"I've rendered animations that took 45 minutes a frame. There was nothing wrong with my scene....it was optimized from the start in the workflow...of it is a high res photoreal scene...it is what it is."
My first question is, why would you assume that everyone asking questions on a forum has such expertise as you to be able to get it right from the start? Without futher info, why would you even assume the OP is even trying to do something "photoreal" here? Is that not fairly presumptious?
I have in fact rendered photo real scenes as well...I did a photo realistic still life of a diner scene as something of a tribute to Ralph Goings and the limited DOF in mental ray was a REAL time killer (and ultimately unnecessary as I could have achieved the same results in Photoshop for that single still). That said however, that also shouldn't suggest that EVERY person rendering EVERY scene should have such issues...I'm not sure I understand why you would make such an assumption. The fact is that I've also rendered some very large scenes (comparatively speaking) using Maya Software where the render times were at least manageable, even on the 3 PC's I have here at home.
Perhaps you know the OP here and are familiar with the file/project he/she is working on...for all I know the OP could be an old vet at this and you and he (she) could be working on this project together for you to be intimately familiar with the work. That said, I was simply responding to the initial post with very little info to guide my suggestions, so I could very well be barking up the wrong tree here,. As I stated in my reply however, 66 frames for an over-night render in Maya Software seems INSANELY slow....on my system here at home, I'm knocking out 900+ frames a night, using Mental Ray along with AO and depth layers for my test renders (although the AO layers do seem to be giving me a problem time-wise). From the little information provided, from my perspective at least, one could easily assume that the OP could be something of a novice and that there could very well be other problems causing the slow renders (only a few of which I covered). Should that be the case, one might think the more practical solution would be to fix the problem(s) FIRST rather than jump to rendering farming as the immediate or only solution.
On that note, at the risk of being horribly blunt, I do have to wonder where you live that you have such easy access to affordable rendering farms...? I can't speak for anyone else, but here in Northern Ohio, such options are indeed QUITE limited. In fact at the college I attend, for a few years now I've been suggesting to the powers that be that they incorporate such options. That school has 4 iLabs and 7 PC labs...hundreds of computers just begging to be tapped...so with a bit of finagling, students could essentially have the power of Pixar for their work. The school has yet to incorporate such options...they do have Backburner installed in -2- of the iLabs, but the professors don't have access to the network servers or the Unix knowledge to actually get it working...trust me...we've tried...repeatedly.
In lieu of such options, the only thing (that I know of at least) that a person can do is simply "send it out". The problem there of course is that as far as I know, that can be VERY costly...assuming you can find such resources to begin with...and for students, or even someone such as myself who's just noodling around for his own ****s and giggles, that's just NOT an option. With that little Trek project I'm working on...I'm not making ANY money on that at all...it's NOT a project being done for a client or anything else, other than my own enjoyment and learning experience. Why would you expect a person in such a situation to fork out thousands of dollars for something like this? Render farming works great if you're already a professional in the industry where you can charge such expenses to the client (seriously - "get Mr. Spielberg on the phone and let him know this is gonna cost an extra 20 grand..."), however for independent artists and particularly for students, it's a VERY different thing entirely. Yea, I guess you could just go out and buy 20 - 30 refurbished i7 systems (and a couple of wi-fi routers), all with high end graphics cards and just set them up in your basement, but wow...even with my technical expertise with the hardware, personally my credit line just isn't THAT flexible. Perspective is a wonderful thing....
I'm honestly not trying to be rude here, however to me it seems that instead of analyzing the problem and looking for practical solutions ("hey...try adjusting xxxx in your Mental Ray settings...") you seem to just jump to the assumption that everyone is already an experienced professional, that all their work is already suitable for rendering, that everyone has access to unlimited resources and that wow...everyone has money dripping out their butt. Render farming is an INCREDIBLE resource for those who have access to it and/or those who can afford it (again mainly established pros already in the industry), however not all of us are so lucky. What's more, as already stated, it doesn't address other issues that could be a significant factor...I won't speak for others, but I would never be so bold as to assume that everyone asking questions on a forum such as this is already a professional. If that were the case, I doubt they'd be asking the questions in the first place. As such, if we can assume a certainly level of novice experience here, then it seems to me that there could very well be other factors to consider. I don't claim to be an expert by the longest stretch of the imagination, however one thing I do know about Maya is that there are many things that can kick the crap out of your render times, that farming alone just won't fix. Again a novice could be just as likely to have some seriously botched geometry. In my earliest days of modeling, I actually had one model that had ungodly amounts of extra geometry...for one thing, my extrude tool was set up wrong and I was getting TENS OF MILLIONS of faces every time I used it. This had a truly MASSIVE affect on the render times, because Maya had to work thru all that extra geometry. After I gained some experience, I later went back and did a similar model, using better techniques and although the new model had CONSIDERABLY more detail, the render time was only the slightest FRACTION of what it was with the first model. Should something like that be the case, then I'm sorry dude but no, render farming simply isn't the best solution at all.
In any case, without more info at least, I have to stand by my original comments...I would look for problems with the file and scene and fix those first BEFORE forking out the bread to have it farmed. That of course, is just my own personal opinion.
