What is an Online Render Farm and its Role?

What is Cloud Rendering?With the development of cloud computing, cloud rendering has come out in the CG industry. What is cloud rendering? Cloud-based rendering, also called cloud rendering, is a remote rendering service that relies on cloud computing technology, allowing users to submit local files to a cloud server and then have the rendering done by a cluster of remote computers. Finally, users download the rendering jobs from the cloud server.Cloud rendering refers to the technology that transfers the 2D or 3D graphics rendering from the client to the cloud server. The application of cloud rendering can greatly simplify the client. That’s to say, with display and network access functions, users can enjoy top-level graphics processing capabilities, which will make the same graphics application appear on different terminal devices without distinction.How does Cloud Rendering Work?The background script of the cloud rendering service platform will complete the background server environment configuration according to the files, triggers instructions, and user parameter settings. Then, the dispatcher dispatches a server that meets the requirements to compute/render the specified task. Finally, the server will notify the user of the render status when the computation is complete. If you use the Fox Renderfarm desktop client, generated assets will download automatically, and if you are a web client user, you need to download them manually.How Much Time Will I Save with a Cloud Rendering ServiceDifferent projects’ computing times vary considerably. Cloud rendering services provide powerful computing capabilities. Theoretically, the more render nodes are assigned, the shorter the computing time is. For example, distributed rendering provided by Fox Renderfarm can compute a render job with multiple servers together, which can save time drastically. The render job that takes one month to render locally can even be completed in 15 minutes in Fox Renderfarm. The approximate time saved can be calculated in the cost estimator.Here are some projects that also use a cloud rendering services:How Much Does Cloud Rendering Cost?The factors affecting the price are as follows:Server configuration: the higher the configuration, the faster the speed and the shorter the rendering time and the higher the price.Number of servers: the higher the number of servers, the faster the rendering speed, the shorter the time and the higher the price.Size of the project: the bigger the project, the longer the rendering time and the higher the price.Software and renderer: different software with different renderers will have different rendering speeds, and many renderers have different versions and different rendering times. GPU rendering is faster than CPU rendering, which will be a little higher in price.Cloud rendering platform: different cloud rendering platforms have different rendering speeds and prices will vary due to the different server resource configurations each cloud rendering platform has. But generally cloud rendering platforms will provide free testing experience services.Take the Fox Renderfarm as an example.CPU Pricing:GPU Pricing:How do I Use Cloud Rendering?Users can package their own customized files, upload the packaged files to the cloud rendering server through the cloud rendering client, make full use of the computer hardware resources in the cluster network, and calculate the complex 3D scene through a large number of computer calculations to generate a preview image or the final animated image for visual effect adjustment or post-production synthesis.Better rendering hardware, lower rendering costs and easier to use. These are the points where cloud rendering has advantages over traditional rendering.Why do I Need to Use a Cloud Rendering Service?For example, the producer made an interior rendering. If the rendering is based on the 3600X2500 size, a general computer will take at least 3 to 6 hours, but if you use a cloud rendering service, you only need to upload the file to the client, rendering time can less than 1 hour. Cloud rendering is several times faster than house render farm. And during the rendering, it does not take up the producer's machine. And for the producer, you don't need to always be in front of the computer, you can view the rendering results anytime, anywhere.What Difficulties Does Cloud Rendering Face?The difficulties faced by cloud rendering are more complex than conventional cloud computing applications. This is mainly due to the demanding requirements of 3D rendering for hardware performance and command response. The cloud rendering system may face the rendering requests of thousands of users, which will be huge pressure on the back-end server system. Compared with conventional cloud computing applications, when cloud rendering meets the needs of the same number of users, the hardware performance needs at least several tens of times higher than that of cloud computing, such as Gmail, Google Docs, and other commercial applications to scientific computing.Cloud rendering requires servers with amazing graphics performance, otherwise, it cannot meet the simultaneous rendering requests of a large number of users.1. Efficient data transmission or synchronization capabilities.2. Efficient and accurate matching between the cloud computing environment and the user's local CG production environment.3. Network and storage. Cloud rendering needs to connect to mass storage to save the rendered digital content products. Rendering 1 hour of HD sequence requires about 1TB of storage resources. When all rendering servers output data to the central storage at the same time, network planning becomes a yardstick to measure the final performance of the cluster system.4. Efficient, stable, and reasonable task distribution management tool. No matter how strong a single rendering node is, it will also cause a waste of resources without good management. Rendering management does not simply the arrangement of render machines. Qualified rendering management solutions embrace a well-designed system architecture. Different technical indicators need different solutions. It can be said that the hardware selection and construction only completed 20% of the overall construction of the render farm and 50% of the effort needed to plan the rendering investment.5. Cluster computing has a problem of efficiency. The number of CPUs and rendering time will be different from the actual situation, and the actual time used by different systems is not the same. The larger the number of CPUs, the shorter the rendering time, and they are inversely proportional. But in fact, the time spent on animation rendering and the number of CPUs is not linearly inversely proportional. The key to the problem lies in communication and software algorithms, including network communication and communication between the PC's internal CPU, memory, and hard disk. How many node computers, based on the number of CPUs, are used in the system are also issues that need to be considered. This requires a cluster rendering management software with excellent algorithms for scheduling to exert the performance of each CPU.Is Cloud Rendering Good?The answer is yes. You can check out the benefits of cloud rendering below:1. Powerful Rendering SpeedFox Renderfarm is one of the top three render farms in the world with plenty of rendering nodes and flexible solutions, which could definitely save your time in the rendering process.2. Secure & ConfidentialFox Renderfarm has implemented a set of security strategies including banking security level computing center, Uninterruptible Power Supply, 24/7 CCTV monitoring, and strong encryption of data transmission. Fox Renderfarm has successfully completed MPA’s Content Security Best Practices and officially become a TPN-accredited vendor. We are committed to building a more secure cloud render farm that better protects the privacy of the project of our beloved customers.3. 24/7 Customer Service and Technical SupportFox Renderfarm has an outstanding team with over 20 years’ experience in the CG industry. Around the clock customer service and technical support could always be a lifesaver if users met any problem when rendering.We also provide customized rendering services and a Key Account service team, which aims to provide the best cloud rendering solutions and technical support for our dear customers.4. Affordable PricingFox Renderfarm offers students, teachers, and educational institutions an affordable pricing scheme (Diamond level membership) to support educational purposes.We support flexible solutions with the best price for clients by lowering the cost from our end.5. Easy to UseFox Renderfarm has both webpage version and desktop client version, which are user-friendly, such as drag and drops project submission, preview during rendering, etc. The UI and pipeline are optimized continuously according to users' habits of the animation industry, which are easy to use.We also provide free services of Raysync Cloud for our users in the rendering process, which is a cloud rendering platform for data storage and transferring at a high speed.6. CSR: Green Data CenterThe electricity of Fox Renderfarm's green data center is all generated by wind and water power which is natural & clean. The data center is located where the climate is dry and the temperature is extremely low all year round, so it's not necessary to use air conditioners for cooling most times. The average PUE of our data center is under 1.2 which means the energy-saving ability is highly effective. Every time you use Fox Renderfarm for rendering, you are making contributions to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.The Best Cloud Rendering ServicesFox Renderfarm is the industry's leading provider of cloud rendering services and an excellent render farm. In operation since 2011, Fox Renderfarm has earned a reputation for quality performance, great customer service and flexible pricing plans. With over 20 years of experience, the pioneering core team serves over 400,000 users and top leading visual effects companies and animation studios from over 100 countries or regions, with clients including multiple awards and Oscar winners. He is also a TPN-accredited render farm. Fox Renderfarm offers a free $25 trial for new registrants now.Let's take the Maya web submission process as an example, only 4 steps in Fox Renderfarm: submit > analyze > render > download,Click the "Submit" button on the left, select the software for submission> set a project path (Note: select a project path to map the local Maya project path)> select the document for rendering, after that, click "Next".Add software configuration after submitting the job (Note: selection of the rendering system), click "Go Analysis" and wait patiently for the analysis to be completed.Click the job with "Analysis Done", set render parameters and then submit it for rendering (Note: the rendering actually starts only at this job)On the rendering page, click the job > export the file > download.The cloud rendering platform can dynamically adjust the scale of the cloud rendering platform. When the rendering requirements reach the peak warning, the dynamic adjustment automatically expands more computing resources, all the adjustment are automated, and the software running environment and fault tolerance rate is extremely high. Can meet the rendering needs of a variety of software. If you want to learn more about what cloud rendering is, we offer a US $25 free trial, welcome to take an experience.Fox Renderfarm is one of the world's largest commercial cloud rendering services with hundreds of thousands of users worldwide, including animation studios, VFX companies, and animation education institutions. We support CPU & GPU rendering at competitive prices and now offer a free $25 trial for every new user.Enjoy your cloud rendering journey with Fox Renderfarm!

When rendering, the most important thing is the time needed and the hardware available. This rendering process requires a lot of computing power to create images or videos quickly. GPU is the computing power of graphics and is increasingly used to render CAD models. There are special processors in the GPU that can execute commands used to edit and display images and videos quickly. In particular, rendering video requires more power and more time to render as many individual images as possible. These images and videos can be rendered in a matter of minutes, hours or even days, depending on the 3D CAD model. For example, to create a 20 second long animated video at 30 frames per second, a total of 600 individual frames are required. Therefore, if one frame takes 10 minutes to render, the complete rendering process would take 100 hours.Why Do You Need a Render Farm?Typically, your workstation consists of a personal or office computer with a CPU and GPU. On this workstation, your 3D CAD raw data is designed and rendered into realistic images or videos. In terms of rendering, powerful hardware is required, including a graphics card. Due to the additional hardware, costs increase significantly, including higher operating and maintenance costs. In addition to the high costs, setting up rugged workstations can be time-consuming when you need to expand or scale your hardware. It's time to consider using a rendering service or outsourcing your work to a render farm.The evolution of distributed and parallel computing technologies has paved the way for the concept of render farms. An offline render farm typically contains a group of computers that are connected together in a network in order to render in an animated model. Each computer in the cluster is called a render node. An animated scene usually contains a number of individual frames. In a render farm, each frame is simultaneously rendered independently in a different render node, or multiple frames are rendered independently and linearly at the same time in a render node containing multiple GPUs. As a result, this significantly reduces rendering time. In some render farms, in order to automatically assign tasks to each render node, render job management software (provided by the render farm or a third party such as Deadline Monitor)) is used as a queue manager and assigns render tasks to the appropriate render node. Rendering tasks are provided as a service using cloud computing technology, which is referred to as rendering as a service.Rendering as a Service (RaaS) is based on the principle of cloud-based rendering. The files to be rendered are uploaded and sent to the RaaS service provider and the rendering task is completed using virtual machines in its render farm. Using a RaaS service, rendering deadlines can be determined and the number of virtual machines may be increased to meet the deadlines accordingly. The advantage of RaaS services is that users only pay for the resources used on an hourly basis. As a result, animation studios do not need to invest much money in building their own render farms or ruggedised workstations. However, as RaaS services follow different business models, the potential and target users of RaaS services, that is, animators, 3D studios, freelancers or students, need to spend a lot of time to explore, analyze and identify the right RaaS service provider.Depending on each render farm, they choose a specific type of RaaS service (including IaaS, PaaS and SaaS) to grow their business. In this article, Fox Renderfarn presents a comparison between IaaS and SaaS and gives a top list of render farms that follow the IaaS or SaaS model. You can use the list to decide which render farm is better for you.In general, there are three service models for cloud computing, IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) and PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service). However, cloud rendering farms are usually delivered in the form of SaaS and IaaS models. This article details the differences between SaaS and IaaS and lists the SaaS and IaaS render farms that are right for you.SAAS Render FarmSaaS (Software as a Service) is another cloud computing offering that gives users access to a provider's cloud-based software. Users do not need to install 3D software or renderers on their local devices. SaaS provides a complete software solution that you can purchase from a cloud service provider on a pay-as-you-go basis. All underlying infrastructure, middleware, applications and data are located in the service provider's data centre. The service provider manages the hardware and software, you simply upload your work to their system and get the output after waiting for the render farm to render it.As a workflow, the 3D model is built on your workstation and then uploaded to the SaaS render farm. The render station can be extended by a number of individual render stations, thus creating a render farm. The render farm consists of a number of individual render nodes. These individual computer nodes can be used individually or in combination. This setting allows optimisation and easy scaling of the requirements of the corresponding rendering job. For example, if you have a video, you can order multiple render nodes at the same time, or if you have different images, you can individually select a large number of nodes where each node renders each frame at the same time. Assigning tasks to each render node requires a render manager or an applet belonging to the respective rendering program.Admittedly, users certainly don't know what the exact machine specs are? Wondering whether they are using a software license or a cracked version? SaaS render farms can run marketing campaigns and indicate that their machine specs are state-of-the-art CPUs and GPUs, or fly the banner of supporting all software or render engines, but who knows what they currently have in the render farm. On the bright side, users are primarily using the number of render nodes to get their work done on SaaS render farms, rather than the power of the computer. The advantage of using a cloud rendering farm service for rendering is that the number of render nodes can be scaled up or down instantly depending on the user's needs. As animators have to pay for the total number of rendering hours using the cloud render farm, they can avoid investing in the huge infrastructure required for rendering.However, the actual rendering costs are not clearly stated on the render farm's website. Indirect cost variables can be added that significantly increase the actual cost compared to the estimated cost given on the website. Indirect cost variables could be software licensing, data storage, activation time and usage time. Another key factor influencing customer behavior is functionality. Does the render farm guarantee that the upload file and rendering time will be the same as the estimated time or that the rendered file will meet your requirements? For example, they estimate a file upload time of around 15 minutes for 5GB of data, but it actually takes over 2 hours to transfer 5GB of data to the render farm system. Also, due to missing textures or missing files, the render farm may render something completely different to your requirements and output it. What you should do before choosing a SaaS render farm is to consider:What software do they support?Is the render farm compatible with your own software, renderers and plugins?How long does it take to upload files and render them? Or how many nodes can you choose from?What is the cost of the render farm?Is it difficult to use that render farm? (Some render farms are not user friendly and will take you a lot of time to get used to it.)If you use CPU-based rendering that requires a large number of computers to complete a project, you should choose a SaaS render farm because you can take advantage of the number of render nodes, where each node renders each frame at the same time. Popular support software such as 3Ds Max Corona, 3Ds Max Vray, RenderMan should be rendered on a SaaS render farm. Outstanding SaaS render farms are Fox Renderfarm and others.IAAS Render FarmIaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is a form of cloud computing that provides basic computing, networking and storage resources to users over the Internet and on a pay-as-you-go basis. IaaS enables end users to scale up and down resources as needed, thereby reducing the need for high upfront capital expenditure or unnecessary owned infrastructure. IaaS consists of a set of physical and virtualized resources that provide consumers with the basic building blocks needed to run 3D programs or plugins and workloads in the cloud.In the IaaS model, the render farm provider gives you and your studio control of the machine, and your studio will manage the operating system, database, and applications. As a result, you typically have more control and flexibility compared to SaaS. For example, if you use an IaaS render farm, you will need to install your own software, renderers and plug-ins and set up a working environment similar to your computer. However, software licensing issues can be one of the main problems with cloud computing services. In IaaS type services, software license details are often added to the server by the user whereas in SaaS type services, software licensing issues are handled by the render farm provider and the user is charged a fee based on time of use (possibly this fee includes the license fee).Using this workflow, 3D raw data can first be designed at your workstation and then transferred to a remote server in the render farm. In general, the difference with classic render farms is that render farms are located in a cloud infrastructure. This infrastructure allows the virtualisation of existing hardware so that custom configurations can be made (network configuration of a cluster containing many virtual machines). In an IaaS render farm, the user knows exactly what the server specification contains or the type of CPU and GPU in the server. There is no need to purchase additional hardware, the cloud infrastructure is available to you with just a few clicks. Depending on the volume of heavy tasks or jobs, you can easily scale up or down the infrastructure including the number of VMs, configuration types, number of graphics cards, etc. Once the infrastructure is created, the virtual machines are stored as images in the cloud and are available at any time. Interestingly, the outstanding feature of the cloud infrastructure is that more virtual machines can be created from an original image and then cloned to other images with the same data. By doing this, not only is the time and money spent setting up each image saved, but many rendering nodes can also be processed by a large number of images at the same time.It is well known that SaaS render farms provide supported software and plug-ins on their systems, users simply upload files and the classic render farm renders the user's work. The SaaS business model seems likely to handle rendering for the user, but there are more IaaS render farms coming to market. The question is why do CAD users still need IaaS render farms?In fact, 85% of customers need to add their license key to a remote server to use it (some IaaS render farms support specific software licenses), but they continue to choose this type of render farm. The key factor influencing user behavior is the ability to have full control over a powerful server and the flexibility to customize their projects. The IaaS model would be suitable for studios or artists with intricate pipelines and who require a high degree of control from the project owner. In addition to this, if a studio uses multiple software and different renderers and special plug-ins, SaaS render farms can hardly meet the needs of a studio due to the limited types of software supported. It is time to move to an IaaS render farm where the provider offers the highest level of customisation capabilities to its customers. In addition to flexibility, IaaS render farms are highly focused on GPU rendering services.SaaS render farms utilize the number of render nodes, whereas IaaS render farms utilize the number of GPUs in a single server and the number of servers. Therefore, if you are using software and renderers that utilize GPU rendering, IaaS render farms should be the best option.ConclusionIn summary, IaaS and SaaS render farms have their advantages and disadvantages. IaaS render farms would be suitable for CPU-based rendering using a large number of render nodes for rendering. classic render farms such as Fox Renderfarm provide rendering for popular software such as 3Ds Max, Maya and Cinema 4D solutions. Users can customize and upload different rendering engines or plugins.For IaaS render farms, all GPU-based rendering software is optimal on their systems. Full control and high customizability are the decisive advantages that make users choose IaaS render farms. Most importantly, users can leverage the power of multiple graphics cards on a single machine to accelerate their rendering time, which is 50 to 100 times faster than CPU rendering.New users sign up for Fox Renderfarm can receive a free $25 rendering voucher!

Rendering is a very important part during the 3D production. This step will generate the final image including information such as models, scenes, textures, vfx and lights.Rendering in film and television effects is computationally intensive and requires a lot of server computing, especially for animated film production, where rendering time is almost a big challenge. So for the producer, render farm is a good choice.Why the render farm can make you work faster and better?The render farm is also called the conputer cluster. It refers to the calculation method of a supercomputer built with an existing CPU, Ethernet, and operating system. The render farm are consist of thousands of servers.Cloud rendering is an upgrade on the render farm. We can upload the material to the cloud and use the render farm for calculations remotely. And the server will distribute the files to multiple servers and render them according to the uploader's choice.For example, a 10 second special effect lens, 10 hours for a single machine rendering, then if you use 10 machines to render, then the rendering time becomes 1/10.Cloud rendering has the following advantagesNo geographical restrictions, wider market scope, lower idle rate and cost savings.Render farm with better server configuration to ensure user safety and efficiency.Control the rendering progress anytime, anywhere.The emergence of cloud rendering has almost swept the CG industry. It not only brought great changes to the CG industry, but also provided strong support. For the fast-paced modern, it is more convenient, which is why more and more people choose the cloud render farm to render that works.