Cost guide please

[fixeighted]

I have a potential 96 animations to render.
Each is 1200x780 and each separate animation is 50 frames.
I know that each frame will take a maximum of 5 mins on my machine.
Can someone give me an estimate for the total please?

I did look for some guide on the pages but got bored quickly trying to find a calculator - sorry but it needs one similar to other farm services, if you don't mind me saying
Maybe I missed it, in which case sorry, though move it to the first page, right at the top

[squintnic]

Chaos Cloud is among the most expensive and the most buggy in my experience many other sites have as good UI and better support and cost calculators.
You rendering GPU or CPU?

[fixeighted]

I usually use Rebus, as they were pretty much the first to get their act together and properly support most things....plus yes, their calculator is up front and very helpful.
I thought this cloud would be worth trying if it was either quicker, better or cheaper.

These renders are all cpu, sadly. I would have loved to use gpu as the frame time is tiny in comparison and the quality is vastly better for that tiny frame time.
However, being a product on a matte plane means that is simply impossible to do in one pass, which is just such a constant disappointment

[vladie]

Hi fixeighted,

Currently the best way to estimate the credits that you need for rendering an animation in Chaos Cloud is to submit your animation with production quality and render it using the Frame Step option. E.g. if you have 1000 frames to render, you can set the Frame Step option to 50 hence render each 50th frame. This will give you a sample of different parts of your animation and you can check whether everything renders as expected. Also you will have the credit cost for these frames from which you can calculate the average cost per frame. If you are satisfied with the render results and the calculation, you can clone the animation and render just the missing frames using the filters below the Frame Range field.

I admit that having a calculator will be much easier but it's still not ready. We are working on it currently. Expect a follow-up from us once we are ready.

As for the GPU support, Chaos Cloud can render your animation on GPU cards using RTX. It's not necessary to have an RTX-enabled GPU card locally. Even if it is CUDA, after preparing your scene locally, you can switch the setting to RTX in the V-Ray options locally. Then submit your scene to Chaos Cloud. We'll respect your selection and will render in Chaos Cloud with RTX enabled. Which will make the rendering even faster.

Please let me know if I can help you further.

Bests,
Vladie

[fixeighted]

Thanks for the response.
I think the main thing is that I wouldn't really like to pay to do a frame increment test, as that is what I do locally to determine averages for even a calculator.
I realise that those credits would likely be refunded; it's just the process that is at the moment a bit less obvious than other services.
Naturally I'd need to know it was both simpler and less expensive than something else

Unfortunately I just can't trust gpu at this time, and with the specific inabilities in this particular scene (refractions with occluding objects) it is impossible anyway.

I'm sure I'll give it another try when it is a bit more developed.

[squintnic]

try renderbuzz
they are the cheapest CPU farm for vray CPU by a mile.
the render submitter is good - and the people that run it are resoponsive and fast

please dont waste time on chaos cloud OR vray gpu - i learnt the hard way on a deadline. in my case cloud didnt support 'keyframed noise' which as a basic map and featrure of max seemed insane to me. it wasnt doucmented either, even though i got my credits back after complaining it just goes to show both these products are not production ready.

[vladie]

Hi squintnic ,

Thanks for bringing back the issue with the keyframed noise. It should be fixed in the latest V-Ray for 3ds Max version. I believe we talked about it. But please let me know if it is still reproducible.

As for the rest of your points, it's up to the users to try and decide. Definitely we take into account your comments and will act on them.

Bests,
Vladie

[squintnic]

Thanks Vladie I rendered that elsewhere in the end. If you could make the price more accesible it would be a big help and at the minimum support basic 3d max features.

How can you have a product thats developed by Chaos but doenst even match the feature support of other non Chaos operated render farms and at a higher price? The price would be over double for me to use Chaos Cloud vs other farms. On a job with a $10k USD render budget why use you when I can get it for close to $6k with very fast support elsewhere?

These are questions I would like adressed. I think ultimately we will see Chaos Cloud fall away, the same way we will see Vray for Unreal, VRscans etc die a slow death. Focus please on the main software and getting Vray GPU to the level or performance RS has and that means no 3 min waits to show a preview.


I know I sound like a broken record here but its frustrating to see half baked features and experimental softweare touted as production ready, on a deadline I have no time for a 2 day turnaround on a basic issue.

[vladie]

Hi squintnic,

Thanks for the follow-up and taking the time to explain your pains. Understand and agree with your point. That's why we are open to any support feedback and refund such cases. Sometimes we are proactive when we discover an open issue, but we miss some and then we count on user feedback. And as we investigate the issues thorough and deep into V-Ray (the issue might be in several points in the workflow), sometimes the support answers take time. For which we apologies.

Since we last spoke here in the forums we improved and added support for several missing features. This docs article is a good starting point if you want to check whether something is supported. Another way is if you use the Preview button from the V-Ray for 3ds Max Cloud Submit UI. It renders a preview version of your scene locally with V-Ray Standalone (which gives a good approximation of what to expect in Chaos Cloud). And as the preview is rendered locally, it doesn't cost you Cloud credits. Lastly you can use the V-Ray for 3ds Max Scene Analyzer which scans your scene for known missing features.

Thanks,
Vladie