Render Farms software

Help and Troubleshooting
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I’m currently working on a project that I totally by accident realized that I could actually do.
Sort of, it is a Render Farm software, where you can upload your 3d file into prepared bip through -headless and with a little bit of scripting.

So I was wondering, how do Render Farm companies handle things like this? Do they do it through web service, or do they have their own propriatery windows based software that you run and send your models or .bips through?

Is there a software for this that one can buy?

1 Like
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Hello,

Actually there is couple option which you can use. I am going to recommended something for you based on my small experience. The best two render farm for me is RenderShot and AlphaRender.

It’s very simple to use, you just save file as package and then you upload it on their website, you got also option integrated on the website to choose quality and settings, but Always make sure you save render settings into your package file.

Alpha Render actually give you 30USD credit for free - this credit is with watermark, but there is simple solution how to delete watermark from output, you just deposit another for example 10 buck and now you got 40USD credit without watermark since you made deposit.

RenderShot in my experience little bit more pricey than AlphaRender, but not to much, just couple percent. But they got better customer service I would say, the reply when there is problem is much more quicker.

You can also you calculator on both websites to calculate how much is gonna cost your render, there is always something like 15percent more what calculator show, so for example if calculator show you, your project is gonna cost to render 10USD, more likely it’s gonna cost you 11-12USD. It’s not a big difference but with larger project this difference can make ‘‘difference’’ :slight_smile:

My recommendation - Alpha Render, if you are going to render something first time, and you want advantage at the beginning with that free credit, this credit can actually help you a lot with rendering.

But how they manage to do it? I have no Idea, I think they are using scripts or something, cause final renders are always uploaded on DropBox, to me it looks like all websites got same script, or similar maybe, cause that process of downloading final files are always same, and also there is lot of similarities.

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Hi TextureMan,

thanks for your reply, I am actually curious on how they do it more so than who can do it.
I’ve done something very similar, for jewellery industry, where you basically upload your 3d model, and through different settings you get the output for ecommerce websites with different permutations based on metal color, gem color, different camera angles, etc.

I was just curious to know how others might have done it, so I don’t end up reinventing the wheel.
I guess the closest to what I’ve done is rendline.com

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I think a lot of companies also use their own scripts. Basically you can just have something like a hot folder on a server where files end up. I think the service part is an important one for clients. I was curious about the ones Texture Man mentioned so I looked at those. I saw Alpha Render is for example CPU based while you have a choice at RenderShot, can make a big difference in the time you need for a render so might be also cheaper in the end. Looking at the FAQ and agreement at RenderShot than I personally think it’s not too friendly if you are pretty new to the rendering bit as a client. Although understandable, it lets you pay for unfinished renders, I can imagine some people need a bit more help at the start.

I saw RenderShot also has an application which makes it all more friendly for the client: RenderShare - RenderShot, it looks friendly and simple and I think it’s mainly a kind of website which is converted to an application which is easy nowadays.

ChaosGroup’s V-Ray is also different, while you can just pick a render farm you can also use a simple button inside their plugin to send it to their render farm.

If you would do renders for a certain industry and are jewellery CAD designer yourself I’m not sure if I would upload my work to the competition since there’s always the risk of models/concepts getting stolen or leaked by security breaches. Think that’s something to keep in mind, not that I’ve confidential things to render but I know from my past at an advertising agency that some bigger companies are quite cautious, with a reason I think.

If I would do a lot of renders every month and I would look at the prices at for example RenderShot I would just grab an old PC, put in two 3090 GPUs, use NVLink for 48GB of VRAM and it would save me 650 a month or 150 for a day of renders. Of course you get your power bill but you are 100% in control and have the same power as RenderShot. Well, that’s if your renders can be done using GPU, if you need CPU because of VRAM limits than it gets way more pricey to have your ‘private’ render farm. I think jewellery is not using that much textures so GPU should be fine.

From what I understand from Rendline.com is that it’s more a template kind of service where you will pick the materials etc on their site. Might be nice for some but I can imagine that for creative jewellery creators everything which is a kind of template is not flexible enough for their needs like combining materials and such.

Anyway, just some personal thoughts, I don’t know the business that well and the few jewellery designers I know are people who do it all without computer let alone they render things :wink: