DR vs Net Render with VRay 3

[JabbaTheNut]

With VRay 3, is it feasible to render animation using Distributed Rendering (i.e., distributing frame buckets) rather than Network Rendering (i.e., distributing frames)?

I realize that historically it was advised that one should use Network Rendering with multi-frame animations. However, has this advise changed since VRay 3?

If Network Rendering is still the recommended approach, which Windows-based render manager would you recommend? Please note that I am using a small render farm and Deadline seems too expensive for my purposes.

[Morbid Angel]

In terms of DR with animation, not much has changed. You almost always encounter a scenario where few buckets remain stuck for some time and all other machines / cpus sit idle during that time. Network rendering is always better in that regard.

Why not use built in backburner if budget is your concern its free and does the job. Its not amazing, but for a small farm it should be enough...

[JabbaTheNut]

Thanks Morbid. I guess I will use backburner.

Is there a better alternative? I don't mind paying for a good solution. However, I have 4 render nodes and $250 per node (cost of Deadline) is just too steep for me.

[Morbid Angel]

Actually I think deadline is $190 per license, then support and maintenance after one year or whatever. I think about it like this - how much user time I will waste on problems/debugging through out a year vs how much the software will save me time and in the past I spent a lot of time on certain things which deadline has helped me tremendously, like software deployment, farm management (DR management), command script submitting etc etc these are really nice features which save a lot of time.

In backburner you can't even requeue a single frame if it failed But I bet other render managers do a lot of that already for example at one facility I worked for they use muster, which allows you to use one license on up to 30 nodes or so if I recall correctly so you pay a certain $ for a bunch of licenses upfront (its not very expensive) but it has some caveats - it has no submission scripts, so you can't send a job from max or maya to it, you need to either write your own or submit from standalone UI which is a pain. Maybe its changed from v8 but in 7 that's how it worked.

There are other render managers there, render pal, royal render you can look at what they have to offer and kind of make your decision based on that.

[JabbaTheNut]

One final question...

I am a hobbyist who is starting an animated series. Each episode will be approximately 10 minutes, or so. I have 4 decent render machines. Would you recommend that I spend money on render node licensing for the 4 machines (i.e., VRay nodes plus Deadline nodes) or go with a render service such as RebusFarm? I do not have experience with such services and cannot easily translate the cost structure (e.g., cost per GHz). For example, what would be the approximate cost for a 10 minute animation under a cost per GHz structure?

[Morbid Angel]

It would be most definitely better\cheaper to buy licenses for vray and render nodes, then go to remote farm. 10 minute animation (depending on your render time per frame) would cost quite a bit, for example if I run the numbers for 10 minutes at 24 fps you will get 14400 frames, that is a lot of frames even if they are fast and there is always a chance you will have to re-render or render a few times, for whatever reasons. As a startup, cost is important for you and having local control over render will do a better job for you (this is how it happened for me anyway when I was starting up)

[JabbaTheNut]

Morbid,

Thanks for the counsel. I checked the cost for a render service using the expected 14,400 frames at approximately 3 minutes per frame. The cost was huge (approx $600)! No doubt, many of the frames would be more than 3 minutes. This would cost even more. I will most likely go the Deadline node route. The all-in cost would definitely be less in the long run.

[Morbid Angel]

That's the general consensus with remote farms. Unless you have a ton of money to throw at rendering, remote farms are used as a last resort type scenario (at least in my experience) for example if you have to crank out 10 minutes of rendering in a few days or less and your current hardware config can't handle that kind of load in time, the remote farm would be the only solution.