If you’re a 3D designer or animator, at some point, you’ve probably looked at your computer and sighed at the duration of time it’ll take to render out a scene that you’re working on. Rendering animated or 3D sequences can be difficult and time-consuming, especially when working from a single machine.
However, that doesn’t always have to be the case. Just like you can offload storage to the cloud, you can also offload your rendering tasks to a rendering farm, saving a ton of time.
What Is a Render Farm?
A render farm is a large collection of machines specialized in 3D rendering called render nodes put together for one task—rendering 3D frames and animations. By dividing the rendering work between hundreds of machines, rendering times can be reduced significantly, making corrections, editing, and the overall production cycle much quicker and easier. Keep in mind that3D rendering is different from 3D modeling, which has its own place in the production pipeline.
Rendering is a time-consuming process. To produce a second of fluid motion, you need at least 24 frames. On top of that, many animated movies and scenes are rendered well over that. So, when talking about an animated movie or sequence that lasts well over an hour, you can imagine how long it’ll take to render.
On top of that, the amount of time it takes to render a single frame depends on the complexity of the scene within the frame, the render settings, and the available computing power.
While you may be able to render a simple frame in mere seconds, a more complicated composition can take minutes or even hours. Additionally, your machine will be tied up during the rendering process, meaning you won’t be able to get any other work done.
This is where render farms come in handy. They usually have hundreds of render nodes that can divide rendering nodes among themselves to speed up the process.
What Is a Render Farm Node?
A render farm node is a single workstation with its own set of hardware, that is, a CPU, GPU, and memory. When it comes to rendering, individual frames are divided between these render nodes, and considering a render farm will usually have hundreds if not thousands of such “nodes,” the rendering process is quickly finished.
For example, consider a 10-second animation running at 30 frames per second. Assuming it takes one hour to render a frame, a time that’s quite viable given the complexity of modern 3D animations, it’ll take your personal workstation 300 hours to render the entire sequence.
On the other hand, a render farm can divide those frames between its render nodes. So, if you send your scene to a render farm with 100 nodes, it’ll render it at 100 frames per hour, cutting the total time to only three hours.
What Are the Advantages of Using a Render Farm?
As you may probably guess, using a render farm has some obvious advantages.
1. Faster Rendering
Rendering can easily eat up hours or even days from your project’s time, not to mention that your machine will be practically useless for any other task. Using a rendering farm helps you get your renders done much faster, giving you more time to focus on the animation or design work.
2. Better Quality Control
A byproduct of faster rendering also means you have time to focus more on design and testing. Instead of making everything in the dark and hoping it all comes together in the final render, you can render your project (or parts of it) multiple times for better quality control and experimentation.
Additionally, there’s an element of risk when you’re rendering your projects on your personal workstations, as in case they crash, you’ll lose all your work. Render farms help mitigate this risk as well.
3. Ease of Use
Most, if not all, render farms have some sort of application or web interface for you to submit your projects for rendering. This removes some of the hassle required to render files, especially if you’re working with a local machine and need to move files between machines for rendering.
4. Technical Customer Support
A lot of render farms also have 24x7 customer support that can help resolve any issues and solve any queries you may have regarding the rendering cost, time, or any specific requirements that you may have.
What Are the Disadvantages of Using a Render Farm?
Not all things are perfect; the same stands true for render farms. Sure, there are advantages to using them over rendering locally on your machine, but there are a few negatives you need to look out for as well.
1. Security
Keep in mind that when you submit a project for rendering to a farm, you’re handing over intellectual property to them. Most render farms will sign an NDA with you to protect your work, but there’s still an element of risk as you introduce a third party into the production pipeline.
2. Software Compatibility
Different users or production teams use different programs and plugins to build their renders. This means that unless a render farm supports the program and/or plugin you’re using, you won’t be able to take advantage of their services.
If you’re using something very common like Blender or Maya, there’s a good chance that a render farm will support the program. If you’re working with Blender, we’ve gotseven tips for a smooth Blender workflowyou should check out.
However, if you’re using proprietary programs or plugins, you will have to talk to the service provider regarding compatibility issues.
How Much Does a Render Farm Cost?
The cost of running a render farm is quite high. Not only do you need top-of-the-line hardware in a large volume, but you also need to keep it powered up constantly. This means that maintenance and infrastructure costs are quite high.
Additionally, the different programs and plugins you might need to render different animations with different requirements also factor into the costs. Software licenses aren’t cheap, even if you’re buying them in bulk.
That said, as an end user, using render farms isn’t exactly very expensive. you’re able to find online render farms with prices starting as low as $0.004/GHz/Hour. Of course, the cost will vary between different render farms and based on your specific rendering requirements, but you can use the power of commercial render farms without necessarily breaking the bank.
Making Your Own Render Farm vs. Renting Render Farm Space
If you have a spare computer, you may also make your own render farm. However, keep in mind this requires the latest hardware and the costs associated with maintaining it, in addition to the technical expertise required to keep everything running.
Depending on the type of rendering and how frequently you do it, dedicating one or two workstations in your office to rendering and maintaining them periodically might save you money and time.
However, if your projects increase in complexity, a rendering farm may be cheaper, at least individually. Any more than a couple of workstations will drive up the hardware and maintenance costs significantly, so keep that in mind.
In most cases, unless you’re working with a major production studio with a big budget, going with a commercial render farm is far simpler, if not cheaper.
Render Farms Cut Rendering Time—at a Price
Rendering farms are a great tool for designers and animators to save time and resources by outsourcing the rendering part of the production pipeline. Render farms have significant advantages over rendering locally, and in most cases, will help you produce better, higher quality work in no time.
