After finding out What is a render farm, this second hands on article will tackle all you need to know to start using one: who is it for, how do you actually work with render farms, where can you find them and what are the costs.
Who uses a farm?
The main users are probably the movie studios (think Hollywood). When rendering a movie would take 16,000 (that’s sixteen thousand) years on a typical home computer and one’s life expectancy is far less than that, in-house rendering is no longer a reasonable choice. After all, they need to deliver those breathtaking special effects to us, right?
As the 3D technology got more accessible and more affordable, different categories of people have started using 3D render farms: production agencies, post-production studios, architects, industrial designers, 3D artists. The majority of users are professionals that make a living out of it, but there is an increasing number of students and hobbyists that are turning to 3D. And this is especially valid for Blender, due to its open nature.
Do I need to use a farm?
It all depends on the particularities of your workflow and the projects you work on. You may never need to use a farm, you might use it for part of the work, or you could be a regular user. Here are a few scenarios in which using a farm could help:
- The modeling has been finished, you started rendering and realized it takes too long and you’ll miss the deadline.
- You have to render an animation and the total render time is insane (think months).
- You have to show the client the latest changes now and your computer isn’t fast enough.
- You have a frame that takes 24h to render and you need the computer for something else in the meantime.
- When rendering, your computers make the same level of noise as a hairdryer – they are disturbing the work (or sleep) environment.
These are just a few examples coming from my own experience. There are probably a lot more – if you have one that you would like to share, please drop a comment below.
Do I need special skills to use a farm?
Older render farms were notoriously difficult to use and you needed serious computer skills to do it. But the latest generation of farms has very intuitive Web interfaces and even plug-ins that integrate right into the 3D software interface. This means that you can get started in no time and, in some cases, you won’t even need to switch to another application to send your project to the farm.
Where can I get one?
Whatever your 3D program of choice may be, there are plenty of online render farms available. Just google the appropriate key words (“Blender render farm” would be a good choice for Blender) and take it from there. You could also ask the question on a forum – the advantage being that you’ll get some recommendations from the users and thus make a better informed decision.
In the collaborative area, the most popular is renderfarm.fi. If you want to build your own, BlenderCookie has a good tutorial, and there are a few others on Wikipedia.
As for a paid solution, I recommend RenderStreet. You would, of course, expect that, since we built it. And knowing what’s inside, I can vouch for the awesome tech hidden behind the simple interface. But you don’t have to trust me on this. Just ask anyone on the forums or Twitter.
How much does it cost?
Each of the three types of farms has its own type of cost. Let’s examine them all:
The collaborative farms are usually free. However, in order to render your project, you need to have some credits accumulated in your account. And you can get credits by rendering someone else’s projects over time. In fact, you’re paying with computing hours from your machine and on the electricity bill.
Building your own means up-front costs with hardware. Depending on the configurations you choose, it can vary from a couple thousand dollars to over ten grand. This is a one-time cost and then you only have to pay the power bill.
The cloud/datacenter ones have pricing by core-hour, GHz-hour or server-hour. The core-hour and GHz-hour prices are relatively difficult to understand and can be confusing, both when estimating a cost and when reading the bill. The server-hour price is more straightforward: you use one server for two hours, you pay two server-hours. You use 10 servers for one hour, you pay 10 server-hours. There are also farms that bill you by the minute (meaning that if you use 9 hours and 12 minutes you only pay for that, and not for 10 hours).
There is more to come on the subject, so stay tuned. In the meantime, do you have any questions about how render farms work? Ask in the comments below.
Related articles on render farms:
1. What is a render farm?
2. Render farms pro’s and con’s
3. Render farms costs & pricing
4. How does a render farm work
