Recently, my actual far surpassed my estimated. I mean, 5X the dollar amount. I am using my local estimated render time, which is usually high, and sending my image to Rebus based on the estimated cost. Also, I am using my actual computer specs, too. I can’t budget utilizing a farm if I can’t count on what it’ll cost. Am I doing something wrong? Should the estimated be pretty darn close to the actual? I only render stills, so there should be little room for error. What would one expect to pay for a 3200 x 1800 still? The last one was estimated at $20 something and it ended up being $80 something. My stuff isn’t big budget animation, so I just would like to see a flat fee based system. I would like to know that I can send a still for around $20.
Dont know about their estimate, never used it. I think it used to be more for animations but that might have changed. But I´m guessing you use Distributed rendering on Rebus. If youre not in a hurry its soo much cheaper to only render on one of their computers. My finals are usually around 5-10 dollars, and never above 25-30. Im on an old i7-2600k @ 4,5 Ghz so rebus still renders about twice as fast as mine.
Have you emailed their support? Maybe they can figure out if something is wrong…
You aren’t rendering through DR locally and using that time for comparison are you?
What I tend to do is render locally at 500x500 (or 1000x1000) and multiply that by 64 (or 16) to assess the time for the 4k render. This time I then use on Rebus. (this also allows you to double check everything looks good and nothing is missing)
never tried to estimate anything before sending jobs, so I might be wrong, but have you estimated the job on a single machine and then distributed the render on the farm? rendering stills on more than one machine is very expensive and not really worth it, unless you really need the job done in a few minutes.
I too have experienced weird things. Rendered the same image twice, same setup, only changed a few things, same settings and DR. Once it cost 20$, and the other one 120$. I was waiting a looong time for 7 nodes that seemed to be stuck on something. I don’t have the intention of using a farm in the future soon only if it’s necessary and I’m on a really tight deadline.
They have responded, which is always great to have good support. They said to send a test frame, so they must have mis understood that I render stills. I can only assume things sometimes get stuck in the render; maybe V-Ray 3 might handle these things better (bright spots).
Well i had the same issues with rebus.. While rendering a sequence, average render time of single frame was 5 mints where as some nodes in rebusfarm took as long as 30 min each frame in a set of 5 to 10 frames so my bill became drastically high… When i tried rendering same set of frames from same file on my machine to check, they are not taking more thn 5 min each. There support team is good & they refunded the money of troublesome frames but now i am afraid of using rebusfarm again.. i cant beg all the time for refund..
My last job went bonkers and I haven’t used Rebus since. However, I’ll need to render out 23 stills within a month, so I want to get to the bottom of it.
Bobby,
When you send your renders off do you use DR?
If you want to save some money send them off without DR. They might take a little longer to render but they will cost much much much less.
Some of our images would take 24 hours to render on one machine. Is it still ‘safe’ to send to Rebus in that way?
Absolutely “safe” and if you arent in a hurry then it is a perfect way to use Rebus.
I was using online renderfarms for awhile but then I decided to invest in cheap render nodes, because to me $20 per render is two 60mm fans, $150 is 16GB RAM, $300 is i7-4770 cpu and so on and on!
I still render online sometimes when I have crazy deadlines, but now usually on my 6 node cheap renderfarm!
You also need a V-Ray node license, which is what is keeping me from building out a farm. My understanding is, basically, you need a license for every machine.[quote=“artmaknev, username:artmaknev”]
I was using online renderfarms for awhile but then I decided to invest in cheap render nodes, because to me $20 per render is two 60mm fans, $150 is 16GB RAM, $300 is i7-4770 cpu and so on and on!
I still render online sometimes when I have crazy deadlines, but now usually on my 6 node cheap renderfarm!
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Yes thats true you need vray license for each node… I had vray since 1.0 and upgraded throughout the years so I didn’t feel the high costs, right now its definitely costly to buy them…one license cost about $500 and one fully assemble cheap render node hardware cost about $750, which is prompting people to buy the most expensive hardware, I wish chaosgroup had an option for cheap renderfarms hehe 
Yes please!
We are just giving this a whirl on Rebus now and will see how much cheaper the rendering is. However, I thought Rebus charged per CPU hour so it wouldn’t matter how many machines were employed. Am I wrong?
DOnt… if u need more machines is more money!!!
Yep… the more machines, the more the money.
I wonder what’s the point of using a renderfarm, if you’re not using its full power, you’re just rendering as slow as you’re at home/work? The only thing is you that can keep working, is that it?
It’s much faster, if you want to pay for the horse power. Uploading all the assets and waiting for your turn in the queue, it’s not faster, unless of course, you want to pay for it. It cost more for the power and to get in the front of the line.[quote=“Vizioen, username:Vizioen”]
I wonder what’t the point of using a renderfarm, if you’re not using its full power, you’re just rendering as slow as you’re at home/work? The only thing is you that can keep working, is that it?
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