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Original post by Ganryu
Render farms distribute frames among the connected computers so that each computer handles separate frames.

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Actually, there are some systems which will allow you to split up the individual frames - and even efficiently. For example, The Brazil Rendering System for 3dsmax is excellent and will be able to (can already? haven''t checked it in a while) do that in a render farm. This is especially useful for people who have maybe 3 computers and generally render high quality stills. They can cut rendering time to 1/3.

btw, as I haven''t visited the site in a while, i don''t know what its current state is. however, about 6-7 months ago it was kinda empty because they were focusing more on development. not sure how much info will actually be there.

i always thought it would be kinda fun to write a raytracer....hmmm...

ewen

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Original post by Ganryu
Render farms distribute frames among the connected computers so that each computer handles separate frames.

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As a matter of fact, some raytracers (like Mental Ray) can render one frame accross the network, but I agree most of them don''t.

Note : before choosing between AMD / Intel CPU, do some tests. Example : Lightwave is heavily optimized for SSE2 instructions and therefore Pentium 4 CPUs are really a good choice if you use it.

Hey! That''s a kinda nifty feature, splitting up each frame in separate pieces and rendering the separately.

3DSMAX comes with free network rendering. You may have up to 9999 nodes with each license.

I use a Dual 1Ghz P3 (1gig RAM) for my primary system and 12 P900s (256m RAM each) for my render farm. It works out quite well when rendering animations.

I built each farm machine for $350 (motherboards with built-in graphics, audio, and LAN) and each one render about half as fast as my main box that cost quite a bit more. Of course, since there are 12 of them I can render a lot in a short amount of time.

Oh yes, I use two KVM (keyboard video monitor) switches to alternate between the machines during setup. For the most part you dont have to mess with the farm machines once they are setup.


LostLogic
www.lostlogic.com
Author, Multiplayer Game Programming

Thx for the info LL. Those are some good things to know.