albertwang Posted June 27, 2012 Share Posted June 27, 2012 Hi all, Question about render farm services such as Fox Render Farm, or others. I'm very new to all of this and am really still in the learning phases so forgive me if it's a bit of nube question, but....how much are we talking about for prices when using these services? I know it's near to impossible to give a good estimate without talking specifics, but say a simple interior scene no complex geometry or materials, 3ds max, vray, good presentation output for printing at say 11x17 inchs, minimal lights used? Something that might take me all day+night to render on my crappy laptop... Again, I know it's hard to talk about estimates, but are these render farm services gonna cost in the Thousands of dollars? Hundreds? Less than a hundred? Is it worth it for someone just rendering for portfolio or 1 or 2 side jobs where pay is extremely minimal, to use? or is it really more for serious stuff where you're client is gonna be paying $1000+ for the job to begin with? Any previous experience would be helpful! thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted June 28, 2012 Share Posted June 28, 2012 you can do online quotes. probably cheaper to buy a decent machine always seemed far too expensive for my liking Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted June 28, 2012 Share Posted June 28, 2012 I'll give you a very recent example... I have a restaurant model that was taking my 3 computers about 24 hours to render a single view. I have 12 views per model, and 4 models, so 48 images total that I'm generating over the course of two months. My computers are now 2-3 years old Intel Xeon quad-core single processor Dell Precision T3500 workstations. I've been using RenderCore out of Los Angeles, CA and have been extremely happy with them. For the same images, their computers can render the images in 4-16 hours (depending on the view). Their computer specs are listed on their website if you're curious. They put one computer on each image. They can also do split-frame, but you need to pre-calculate the lighting or you'll get noticeable banding. Last night I submitted a batch of 12 views (one model), and the last image just finished a short while ago. My total bill to render 12 images was $700. To break that down, it took a total of 125 hours, and they bill each hour of processing time at $5.60 per hour. So, on average, it cost less than $60 to render a single view that took their computer approximately 10.4 hours to render. Had I rendered those images internally, I'd have needed over 5 days straight of render time to meet the deadline. And that was for 1 of 4 similar models. Oh yeah - if you have an idea how long the images will take to render, you can pre-pay and get nice discounts on the per-hour price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Schroeder Posted June 28, 2012 Share Posted June 28, 2012 (edited) Online render farms are nice if you need them in a pinch. However, sustained use is far too expensive even at bulk rates. For the long term cost, you could easily invest in a very good computer. For a once off, crap I need it tomorrow, deal then they are okay in terms of price. Animations will cost you quite a bit so if you haven't factored in that cost in your original proposal, you will completely eat the cost of using an online render farm and more than likely be in the negative income for your job. Just 500 frames of animation, at 10 minutes a frame (based on my CPU) would cost me $100 US Dollars. One or two still frames are not too bad, most will cost around $2-5 US Dollars to render as long as they aren't too long of a rendering time. I used 2 hours as a baseline estimate, again based on my CPU. The other issue with online farms is that if you are not 100% perfect at making sure your render is flawless, they will still charge you if you make a mistake. Say, you forgot something or there is flickering etc. Also factor in if you haven't optimized your Vray scene or are using way too high of settings, the extra time needed to render will cost you quite a bit of money as they charge by the GHZ hour. Most of them have online quotes as nicnic stated. They are fairly accurate in terms of cost. For my estimates, I used Rebus which I have used before and like how they have plugins for you that automate the process. But they are a little on the high side, I think, compared to other farms. Generally most farms are fairly near each other in terms of cost per GHZ hour. Edited June 28, 2012 by VelvetElvis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertwang Posted June 28, 2012 Author Share Posted June 28, 2012 Thanks for the info everyone! Very Helpful! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted June 28, 2012 Share Posted June 28, 2012 (edited) Hi Albert, welcome to the forums. No offence but, this is quite a lazy question. You said in your post that you know it is a pointless question because its case specific and you also said you know there are calculators on the service's websites.... Maybe lazy is the wrong word...inefficient perhaps. I just think you'd be better off putting your info into an online calculator and getting an accurate quote for both cost and time. Then you can put that next to the investment of a few nodes and consider which is the best path forward. There are alot of intangibles associated with both methods that only you know as they are particular to your experience, workflow and hardware. Edited June 28, 2012 by Tommy L Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted June 29, 2012 Share Posted June 29, 2012 (edited) Start by getting a not-crappy desktop to aid you with your workflow. You will work on it when home/office and then leave it render while you work or fool-around with your laptop, or vise versa. You can get a decent i5 desktop tower that blows ANY laptop (other than desktop-CPU equipped ones), and improve your workflow tremendously for about $1000, or even an i7 if you cut some corners. Heck, $800 builds from Dell and other manufacturers are available with i7-3770 and 1GB GPUs... If you start making money with your new PC and you need more speed, you can upgrade to a six-core i7, or even more aggresively, start adding rendering nodes: mAtx or mITX based nodes with onboard GPU/Gbit LAN, a small HDD, 8GBs of Ram and an i5 quad or 6-8 core AMD Cpus can be as low as $400-450 a piece, lacking nothing to fully fledged workstations after the rendering button is pressed in speed. as you can read 8-10x 5MP renders (or 11x17 capable) are enough for each node investment to pay-off in comparison with outsourcing them to a Renderfarm. Edited June 29, 2012 by dtolios Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy L Posted June 29, 2012 Share Posted June 29, 2012 Start by getting a not-crappy desktop to aid you with your workflow. You will work on it when home/office and then leave it render while you work or fool-around with your laptop, or vise versa. You can get a decent i5 desktop tower that blows ANY laptop (other than desktop-CPU equipped ones), and improve your workflow tremendously for about $1000, or even an i7 if you cut some corners. Heck, $800 build If you start making money with your new PC and you need more speed, you can upgrade to a six-core i7, or even more aggresively, start adding rendering nodes: mAtx or mITX based nodes with onboard GPU/Gbit LAN, a small HDD, 8GBs of Ram and an i5 quad or 6-8 core AMD Cpus can be as low as $400-450 a piece, lacking nothing to fully fledged workstations after the rendering button is pressed in speed. as you can read 8-10x 5MP renders (or 11x17 capable) are enough for each node investment to pay-off in comparison with outsourcing them to a Renderfarm. Getting your render power off your workstation is imperative. Having nodes is like having a cell phone or a car, you'll soon wonder what on earth you did before you had them. I dont use online render services unless its a last resort. But I can imagine that every time you think about hitting 'send to RebusFarm' it becomes a decision that is time-consuming. When its your own farm you start running region renders at full res, full settings using DR for testing. There's no better way to work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Schroeder Posted June 29, 2012 Share Posted June 29, 2012 Getting your render power off your workstation is imperative. Having nodes is like having a cell phone or a car, you'll soon wonder what on earth you did before you had them. I dont use online render services unless its a last resort. But I can imagine that every time you think about hitting 'send to RebusFarm' it becomes a decision that is time-consuming. When its your own farm you start running region renders at full res, full settings using DR for testing. There's no better way to work. Perfectly said. The few times I've used online farms I was a nervous wreck as I waited to see if all the frame came back correctly. Fortunately, I've been rendering over render farms long enough to know how to prepare to at least be 95% sure it's right. And those few times I used Rebus, thank the lucky stars everything came back correct. Unless it is the online render farms fault, which 99% of the time it isn't, they will charge you regardless. Even if you render all black frames because you accidentally moved the camera and the key frame button was off. Doesn't matter, you are still charged. I don't smoke, but if I kept using online farms I would have a 20-pack a day habit by now. There is no better investment you will make, if you want to work by yourself as a freelancer, than getting 1-2 extra nodes to help you out and continue to grow your own render farm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fooch Posted July 2, 2012 Share Posted July 2, 2012 Perfectly said. The few times I've used online farms I was a nervous wreck as I waited to see if all the frame came back correctly. Fortunately, I've been rendering over render farms long enough to know how to prepare to at least be 95% sure it's right. And those few times I used Rebus, thank the lucky stars everything came back correct. Unless it is the online render farms fault, which 99% of the time it isn't, they will charge you regardless. Even if you render all black frames because you accidentally moved the camera and the key frame button was off. Doesn't matter, you are still charged. I don't smoke, but if I kept using online farms I would have a 20-pack a day habit by now. There is no better investment you will make, if you want to work by yourself as a freelancer, than getting 1-2 extra nodes to help you out and continue to grow your own render farm. +1 agreed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
angiliaduan1 Posted July 4, 2012 Share Posted July 4, 2012 the cost depends on your scale of rendering projects,and prices are different at diffenrent render farms.But I heard that Fox and Rebus are not expensive,and Fox have cut down their rendering price recently. You can visit their website,maybe could ask their servicers online. http://www.rebusfarm.net/ http://www.foxrenderfarm.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RenderFlow Posted July 13, 2012 Share Posted July 13, 2012 Hi all, Question about render farm services such as Fox Render Farm, or others. I'm very new to all of this and am really still in the learning phases so forgive me if it's a bit of nube question, but....how much are we talking about for prices when using these services? I know it's near to impossible to give a good estimate without talking specifics, but say a simple interior scene no complex geometry or materials, 3ds max, vray, good presentation output for printing at say 11x17 inchs, minimal lights used? Something that might take me all day+night to render on my crappy laptop... Again, I know it's hard to talk about estimates, but are these render farm services gonna cost in the Thousands of dollars? Hundreds? Less than a hundred? Is it worth it for someone just rendering for portfolio or 1 or 2 side jobs where pay is extremely minimal, to use? or is it really more for serious stuff where you're client is gonna be paying $1000+ for the job to begin with? Any previous experience would be helpful! thanks We are a renderfarm service and we can tell you that the range may start from cents and there is no top. It depends on your requirements. Imagine the difference between a preview and a Hollywood Cinema project. Both can be rendered at the same render farm. We would like to invite you to check our free public demo account without compromise. There you can make test render and see what it would cost you. You can also see and compare what other render projects would cost. If you like what you see you can register and work in private. Visit our website: http://www.renderflow.com and introduce the following data to access our Demo acoount: User demo@renderflow.comPassword: demo For any more doubts or questions you can contact us by mail info@renderflow.com or using Skype: RenderFlow We hope we could help you with your doubts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tangxu Posted July 25, 2012 Share Posted July 25, 2012 you can learn more from their site about the services:http://www.foxrenderfarm.com the page looks simple, but their cost-calculating way is relatively easy. You can get USD$ 20 when you register. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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