Renderfarm recommendations and advice

[stevesideas]

Hi guys,

I have a job I am quoting for. The biggest problem of all is finding a render farm with reasonable pricing.

I basically have an animation that is going to last between 10 & 15 minutes. From my calculations this equates to 18000 frames.

When I use an estimator on a renderfarm site I assume a frame will take an hour (I think possibly more as it needs to be rendered to HD). I also input that I use 4 cpu cores. I then say the total frames are 18000 and then the cost comes out at a rediculous price. The UK site I tried came in at around 45k !!

Am I calculating something wrong ?

Another point is that I need a farm that supports 64 bit max 2009 with the latest vray.

Any links, tips or help is really appreciated.

Ta

[tricky]

Good grief! That is ridiculous.

Mind you, a 10-15 minute animation is an awful long walkthrough by anyones standards. Is it architectural? A UK site or one of these Dubai affairs? I assume by your shock you don't feel that your client would be prepared to spend the £45k on rendering, plus, let me guess, another £45k on the actual animation production that you would be doing?

[stevesideas]

Its actually an aircraft walkthrough that will be shown in an Imax theatre. I have been told it needs to be rendered to 1080p.

In terms of cost for rendering I think yes, that is way too much.

In terms of the cost for the project..my estimate came in a lot less than 45k thats for sure. But details are sketchy at this moment so its a case of re-evaluating the cost once i get more information.

What do you think you would charge for getting aircraft data sets and having to optimise, texture them, light the scene and clean up green screen footage, and then composite the whole lot together, with possible simple animations as well as camera movement ??

This job is fairly big..in fact, the biggest I have had come in yet, so maybe my quote is well off ...

Advice on costing or renderfarms is really appreciated

[Morbid Angel]

sorry man, things are not looking good. I went to here:
http://www.rendertime.co.uk/renderfarm.html

and input some numbers...for you it came out to roughly 46,000 punds! that is 18000 frames at roughly 1 hour per frame...

Perhaps you can talk to Natty directly, he runs the rendertime render farm, and he can give you some more advice.

[stevesideas]

Funnily enough, that is the one I did the cost calc on. Im a bit concerned as if the price of rendering is this much the job may not happen at all....

I think I may wait until I get more info about how long each frame will take. All i can do for now is submit these figures and see what my client thinks.

That amount of money is a small film budget...not a 15 minute animation

[Morbid Angel]

no kidding.
Well, it really can depend on frame time. If the frames render in 2-5 min per frame, no problem. But from my experience, full HD 1080p of full frame cg....will not render in this time. Not unless you bake everything...and that can get very complicated.

[dlparisi]

Not to mention you'll most likely have render out the animation several times to tweak it and get it right. Of course, those frames can be lower quality, lower rez, with fewer frames but at 18,000 frames to start you're still looking at a lot of frames to render meaning you may want to do those on a farm as well. It's not looking good.

[stevesideas]

I should be able to do the low res/low quality frames on my 2 computer farm at home. Oh well. Will speak to the client again on Monday and listen to him fall of his chair when I give him the cost...heh

[marisalibox]

try contancting

www.marulli.it

http://www.marulli.it/renderfarm-eng.html

[dlparisi]

I should be able to do the low res/low quality frames on my 2 computer farm at home.

It'll take forever...

[stevesideas]

It'll take forever...

I wont be doing a full 10 min preview Only sections to test the look and feel of the animation. Probably some high quality screen shots at various stages too and then a 3dsmax preview animation (no textures etc). Thats usually enough to wet the clients appetite.

Thanks everyone for the advice so far.

[dlparisi]

Even rendering a 10th of the frames at low res and quality is going to take a few days. It's not impossible, it just won't be very productive is all.