

We have two dual quad core render slaves which we use to send high res stills to or we will use them in Distributed rendering with our workstations. For animations I will use the dedicated render slaves, our workstations, and about 20 or so of the more high power cad workstations. I have not had any problems spreading this across multiple OS's but that will depend on the software you are using.

 

One problem is that if your rendering movie files, then your renderfarm will only be as fast as your slowest machine.

 

How do you find this so? If you are sending out the movie sequence as frames to separate computers and computer A is twice as fast as computer B, computer A will render twice as many frames as B thus speeding things up compared to two computers that were as fast as B. That has been my experience.

[amer abidi]

If you are sending out the movie sequence as frames to separate computers and computer A is twice as fast as computer B, computer A will render twice as many frames as B thus speeding things up compared to two computers that were as fast as B. That has been my experience.

 

I concur.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

 

We have two dual quad core render slaves which we use to send high res stills to or we will use them in Distributed rendering with our workstations. For animations I will use the dedicated render slaves, our workstations, and about 20 or so of the more high power cad workstations. I have not had any problems spreading this across multiple OS's but that will depend on the software you are using.

 

I agree with Brian. Having at least a couple of workstations around to send renders to for testing and other purposes during the day is vital if you can afford it.

 

Time is often more valuable than money IMO, though others would probably disagree. But the thing is, you are wasting both time and money if you are starring at your workstation waiting on it to finish.

[mbowers]

Brian et al,

 

Not rendering stills but rendering out AVI file strips to various machines. If computer A is rendering 2x faster than computer B then the process has to wait until computer B is done with it's share of the work. I typically render out parts of an animation in Sketchup on various machines, then combine them together in Post, that is my experience. I'm sure there are other ways. Multiple OS's are a head ache from the IT side installing updates, patches, software ie..so that's why i mention trying to keep everything across 1 similar OS.

 

 

Since I don't know completely what your situation is I won't say what would be best for you, but I will let you know what my situation is and what we have in place.

 

I work for an architecture firm with about 100 people in our office. We do mostly high resolution stills and a few animations. We have 3 full time visualization artists.

 

We have two dual quad core render slaves which we use to send high res stills to or we will use them in Distributed rendering with our workstations. For animations I will use the dedicated render slaves, our workstations, and about 20 or so of the more high power cad workstations. I have not had any problems spreading this across multiple OS's but that will depend on the software you are using.

 

 

 

How do you find this so? If you are sending out the movie sequence as frames to separate computers and computer A is twice as fast as computer B, computer A will render twice as many frames as B thus speeding things up compared to two computers that were as fast as B. That has been my experience.