1st Render Farm....Need Help
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I want to get a render farm going in the studio I am about to work in. We will be working on Macs. I am the one responsible for getting my Sketchup station going.....they are funding it. I never built a render farm before but I know I will need one for this job. I have to give them precise instructions on what to buy but I have zero knowledge about building/buying render farms.
My first instinct was to get the cheapest Quad core system with the most RAM I can find and stick a Nvidia card in it with good CUDA support then network that tower to my workstation. I have a feeling I can find a more efficient solution. I see many approaches and opinions to doing this. I could use some advice from this community on how to proceed. Thanks in advance.
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What render engines will you be using?
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@solo said:
What render engines will you be using?
I will probably be starting with Kerkythea but plan to move on to Thea Render hopefully if they can purchase it. I will also have Blender Cycles too. Nothing too fancy.
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There are many options, personally I am using more GPU these days than CPU, so a machine with two Titans will be my choice, then again the new Thea will use GPU and CPU, so two Titans and a workstation with 24 cores becomes a one machine beast, faster than any farm as it's all done on one machine internally without network crap.
There is a guy on the Thea beta team that has such a beast, he has three Titans, 24 cores (48 threads) and I believe 96 GB ram, his machine realtime renders faster than mine in 10 minutes and with the new Thea I'm talking about scenes with thousands of high poly trees and all.
How much is your budget?
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Thanks for giving me another goal in life Solo. That machine you described will most likely be my personal beast one day. I'm not sure what their budget is but I do know they already purchased the work station machines which are most likely IMacs. Don't think the budget will allow the beast but I will bring it up anyway....who knows right?
It doesn't have to be such a beast right now. I think they would rather stay under $1000,00. As long as I can get some decent renders on a machine away from my work station.
btw, is there a link to a thread with the Thea beta guy with this "beast"? I would love to check it out.
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