render-farm using iray and mental-ray

[mikecro]

p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 120%; } I work with Maya and 3DS Max.

Now i want to build a render-farm for best performance using iray within the 3000-3500$ range.

 

 

My thougts: I want to build two different pcs – one as the main workstation which is also capable of handling apps which scale best with high single-core performance (5960x, GTX Titan, 32 GB RAM). Then a second pc which should work as pure render-“muscle“ (one or two XEONS with a couple of GTX 580s or 670s). Then connecting both pcs as a render-farm via network.

 

 

Questions of a newbie:

 

 

1) Does such a cinfiguration make sense?

2) If yes: is it hard / complicated to setup on software-side?

3) Does IRAY support such a config?

4) Do i need a full Maya / 3DS Max license for every pc in the rendering farm or just for one? Or do i need just a the rendering-engine-software on every pc of the render-farm? Does there exist a IRAY-standalone-Version? If so – how much does it cost?

5) What kind aof hardware-config for the „rendering-muscle“ pc does make sense? Do „older“ GTX-GPUs hold a new XEON back performance-wise? How much RAM and storage?

6) Better solutions?

 

 

I appreciate any advice or help