Rendering Solutions

[Kinetic99]

Hello and thanks for your time,

I was wondering if anyone could point me out to any information or experience in the different types of rendering practices that exist. My goal is to render photorealistic objects/products using 3dsmax and VRAY.

From what I read there are three solutions: Renderfarms, Rendering Servers and Cloud Rendering.

Are there others? What would you recommend for small to medium sized budgets?

K

[CAMedeck]

Are you planning to render animations, or just images?  I know someone that deals primarily with rendering images at about 6k pixels across that buys used computers from eBay and uses them for distributed rendering or strip rendering with Backburner.  He watches for deals frequently and finds some real steals for hardware that is only 2 to 3 years old but still pretty high end.  The advantage is that once you invest the money, you can use it as often as you want.  

If you go with an online render service, you pay every time you use it.  For animations, they are almost a requirement for freelancers and even small studios that don't have the budget to build a large enough farm.  You could render a short sequence on a small farm, but you may be left waiting for a few days or even weeks with anything longer.

I'm lucky enough to have about 40 powerful machines dedicated for rendering in my office.  But even that falls short of our needs sometimes!