Should I start using Vantage vs using in-house render farm

[nick_eischeid]

Hello All,

I am currently using V-Ray 7. I have an in-house render farm that consists of three additional workstations (these are several years old now). I work on everything from animating a large campus with several buildings or just a still rendering of a relatively simple interior. I am thinking about switching over to use Vantage for both animations and still renderings. The problem I have is that I don't have a RTX GPU in order to try Vantage. I therefore have to convince my CEO to trust me that spending the money for a new workstation is worth the money without first being able to demo Vantage. Do you think it is worth the risk for me to try to get my company to buy me a new workstation so that I can start using Vantage?

Thank you,
Nick

Current Setup:
Windows Pro 10
Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-7960X CPU @ 2.80GHz 2.81 GHz
RAM: 64 GB
GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

[Phillip Miller]

Hi Nick - Have you considered purchasing modern GPUs for your existing workstations instead? This should be less costly and yield close to the same performance of purchasing new workstations with the same GPUs. You can also use GPU Extender boxes if the GPUs won't fit (due to space or power) in your existing machines. Sitting next to me is a 10-year old workstation that has gone through 5 generations of GPUs without a complaint.

[Luma3d]

I had a 5 machine farm before covid, then lost that farm during covid, went to a powerful desktop for production. Fine for stills, but not great for animations. Now... I'm on a laptop with a rtx card and using Vantage for everything... Stills and animations. And with the new 50 series rtx coming things will get even better. Speed and mobility.

[philip kelly]

I don't get that. The desktop with 4090+ will always outstrip a laptop.

[suzanne_doherty]

For me, Vantage isn't quite there to replace a farm, as you can't queue up renders, yet.

But what it is an absolute game changer for is lighting. Lighting scenes is effortless, and it gives you the ability to be creative, try new things, itterate, etc very quickly.

Sometimes I will use Vantage for stills, and occasionally animations, but my default is to use Vantage for scene building, lighting, drafts and pre-vis. Then I'll use CPU rendering for the final work.

[Luma3d]

@philip... the point for use is mobility. We can work anywhere and not be tied down to a desktop or desk. I've been able to work on large datasets with no issues.

[Phillip Miller]

Completely understand the value of mobility - but this wasn't Nick's criteria, as he was looking at buying new workstations.
Now, the flexibility of mobile does come with additional cost and less performance than a desktop would give, and without the ability to upgrade the laptop's GPU in the future.
That's why I like pairing my laptop with an EGPU box so I have the best of both worlds (at a price of course).
The new Thunderbolt 5 options could make this even better. Of course, the EBOX doesn't come on the road with me, so I still need a good GPU in my laptop. Now I just need that new 5090

[nick_eischeid]

Thank you for all of the helpful responses!

Phillip Miller I didn't realize I could add a new RTX to a 7 year old workstation! That will be a lot cheaper. Some of my scenes take around 30gigs of RAM to render. Can I get a RTX with that much video RAM? What happens if my RAM usage exceeds my video RAM amount?

Luma3d How does the render times compare for an animation between your 5 workstation render farm vs. your laptop with RTX using Vantage?

suzanne_doherty When you say you "use CPU rendering for the final work" can you render using the CPU directly in Vantage or do you have to go back to V-Ray to render using CPU?

Thanks again,
Nick

[Luma3d]

Well his question was... "Should I invest in Vantage and get rid of my farm and get a new desktop with a stronger gpu?" He's trying to convince his boss to make the investment on hardware so he can use software. So describing my past setup and current setup is a way of saying Yes... invest in a strong desktop with an rtx card and use Vantage. It has saved my company tons of money by making the switch. Less machines and faster productivity.

[Luma3d]

I used an egpu when I had a msi with crappy card. But with the upgrade to a 4090 in my new laptop, the 3090 in the egpu became obsolete. Plus there's the bottleneck of the thunderbolt cable.

[Luma3d]

Let's put it this way... when I had the farm I never worked on large animations because it would take forever to render. Now with Vantage I say yes to animation requests because it's fast. Definitely under 3 mins per frame. Which was the benchmark I would try to hit on the farm. No need to calculate gi, or make sure that the files are on all the slaves, etc. Just set and go.

[Luma3d]

I never use cpu rendering in Vray anymore. Straight Vantage real-time. The only time I render finals with cpu is on my Corona projects. 45 min 4k images vs under 10 min in Vantage? No brainer.

[suzanne_doherty]

I never use cpu rendering in Vray anymore. Straight Vantage real-time. The only time I render finals with cpu is on my Corona projects. 45 min 4k images vs under 10 min in Vantage? No brainer.

How have you managed to get around the flickering on reflective surfaces and GI blotchiness for animations? Unless I crank up the Vantage settings, the animations just aren't good enough, or it's just as quick to render with Vray CPU.

[suzanne_doherty]

Thank you for all of the helpful responses!


suzanne_doherty When you say you "use CPU rendering for the final work" can you render using the CPU directly in Vantage or do you have to go back to V-Ray to render using CPU?

Thanks again,
Nick

I go back to Vray CPU.

[Luma3d]

Haven't ran into any noticeable flickering in my animations. Knock on wood. Really up to the settings and proper amount of bloom.