Hi,
I hope this won’t be a double thread, i’ve posted it earlier but can’t find it anywhere.
So: I’m soon gonna have two PCs and I was wondering how I could get them to share renders. I’ve read about render farm manager software but I’m worried about compatibility with cycles and I also would rather choose something easy to configure. (Don’t want to lose more time setting it up than I’ll earn using it ;-D)
Thanks in advance for any help.
If you don’t want to set up any network rendering, the basic option is to save the frame render to a shared network location or a synced online location like dropbox.
Get each machine to render the same blend file and in the Render / Output panel disable ‘Overwrite’ and enable ‘Placeholders’
Each machine will then render the next available frame of an animation
@mib:Thanks I’ll have a look at loki. Do you know if it supports gpu renders?
@Rick:I din’t know the place holder option was meant for that. It would be as copying the file and ask each pc to render a certain amount of the animation except that I wouldn’t have to “guess” how much to assign to each pc according to its spec, right?
Yes, it support GPU and even mixed systems.
If the .blend is setup with GPU Loki use all GPU systems and fallback to CPU if not available.
Loki support tile render for single images too.
Cheers, mib
Thanks a lot!
Hi again!
I’m in doubt. I’m going to buy this second pc I talked about in a few weeks and I am wondering if there is a better way to: shorten my render times/use my money.
I already have this pc: I5 4670k / GTX970/ 16go ddr3/ MoBo AsRock Z87M Pro4/ psu CoolerMaster 550w. And I was almost set on this new build: I7 5930k/ GTX980ti/ 32go ddr4/ MoBo msi X99 Raider/ psu 600w. And have the two work in pair.
My main usage is HD video editing + sfx with 3d models and 3d animations, particules and smoke (all in blender because, you know, it’s the best software in the world!). The most annoying is the render time when I’m done tweaking and a smoother 3d rendered viewport would be appreciated.
But here comes Mr.doubt: would there be a better way to improve render time? Knowing that gpu rendering is absolutely necessary and fluids still don’t render on gpu (correct me if I’m wrong (pleaaase DO!!)) is there a cluster or mini-render-farm that I could build for the same price that would be faster?
Thanks in advance!
No one? Ain’t it the right section to ask?
For cpu versus gpu rendering features see https://www.blender.org/manual/render/cycles/features.html
Thanks for this link! Still no gpu rendering for smoke T.T
I found this thread earlier and it’s kind of an up to date version of it that would be usefull in my case.
Like : should I sell my actual pc and add a second 980ti inside the new one or should I go for more PCs with less powerfull cards??
Video editing… go for single station, better, faster, more GPUs.
Simulations (rendering is lighting simulation)… go for farm, more CPUs.
In any case add bigger, faster SSD.
Ok, but, gpu is good for 3D renders as long as I don’t have smoke/fire simulation, right?
So, in your opinion: one or two good GPUs on the master will speed my video renders, but I should keep some slaves for heavy 3D work and simulations.
About SSD I was wondering if the pcie SSD were worth the extra price. Any experience with those?