Rebus Render Farm: A Complete Overview

This overview about Rebus Render Farm is the third one in our review about render farms. It is from Europe as well (from Germany), and could be considered as the most famous one.

Here is what we will cover today:

1. What is Rebus Render Farm?

Rebus is a SaaS render farm like Ranch Computing. They originated from Germany, and have a long history with a high reputation among many studios.

2. What kind of service do they provide?

SaaS which is kind of like Ranch Computing. You will have them render the project for you, and receive it when it’s done.

However, they do not need you to upload the project to the website. They develop tools which can be added to your own software and you can just render from your software. With Ranch, you can only check if your project is packed in a correct way for uploading. With Rebus, they check and render through their tools for the software.

3. Supported software

They support quite a variety of software. From motion graphics like Cinema 4D, Blender, Maya to Archviz like 3Ds Max, SketchUp, Rhino, Revit. They also cover famous rendering engines like Redshift, Octane, Arnold, Corona, V-Ray.

In each tab of software, they will have lists of supported releases, supported render engines, supported plug-ins so that you know if your project can render on their farm. You can find the tutorial videos at the bottom of the page, which is convenient for starting.

4. Pros

Rebus has many pros as a SaaS cloud render farm. It’s like Ranch, so we will go over those pros but in the context of the Rebus workflow.

4.1. Cost calculator

They have a cost calculator, actually just an estimation but it’s good right? You will choose CPU or GPU, your software and renderer, your project (with information of the number of frames and how long it takes you to render one frame), your workstation information, and you will get the cost.

You don’t need to register an account to try this cost calculator, just like Ranch, which is really convenient. There’s some better features about their cost calculator, compared with Ranch’s. We can name like:

• They have an exchange feature which can change render points from USD to many other currencies. It’s very cool. You might not be from the US and wanna know how much you will spend in your currency, they will help you. Right now they have from Euro, USD to Japanese Yen, Singapore Dollar, etc. You should check their calculator for more information as we cannot write them all here.
• The software choice: it’s a drop down menu and you don’t need to click back or open a new tab to calculate other projects from other software. It might not be necessary for most people, but we know some of you use many software combined, or use many rendering engines.

However, they do not have the choice for a high to low GPU like Ranch.

If you are concerned about your actual rendering, you can try their estimator tool when you download their software. The software will install a plugin inside your 3d software from which you will be able to send the job to the estimation. It’s more accurate.

4.2. Supporting many languages

It’s not a common feature on other sites. Normally, people just have English and their language, maybe Spanish, French, Chinese, etc. But Rebus’ website has many languages, which means that you can explore their service more easily. We have checked, and the workflow, supported software and FAQs are all translated in other languages. That’s a smart approach.

4.3. Unlimited Render rental

It’s for you to render huge projects 24/7, where you have fixed costs and discounts if you rent for a long time. We appreciate that because it’s proving Rebus can serve every kind of your projects’ scale, from small, medium to big one.

You will need to pay first, then you can use the CPU unlimited within the period of purchase.

We still remember in 2014 their CPUs were Dual XEON E5 2630v3 (16core) and Dual XEON E5645 (12core). They changed to AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X (32Core) and Intel i9-7980XE, which is a great move.

4.4. Automatic saving

A great feature when you use Rebus is that you can choose the place where you wanna save your results, and then after each frame they render for you, they will save there automatically. It’s convenient as you don’t need to download them after it’s done. Also, because they save each rendered frame, you can check it immediately.

However, you still cannot pause the process and then resume after you finish checking.

4.5. Other currencies accepted

Normally other farms just accept USD or maybe euro also. But in Rebus, they accept other currencies as well.

It’s a good move like their costcalculator, which exchanges USD to other currencies. You can pay in your currency and don’t worry about not having a wallet in USD.

5. Cons

Same as Ranch Computing, Rebus has some weaknesses and limitation of SaaS in general

5.1. Limited software supported

Although they have a set of 3D software they support, they cannot cover all of them. If you see their list, you may be surprised as they don’t support Houdini. We think it’s very weird as Houdini has proven its reputation and abilities in 3D and VFX fields. Maybe they are developing the tools for this versatile software.

You could not find support for niche software and real-time rendering tools on the site, like Daz3d, Keyshot, iRay, Lumion, Twinmotion, Enscape, D5 Render, Unreal-Engine, etc.

5.2. Limited choice for CPU or GPU

It’s not like you don’t have many options for CPU and GPU, or you cannot pick up which one you wanna use. However, the GPU is just for 3Ds Max, Cinema 4D, Maya and Blender. Other software like SketchUp, Rhino, Revit which use V-Ray can render in GPU as well, but you can only use CPU for that. It’s a downside. It’s in their cost calculator on the website, we are not sure about the actual rendering. Hope that it’s not the same.

Another thing about choice of CPU and GPU is that they don’t have unlimited render rental in GPU. It only has 2 CPU packages. Therefore, you cannot use it for GPU-accelerated software. Considering that the industry is shifting to GPU, we think that they should expand it and have more options for GPU rendering.

5.3. High cost

We tried rendering a project in Blender on Rebus, and it turned out to be quite costly compared to the price of RANCH. We think that they took more power to do the job and we don’t want to wait in the queue. Maybe that’s the reason.

If you are not in a hurry and have a tight budget, we don’t recommend it.

5.4. No 24/7 support

The live chat on their website is not 24/7. You can leave a message then they will respond asap.

See more: CPU vs GPU render farm: What is the difference and which is the best for your projects?

6. Ratings and recommendations

Rebus, like Ranch Computing, is very suitable for 3D and animation rendering. They focus more on big projects where you could have attractive volume discounts and unlimited render rental. However, for small projects, we don’t recommend it because the cost is high.

They don’t support much of Archviz and real-time rendering. You should consider other services for that. It’s common that SaaS doesn’t support Archviz real-time rendering tools.

It’s very disappointing that they don’t support Houdini, a very powerful VFX tool, or other tools in the 3D pipeline like Nuke, Katana, etc. It could be in the near future, and we always look forward to it.

Rebus is famous without a doubt. You can find many sites mentioning them. Let’s take a look at what we found:

In CGDirector, Rebus is number one:

https://www.cgdirector.com/best-online-render-farms/

In InspirationalTuts, Rebus is number two:
https://inspirationtuts.com/best-online-render-farms-for-3d-artists/

In Radarrender, Rebus is number three:
https://radarrender.com/top-5-best-render-farms-2021/

In Architecturelab, Rebus is number four
https://www.architecturelab.net/render-farm-for-architects/

If there’s anything about RebusFarm you want to update, don’t hesitate to tell us. It’s just our point of view and experience, yours is always welcome.

See more: Our ranking render farm