How many render nodes do You use?

[adrianbartosiak]

I planing to buy my few first render nodes (4 or 6 core i7 + OS + Vray 3). I don't have any specific budget, so I am wondering how many nodes especially individual professionals (like Bertrand Benoit or Peter Guthrie) or eventually studios are using, what is recommended? I am mainly doing hi-res stills.

[notamondayfan]

1 node, 1 PC. If you're smart you don't need a massive farm, just good planning.

[stefanostrika]

Is not easy to answer, it really depends on the complexity of your projects and your deadline.

For somebody one pc is more than enough while somebody really needs many machine to deliver the job in time.

I'm personally using one Xeon workstation and 4x 6core i7 nodes and my final render @4k are normally completed in about an hour or less.

[paneli]

I planing to buy my few first render nodes (4 or 6 core i7 + OS + Vray 3). I don't have any specific budget, so I am wondering how many nodes especially individual professionals (like Bertrand Benoit or Peter Guthrie) or eventually studios are using, what is recommended? I am mainly doing hi-res stills.

 

Its cheaper to buy one dual xeon then "few nodes", because you need less max, vray, plugins etc licenses.

[Scott Dombrowski]

I work in a large A/E firm, but am the only one doing 3D. I have two render nodes at my disposal, but DBR in mental ray is glitchy and unstable for me, so I can't use them to their fullest. It is nice to be able to send something to the nodes and continue working on my machine, though.

[adrianbartosiak]

Am i thinking correctly that for render nodes I need to buy operating system and vray license, and i don't need 3ds max (and plugins) license for each node (only on main workstation 3ds max and plugins installed)?

[numerobis]

yes, you don't need additional max licences. For plugins it depends...

 

http://help.chaosgroup.com/vray/help/150SP1/licensingvray.htm#config_slaves

Edited August 21, 2014 by numerobis

[Scott Dombrowski]

Am i thinking correctly that for render nodes I need to buy operating system and vray license, and i don't need 3ds max (and plugins) license for each node (only on main workstation 3ds max and plugins installed)?

 

Yes. Mostly. Your render nodes don't need a full vray license, just a vray render node license.

[adrianbartosiak]

I am counting costs of diffrent solutions with software (Core i7 4790K, Core i7 E 4930K, 1x Xeon 2680 v2, 2x Xeon 2680 v2).

 

And it looks like the less cost per perfomance is to buy few 4790K and the worst solution is to buy 1x Xeon RN.

It is also better to buy 4930K than 2x Xeon, but few 4790K is cheaper than 4930K.

 

Dual Xeon RN are just so expensive that in price of 1x dual xeon RN i can buy 6 or 7 4790K RN which will give me more power than dual xeon RN.

[paneli]

In one hand, the distributed rendering is going to take a long time before all machines load the scene every time you render.

So forget about quick draft renderings.

 

On the other hand, a dual Xeon, assuming is also your ws, is immediately available for draft rendering with all cores.

No time spent on waiting.

 

Also is cheaper to maintain, less power consumption....

[Tommy L]

In one hand, the distributed rendering is going to take a long time before all machines load the scene every time you render.

So forget about quick draft renderings.

 

On the other hand, a dual Xeon, assuming is also your ws, is immediately available for draft rendering with all cores.

No time spent on waiting.

 

Also is cheaper to maintain, less power consumption....

 

DR loads scenes fairly instantaneously in my experience, very little lag time. I use 10 nodes for DR using Vray 2.4. Test renders are super fast. My finals at 6.5k render in about an hour on average.

[braddewald]

Same here. I have 7 nodes and they kick in pretty much instantly. A node with dual Xeons will be far more expensive than multiple lower-end nodes (like FX8350's) of equivalent power, even taking into account the added vray licenses.

[Nils Norgren]

If I took an iPhone photo of our farm here at Neoscape.

 

-Nils

[Scott Dombrowski]

If I took an iPhone photo of our farm here at Neoscape.

 

-Nils

 

The nodes sitting on top there look like beasts.

[Scott Schroeder]

In one hand, the distributed rendering is going to take a long time before all machines load the scene every time you render.

So forget about quick draft renderings.

 

On the other hand, a dual Xeon, assuming is also your ws, is immediately available for draft rendering with all cores.

No time spent on waiting.

 

Also is cheaper to maintain, less power consumption....

 

It should be pretty quick to load over DR. If it's not, then it's not because of DR. It's either a poorly created scene and/or poorly connected network.

 

If you need anything more than 30 seconds or less region renders on your main workstation, you are wasting time using it as a draft render box. That time you think you will lose by waiting for a DR scene to load, you will lose 10-fold in lost production times while waiting for your primary box to spit out draft renders. Not to mention the massive amounts of wasted production time waiting for final renders if you have only one strong machine that doubles as both your primary workstation and your primary render box.

 

I've got the same box as my workstation as a test machine that I can offload draft/DR renders to. We have one dual Xeon as a primary 24 hour render slave that I can also take for test renders if it is not working on production renders. At night, we can get up to 24 additional user boxes on a farm if needed, but that's pretty rare. The Xeon and my primary and secondary work boxes and handle most of the nightly render loads.

[jasonstewart]

There is a good thread on Chaos forums about the topic of more cheaper nodes vs. less more expensive nodes specifically with the vray 3.0 node license system. Its worth checking out if you plan on buying some nodes. Some of it will ultimately come down to personal preference, not everyone wants 10 nodes when they could build 3 with the same amount of power. Depends on what you want.

[heni30]

If I took an iPhone photo of our farm here at Neoscape.

 

-Nils

 

Those Apple SE's on top are ruining the Star Wars effect. It's like a curtain accidentally fell and and you can see the true Wizard on top.

Edited August 21, 2014 by heni30

[Tommy L]

Those Apple SE's on top ruin the Star Wars effect.

 

I think all those modern looking servers underneath ruin the star wars effect created by the Apple SE's.

[paneli]

DR loads scenes fairly instantaneously in my experience, very little lag time. I use 10 nodes for DR using Vray 2.4. Test renders are super fast. My finals at 6.5k render in about an hour on average.

 

Same here. I have 7 nodes and they kick in pretty much instantly. A node with dual Xeons will be far more expensive than multiple lower-end nodes (like FX8350's) of equivalent power, even taking into account the added vray licenses.

 

So how exactly you set up your scene for the nodes to kick in instantly?

I just got them connected to the same 1gb/s switch. And still most draft renders the dr is not even there to kick in, and in production render it kicks in only in the middle of the 1st prepass.

 

If it is setup wrong, I might actually rethink my philosophy regarding xeons.

[adrianbartosiak]

For the upcoming Haswell Xeon E5-26xx it looks like the 2687W v3 will be the best choice.

 

For the

[braddewald]

So how exactly you set up your scene for the nodes to kick in instantly?

I just got them connected to the same 1gb/s switch. And still most draft renders the dr is not even there to kick in, and in production render it kicks in only in the middle of the 1st prepass.

 

It could be any number of things. Have you tried transferring a large test file to make sure you're getting the full 1gb/s? I noticed that my newer nodes with SSD's and more RAM kick in a lot faster.