rener farms - who do you use and recommend?

[simonm]

Hi all

 

Im potentially going to use a render farm service in the near future. Was wondering if you have any insight to which ones youve used and if its been a hassle free experience?

Last thing I want to deal with are discrepancies and issues with uploading and technicalities - 3DS and Vray gives me enough of that

 

I have a new workstation which is:

i7 4930

32 gig ram

gtx 780 gfx card

sabertooth x79 motherboard

 

On a normal interior/exterior scene on ultra high settings (i use solid rocks), it takes between 4-9 hours. Im a little confused on the pricing of the farms and was wondering what the estimated cost of such a render would be?

 

FYI - i do only still images and I have the latest versions (including updates) of 3ds and vray.

 

Thanks and looking forward to any comments

Edited September 29, 2014 by simonm

[Chris MacDonald]

Sounds to me like you could do with getting rid of Solid Rocks and learning how to tweak VRays settings manually. There really is no other way to get the best out of it, because every scene is different.

 

 

As for render farms, I've always used Render Nation. Always seems to be someone on hand to help, should anything go wrong. Can't vouch for any others as I've not used them.

[Chris MacDonald]

In the long term you would be better off investing in your own render farm.

[Scott Schroeder]

Online render farms are generally not an everyday solution for stills, they are more an emergency safety measure. Just using one farm as an example, that still image would cost you around $17US if you use the full 9 hours. That cost can add up over time, especially if you realize that you forgot to turn a layer on or off and now you have to re-submit.

 

You are using ultra high settings, what do you expect to happen? 4-9 hours isn't that bad if you are rendering large size, 4k or higher. If you render at high settings, can you even tell the difference if you put the images side by side? What about medium settings? Just because the program gives you ultra high settings, doesn't mean those are the only ones to use to get a quality image.

[simonm]

Thanks for the response guys.

 

Scott - youre right. However there is a little monster on my right shoulder always whispering to me telling me that everything needs to be on ultra high (could also be my OCD). I guess its easier to post produce with less noise and a sharper image and then add those artifacts in later during the final breakdown.... it tends to give more headroom.

 

Chris - youre right. I do have a fair idea of the settings, not an expert, but more of an intermediate understanding. I actually have a subscibtion with Grant Warwick but ive watched the video a few times and it hasnt sunk in yet (im too busy to sit down and watch it again). I have to watch things a few times before they sink in - im a bit dumb like that

 

Im actually new to solid rocks - and it tends to give me quicker results. You see, ive lost count of the countless hours ive lost in the render settings trying to tweak this and tweak that... i feel that takes one away from the creative process.... in my day to day business, i cant get caught up in that anymore, its time wastage. Solid rocks give me a one push button solution, which is what the software companies should be doing (we pay enough for them - especially 3DS Max, im still hurting over the price). I realise vray have now introduced this in vray 3, but its still not where i feel it can be. Solid rocks offers that extra flexibility and features - big ups to them (in particular the auto exposure and color balance settings)

 

my 2 cents

[TomasEsperanza]

Hi PixelMan,

 

Congrats on the workstation, ' sounds good.

 

I've used Rebusfarm for animations. I didn't like the process; the pricing structure was annoying, the set-up took too much control out of my hands, and it was a bit of a farce to get set up. They have this slick plugin for max, but while I liked the idea initially, I kept coming across limitations.

 

With technology always improving, I imagine the farms may have improved in the last couple of years, and they'll all have their particular pros and cons.

 

Of course, with many frames to render, the extra horsepower means a commercial farm can be a necessary evil. But with a render node or two along with your workstation, most stills can be left overnight and be done in the morning, unless your settings are extremely high.

 

That said, it might be an idea to try a few farms, to get a feel for their service, then have an account set up and ready to go, in case you have a killer deadline.

 

Yeah V-ray is fiddly, but I like the versatility. I'm doing Grant's course too. I find the rendering stuff more useful than the materials stuff, but it's all good

[Zdravko Barisic]

...On a normal interior/exterior scene on ultra high settings (i use solid rocks), it takes between 4-9 hours....

 

Hm? Thats a lot of time...

Have you ever tried this script

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/cleaner

VrayMtl ClapmsDisabled button is magic button, try it.

Also, filtering maps is not so needed. Just turn it OFF in main VR tab.

Good luck!

[Jon Berntsen]

I would characterize 4-9 hours for an ultra high setting exterior or interior to be a pleasant result. Especially if rendered on ws only. If you come with these expectations that a bruteforce GI render should be done within a couple of hours, then you might turn to another render engine that gives you less options and quality. Unless you are rendering flat sidings or teapots. None of my clients wants that, at least

[Scott Schroeder]

It should be noted that Grant's course is in no way optimized for speed. So if you follow what he does, you'll pay for the quality in render time.

[TomasEsperanza]

Hi Scott, I know what you mean, it's an approach that considers the balance between speed and quality, but nevertheless with expensive materials, it's going to be slow if you want a really clean image.

 

That said, I do find that by thinking more about where the renderer's calculations are being spent, you can optimise a scene for either speed or quality as is called for. I set up a draft quality and a high quality presets as templates, and then adapt and save them for each scene, so that I can quickly switch between the two, whilst working.

 

Another useful script is the VRayMat Resampler. This will globally set material subdiv values in a couple of clicks, but allows more subdivs for blurrier reflections and refractions. The more samples the shader needs to get a clean result, the more it gets. This avoids using the AA sampler to do that which would be less efficient as it's designed for higher contrast stuff; edges etc.

 

FWIW, When it comes to a single high quality still, there's really no point in having it done in 5 hours, if your not going to be in the office for 15 hours. (If your are working from 9am till 6pm, for example).

[Scott Schroeder]

That's why Vray 3's progressive render kicks all sorts of ass. No fiddling around. Just keep everything at default values, and I mean everything. Set your min shading rate to around 8 to spend less time on AA. Fire that thing off, and come in the next morning to a practically perfect rendering. Or set either a time limit, noise limit, or sample limit and Vray will stop when you tell it do. No guess work. No screwing around.

[simonm]

i like where this is going

 

Scott, you know I havent even used the progressive renderer yet! I have been quiet busy with deadlines I havent had a chance to play with it!! Tonight im going to leave a render overnight and see what it does so youre saying leave everything at default values and click and go!! Ill set it to around 3000px x 1500px and see what it does overnight... ill post back the results

 

Zdravko - VrayMtl ClapmsDisabled button, what does this do ? with the bitmap filtering, does that mean all the maps are set to none? for me that might hinder some of the bump maps as sometimes when i set them to none, they become too course if that makes sense.

 

Juraj - man, if you can do a tutorial/walkthrough on what you said that would be awesome. Coz after reading it 3 times, you might as well be speaking Japanese to me as I didnt understand he he

 

I like Grants course, its extreme and awesome but i kinda get lost in it.... ive got to do it a few more times and practice it before it sinks in.... gotta make time for that!

[philippelamoureux]

I'm testing the progressive renderer and so far I like it very much. Haven't rendered a final image with it yet, but even just for quick preview of your scene it's so useful.

[aminbakht]

I have only used http://www.rebusfarm.net and had a good experience. Fast renderings and good support. I used it on projects where we used maya + Vray and maya + Arnold. never had any issues. Though they felt a little expensive but I never used anything else to compare with.