Network Rendering server Rack style CPU vs Desktop CPU

[sdeters]

We are reviewing our Render engine, and hardware for 3Ds Max.

At the Current time, I am using one computer with 8 cores running at 3.6 clock speed.  It is taking 18 days to render a minute video. 

We are rendering Mechanical marketing type videos.  So two minutes will probably the longest one we have.

1080 P video with 30 frames per second.

We are using Arnold due to being shipped with 3Ds max for the render.    So Network rendering nodes will have to be bought.

I am need some horse power, so I am needing some thoughts.

we could go with a render farm, on a rack server type system, or we could purchase multiple desktop computers to render on?  Is there pro's and con's one vs the other.

Geometry that I am using has been exported out of Cad System.  So I am working with Brep faces in 3Ds max.

Would V-ray be a quicker render than Arnold?  tough question to answer I know but thoughts on this would be great. 

I would like to get my render times down to days not weeks on end.

[madsd]

Scalines is the fastest, you lose some things in the process naturally. But that is logic.

You may considder changing how you approach lighting the scene to drop the speeds by magnitudes and little to no visual loss.

If you go farm, I would pick rack.

If you can preview a product animation that comes close to what you want to make, we can make a qualified attempt to help you get to the goal with the fastest possible scene setup in terms of lightning. You see, adding a HDR as only light source is not the only way to light a set nor is it the fastest, but you can use it for reflections only, and rig lightning differently which will drop render times significantly.

For flexibility I suggest to render AOV passes, get the easy stuff out of the way fast and composit the stuff together to even further decrease render power load.

[sdeters]

As you can tell this is follow up or a continuation of my last post, Being very inexperienced, I am a mechanical Siemens NX Design guy, not a 3DS max guy,   I am trying hard to become better at this 3Ds max.  This has become a second responsibility so it is challenging to say the least.

So for Using an HDRI for light, this was an easy to setup for me,

If you would please help, provide or suggest a different light setup, that would be great. 

My only two requirements from marketing, black background, and they like the floor reflections.

I have added the 3Ds max setup I have with teapots.    For the Missing HDR file, You can really use any file you want. 

I have attached one of the Frames from the animation I have done. 

Thanks for the help once again, 

[madsd]

Awesome,

I'm wokring on something right now, but will dig into your file and give it a go. Possibly send back a scene with a different setup but following the guidelines marketing set out for you.

I'll return in 24 hours with something.

[dgorsman]

I'll second the recommendation for a server-style render farm, but with a caveat.  One of the uses for a desktop-style render farm is using existing computers in a network environment during off-hours.  If you've already got a dozen or so high-power desktops for engineering applications during the daytime and you're only going to be rendering every other month or so, then consider putting them to work after the users go home.  If you only have a couple of those desktops and/or you're going to be rendering pretty much every single week, then it can make more sense to get a server set up specifically for rendering.

Don't forget that you aren't required to render the full sequence all in one shot.  Look for easy places to make edits (e.g. motion loops, object fade in/out), which can be quickly rendered in chunks overnight or over a weekend.  That will also give you a little more freedom when you get to editing the final product in "post".  And if something doesn't come out quite right you don't have to redo the entire project.

[sdeters]

Good points and thanks.  This is another way of doing things,  We have at least twenty machines sitting idle at night, this is another possible solution.

I could use these, plus the render nodes it costs, to say network render on ten of these machines,  We have many, heck that could cut render frames and times down greatly.

When We all get in the morning would they all kill the process or how would I manage not taking up their machine if they get in earlier than me? 

thanks for the feedback and help

[madsd]

People can terminate, and log into windows with their own login.

You should make a "visualisation" windows account which you can log into, to keep it seperated from the peoples workstations, although not needed, it is convenient.

When people get back, the render manager just stops using the node, and the rest just continues, you don't need to do anything, the magager tracks what frames needs to be done, and sends the frames to the machines available.

[madsd]

Hey,

I'm close to a deadline, but you have not been forgotten 🙂

It is likely I can look at it tomorrow.

[sdeters]

No worries.  I really do appreciate all of the help.   I am no hurry

[madsd]

Ok,

Had some time so spend 10 minutes looking into it.

I've changed a lot of things in your scenes fundamental light rig.

Removed your HDR light, and instead use the HDR entirely for reflections.

Hhave clamped indirect samples beneath 1.0 to 0.7 to make sure it is impossible to get fireflies indirectly even with very low specular samples = fast.

Removed the HDR refference on the domelight, disabled its shadows, and installed a custom build Light filter only available through this post.
I attached the dll to the post and it is important that you understand it MUST be located in your plugin folder.

It is a skylight faker which further improves speeds and you can find it in the Slate material editor in the scene I attached. You can adjust the radius until you get the amount of shadows needed, this again improves speed a lot.

Now, we got reflecting surfaces reflecting eachother, reflecting a HDR map, and use a simple light rig on top with no fireflies at low settings.

All you need to do is dial in your shaders so they look good with respect to the new conditions.

If you want a bit of directional light in the shadows, add a lamp in, else ignore it.

Image took something like 15 seconds to render with no real visible artifacs, yet all surfaces reflect either hard or with specular roughness.

[Francisco_Penaloza]

Well, I haven't try Arnold in animations, just a few stills. You could download the V-Ray demo and test it out, but if you know your render engine very well you can always do optimizations so hard to tell.  My usual rendering is V-Ray so I could say that V-Ray may be faster, but saying that in this forum is like insulting someone's mother so I think you should test it out. 😉

Regarding Workstations VS render Racks/nodes, it depends on your budget and if you are a person/company that relies on prebuild machines such Dell or HP or you guys are OK with off-brand builds.

The basics always apply, when more cores the faster your render also a dual Xeon with let's say 10 cores each, will use fewer licenses that four workstations with faster quad cores i7.

Arnol uses brute force raytracing so the math is simple, more cores, faster rendering.

You could use this benchmark webpage as a reference to compare what you have now and what you will like to buy. This is tested with Corona render but is very close to what Arnold could do.

https://corona-renderer.com/benchmark/all

You could also use this other page, this is a synthetic testing but still, it scores CPU accordingly.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Best luck.

[madsd]

I redid a couple of tweaks to match your video.

All you need to do is set the specular samples, rest are low and pass through quicly without leaving any traces.

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