Now that you know what a render farm is from our previous article, I’ll explain in the following article what you need to get started working with a render farm.
Who uses a render farm?
The main users are probably the movie studios. If rendering a movie to a typical home computer would take 16.000 years and rendering would exceed life expectancy, rendering at home is no longer a reasonable choice. After all, users expect breathtaking special effects.
How to get started working with a render farm?
As 3D technology became more accessible and affordable, different categories of people started using 3D rendering farms. These include production agencies, post-production studios, architects, industrial designers, and 3D artists. The majority of users are professionals who make a living from it, but there are more and more students and hobbyists who are choosing 3D. This is especially true for Blender, as it is open source and therefore easily available to all users free of charge.
Should a render farm be claimed?
Everything depends on the specifics of your workflow and the projects you are working on. It may be that you are using them for some of your work or that you are a normal user. Here are a few scenarios where the users of a render farm could help:
- The modeling is complete, you’ve started rendering and noticed that it’s taking too long and you’ll miss the deadline.
- You need to render animation and the whole rendering time is going crazy.
- You need to show the client the latest changes now and your computer isn’t fast enough.
- You have a frame that takes 24 hours to render and you need the computer for something else in the meantime.
- When rendering, your computers make the same amount of noise as a hairdryer – they disturb the working environment.
These are just a few examples from my own experience. There are probably many more situations where a render farm would be a great help.
Do I need special skills?
Older render farms were notoriously difficult to operate and advanced computer skills were needed to do that. But the latest generation of render farms has very intuitive web interfaces and even plug-ins that integrate directly into the 3D software interface. This means you can get started in no time and in some cases, you don’t even have to switch to another application to send your project to the render farm.
Cre: viscircle.de