Hi. I am rendering a small animation that includes an Open vdb smoke file.
The times…are almost impossible for me to process. The smoke is present in 250 frames and each frame at 2k takes 40 minutes.
I am seriously considering to use a render farm for those frames. There are two main issues. The open vdb files are about 250 GB…so I doubt I can upload that to a render farm. Maybe it is possible I am not sure. The other issue is the cost of doing that.
I am asking in the forum for advice on this. First: Render farm is it possible to upload my openvdb files?
Maybe you have a workaround to do it without it. I know that Ian Hubert has a pack of alphas that simulate smoke…maybe I should try that one instead…and forget about my simulation .
Look up some vids on reducing rendering times and optimise your render settings. I found decreasing the amount of light bounces helped a bit with a smoke simulation I did.
Hi, you can totally try rendering your animation with a render farm. At GargeFarm we’re using a plugin/addon which you can use directly from Blender to upload your scene along with the VDB cache. Our plugin will handle that, though you would need to consider the additional upload time. Ian Hubert’s workflow with alphas is also a viable option if it can hold the same effect as a simulation. It would greatly optimize the rendering times, plus less data to upload.
Feel free to try out our render farm with the free credits we offer on registration at https://garagefarm.net/blender-render-farm.