To outsource or not to...

[ashleymartin]

Hi All,

 

I am conducting research on why individuals / companies outsource to render farms. A few questions…any feedback is greatly appreciated!

 

 

1) What are the main benefits to outsourcing to a render farm?

2) What are the main challenges? Do you find this to be consistent regardless of geography?

3) How often do you outsource your rendering needs?

4) How long does an average rendering take you?

5) On average, how long does the end-to-end engagement with a render farm / service provider take? Do they ever need to redo the work? If so, how often?

6) What is often the main purpose for the rendering (i.e. communicating for marketing/business development, prototyping, internal in-process validation, etc.)

7) Would you say the majority of archiviz professionals work on a contract / freelancer basis?

8) Do you create static renders or animated renders?

9) When doing a render yourself, do you have to wait for the render to complete before you can continue working/designing?

10) At what point in your design process do you first start rendering?

 

Many thanks in advance for your time!

 

Ashley

[BrianKitts]

Think you may have your terminology a bit mixed as many use outsourcing for a renderfarm, as most don't have the inhouse capability for processing heavy data loads specifically for animations.

 

However I'm assuming what you're asking about is outsourcing visualization work, typically a touchy subject in the industry.

 

Answers to your questions:

1. Scale-able labor, there when you need it....not charged when you don't.

2. Language Barriers. If you find a company that has people on staff for translation you may have an easier time communicating but then you have a higher price tag as sometimes those companies will have to pass information between multiple people to make a simple change which slows the process. As for the geography, it depends on if you're talking about outsourcing overseas versus domestic. Domestic is easier to communicate with at a higher pricetag.

3. This question would be geared more towards arch firms as we ourselves are a rendering production studio.

4. Depends on how indecisive the designers are! Too many variables to answer this question

5. Same as answer 4

6. Design review/approval, and marketing.

7. 50/50 split

8. Both

9. Typically multitask rendering and modeling simultaneously anyone who waits is wasting time.

10. As soon as the client signs the contract!